Army goes for replacement for UH60 Black Hawk.

   Black hawk is a conventional helicopter that has been flying for years and is quite satisfactory.  Back in 2014 the army asked for a fly off between the Bell Helicopter V280 tilt rotor design and the Sikorsky-Boeing Defiant a more or less conventional design with a pusher propeller for better speed. 

 

   After 8 well paid years of testing and tinkering the Army finally picked the Bell V280 which was faster.  The V22 Osprey is the only tilt rotor currently in service.  It can do 300-400 knots, but large conventional helicopters have better range and bigger payloads.  Osprey has a poor safety record, a lot of crashes, some with troops on board and many deaths.  It is not clear to me why the services care about speed.  In Viet Nam we arranged for the troop carrying helicopters to arrive all at the same time.  We had enough troops in the first wave to overwhelm the enemy, especially with gun ships supporting the infantry. 

 

    The Bell 280 is flying, at least the Aviation Week article shows it in the air.  There is a juicy $7.3 billion of “startup money” for the V280.   Actual production of V280’s will cost $70 billion.  Aviation Week did not mention how many V280s that $70 billion will buy. 

  

   The Army said very little about the contract award, like why they picked Bell.  Sikorsky-Boeing is thinking about suing to reverse the contract award.  That ought to suck up another year or two. 

 

Guns for Girls

 Face it girls.  Men are bigger than you are.  They are taller, heavier, and stronger that you are.  If you have a long walk to your car after dark, or to your apartment, you ought to think about carrying a gun.  “All people were NOT created equal; Sam Colt made them that way.”

   You are thinking about a hand gun that can be concealed in a purse, a pocket, a holster, a car glove compartment, a desk drawer, wherever.  Hand guns come in two flavors, revolvers and automatic pistols.  I recommend revolvers because they are extremely reliable.  Pull the trigger and a revolver always goes bang.  Automatic pistols not so much. 

    Handguns are made to shoot a variety of cartridges (bullets) ranging from target practice rounds that would not kill a flea up thru Dirty Harry’s 44 Magnum (“The most powerful handgun on the planet”).  You want the most powerful round that you can shoot well.  For many people 38 Special is easy to shoot and powerful enough to do the job. The more powerful the round, the worse the recoil and the louder the report.  You want the go to a shooting range and actually fire the round you are thinking about and see how hard it is to shoot.  While you are at the range see how well the gun fits your hand.  I learned to shoot in the Air Force where the issue revolver was a miserable to shoot 38 special. The trigger was too heavy, the grip was not big enough to get all my fingers around it, and the wooden grips had been soaked in gun oil for 20 years and were slippery.  The gun twisted in my hand after each shot.  Later I acquired an Army .45 and it shot like a dream.  Try to shoot a number of different guns, you may find one that shoots better for you than the others. 

   Two things about shooting.  Always wear ear defenders, those bulky plastic earmuffs, ESPECIALLY on an indoor gun range.  Without ear defenders the report is so loud that it can scare you into a permanent flinch, where in you squeeze the trigger too fast and too hard and miss the target.  The other thing is to shoot a hand gun with BOTH hands.  This is the Weaver technique which became standard in the late 1960’s and it improved my shooting a lot. 

   You need to get out and shoot your gun for practice if you expect to hit anything for real.  Squeeze the trigger gently so that it is something of a surprised when the gun actually fires.  Line up the front and back sight over the target bulls eye.  Take a small breath and they hold it while you line up the sights and squeeze the trigger.  When you get home from the range clean your gun, especially the inside of the barrel and cylinder.  Wrap your gun in an oily rag when you put it away to prevent rust.  

Cannon Mountain ski weather.

  We got 7 inches of fresh snow last night. Nice fluffy powder. That will put the mountain in great shape.  And it is still snowing as of 7:30 AM.

Title 42.

They have been talking about a court ordered repeal of Title 42 as another disaster on the southern border.  Title 42 was something CDC got passed requiring the Border Patrol to immediately send back to Mexico anyone who might be bringing COVID into the US.  The talk says repealing Title 42 will swamp us with yet more undocumented immigrants.

This discussion seems like malarkey to me.  Anyone crossing into the United States lacking proper paperwork should be immediately returned to where they came.  No Title 42 required.  If they have not gotten proper paperwork from a US consulate abroad or a US Customs station on the border, out they go. Right now.

What’s so hard about that? 

What to do about the FBI?

 Start at the top, fire Wray.  Fire the next three levels of management.  Prosecute them if possible.  Cut the FBI appropriation in half.  They have too many people.  Sell all the FBI's aircraft.  When FBI people travel they can fly commercial, like the rest of us do.  Repeal the law making lying to the FBI a crime.

Ticket splitting?

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel blamed the “red trickle” in the mid term elections on “massive ticket splitting”.   Ticket splitting is not a cause for defeat.  The cause for Republican defeat is candidates that failed to impress voters. 

   Do we still need an RNC Chairman who lacks such basic understanding of elections?

Parents against Fentanyl.

 

 

Parents want to make sure their children know that street drugs will kill.  Fentanyl is cheap and extremely powerful.  So powerful that the slightest error in mixing fentanyl with other ingredients leaves a pill with enough fentanyl to kill.  A few months ago a survey of street drugs showed that one in six pills bough on the street had enough fentanyl to kill.  A later survey a few weeks ago showed things were worse.  This survey found that one in a mere three pills bought off the street had enough fentanyl to kill you.  The newsies will call it an “overdose”.  I call it deliberate poisoning.

   Anyhow, you ought to tell your kids that street drugs will kill them.   If they just have to get high they ought to stick to alcohol or pot.  They are safer than street drugs.