It's not often that I find something surprising that I had no idea about when it comes to local history, so color me surprised when I found this little nugget from NPR and another local blogger. I had no idea that Amelia Earhart had to make a forced landing after experiencing engine troubles when following the rail lines near Tintic, Utah in 1928.
One picture of an article you can find on Amelia's stay at Jacob Barlow's site. He has many more pics there of additional articles detailing her stay while her plane was being repaired.
I won't steal the thunder, but you can read a transcript of the radio broadcast of the story on NPR's website here. Another big thanks goes out to Jacob Barlow's site which introduced the subject to me and he has some really neat pictures of the original newspaper articles about it there. I would highly encourage you to check out his site as it has all sorts of cool info about old towns, ghost towns, filming locations, and lots of other assorted and interesting info about Utah.
I'm not a fan of reality TV shows, even when they were all the rage a few years ago. The only one that I could occasionally stand was MTV's Pimp My Ride, as it was a bit silly and over the top. I mean, there's a reason it spawned memes still in use today, but as it turns out, Hollywood is still a cesspool of nastyness, and the show was a train wreck behind the scenes. The ever-excellent youtube channel Weird History does a short dive into some of the controversies:
I always loved that title of the little section of Popular Mechanics magazine back in the day. They always loved highlighting things people thought was new, but was a decades old idea, but likely was only made practical by modern innovation.
Anyways, as I have said before, I have next to no interest in purchasing/owning most bullpup guns (if not all). However, I still find them very fun and interesting from an engineering perspective. The one that caught my eye lately was a prototype bullpup rifle featured on the firearm blog made by a company called Senex Arms.
Pic of the prototype obviously swiped form TFB.
The firearm blog says it's meant to be as compatible with as many AR-15 parts as possible, and mentions it uses a slightly modified AR bolt carrier group. From the looks of it, it seems it would also use the same fire control group, magazine, and barrel. However, they do say it will feature an HK-type non-reciprocating charging handle, and will have a quick change barrel as well. It's seems like an actual good idea for people that basically want a bullpup AR with parts compatibility with the AR.
Hopefully, it doesn't turn out to be like the Bushmaster M17S.
However, the whole thing reminds me of another decades old project that turned into the ill fated Bushmaster M17S. The concept was similar, make a bullpup AR18 action, but use as many AR15 parts as possible like mags, mag release, grips (on later models), pins, and springs. The whole thing just didn't pan out due to weird ergonomics, poor controls, heavier weight, and somehow it's not as accurate or reliable. The production run was small, and is not made anymore because most people just didn't like it. The Senex guys seem to have a much better, well thought out concept, so hopefully the same fate doesn't befall them.
As an aside, I found while making this post, that the M17S has been re-engineered/improved by K&M Arms to fix many of the long-standing issues of the platform, and is now back in production. Here's a picture of the modernized rifle from K&M Arms' website:
Many people wanted to know what those lights were in the Nevada skies in the 70s through the 90s. People theorized that it was flying saucers, experimental spacecraft, or UFOs of alien origin, but now we have a good idea of what most of them may have been after Constant Peg (and the F-117) was declassified.
A picture of the US crews in front of a MiG-21 from the 4477th. Sourced from Wikipedia.
What is Constant Peg, you ask? Well, it was the name of the longest continuing classified military airplane program done by the United States. Nestled in a remote locale in Nevada, is the Tonopah Test Range, with it's accompanying airfield which was home to the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which was a joint-service effort with pilots/aviators from the Navy, USMC, and Air Force, that was also sometimes supported by the infamous Groom Lake facility. This unit was given the classified assignment described as "the testing and evaluation of foreign aircraft technology" from the years of 1977 to 1990.
A Constant Peg MiG-23 flying over the Nevada desert.
Basically, the military had been able to acquire a relatively large amount of MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-27s, Chinese copies of these planes, and others through various means, such as: political dealings, espionage, straw purchases, defections, captured, recovered from crashes, and even stolen examples. Ultimately, the Air Force (and other services) were eager to form a squadron to evaluate them and put them to use against American aircraft and pilots in wargames. Both to assess their performance and capabilities of the expected adversary aircraft, as well as understand the workings of the aircraft to better prepare US pilots against them in the event of a future war, and current proxy conflicts.
Another MiG-23 of the squadron.
The pilots selected for this mission were to be the absolute best of their fields, and would train relentlessly, as they not only had to fly missions as test pilots to evaluate the performance limits of the planes themselves, but also to fly as adversary aggressor pilots to other American aircrews. The pilots were extremely professional and dedicated to the mission, even to the point of speaking Russian when on comms with other American aircrews.
Constant Peg MiG-17 at the front, Mig-21 at the rear
As amazing as all this sounds, the real miracle of the whole story is the ground crews and maintainers of the aircraft, who were often very senior NCOs, a large number of which had served in the Thunderbirds. This was required as they needed to basically reverse engineer how to support these Russian planes with everything still labelled in Russian, with no manuals, translations, or original support crews to speak of to assist. Nothing short of astounding when you thing about that feat!
At the end of the day, I can't really do it enough justice with just a small blog write up with a few pictures. So here's a short 5 min documentary on youtube on the subject. Also, I embedded below, and even more excellent video from the 10% True youtube channel that has a couple of Constant Peg veterans commenting on recently declassified footage at Tonopah of the 4477th operations:
I think the final and most definitive work on the subject will have to be the book available by Col. Gail Peck (retired) who headed the project, which is available on Amazon:
Though, don't be fooled by the fact the squadron officially stood down in 1990, as our story doesn't end there. It was known that after the 4477th stood down, the remaining assets were reconstituted as Detachment 3 of 53rd Test and Evaluation Group, who flew much more modern threat aircraft such as MiG-29 Fulcrums and Su-27 Flankers. This was also disbanded, but is now likely operating those assets as a part of the 422d Test and Evaluation Squadron, with their aircraft likely being based out of Groom Lake itself now. It seems even locals have documented them showing up from time to time. So if you can hear or see military fighter jets in the skies of Nevada, you may want to take a closer look, to see if they are Russian in origin.
Unfortunately, it seems the onslaught of famous people dying continues, but unlike most, this one hits a little harder than most. I just learned that Ivan Reitman died on the 12th at 75 years of age.
This one hits harder than most because, unlike all the other fandoms I had growing up (ie. Star Wars and Star Trek), the Ghostbusters franchise still had it's missteps, but still tried to not only do right by the fans, but general audiences with the last movie, and was very good. So far, fans don't seem to be getting the middle finger from that franchise anymore, unlike the others I mention, who are still actively extending it.
Even if you aren't a Ghostbusters fan, there's plenty of other prolific movies he has been a part of: Stripes, Space Jam, Heavy Metal, Up In The Air, Evolution, Beethoven, Kindergarten Cop, Twins, and Animal House. I'm sure between all of those, everyone will find at least one or more to love in that list.
So my condolences to Jason Reitman and the rest of the family, as they (and audiences) lost one of the great ones in Hollywood.
You know, for a long time, I felt like Dr. Venkman on the subject of St. Valentine's day, but now, I'm just excited by how racked my brain is to figure out what good thing I can do for my lovely wife today. Any gift or act I do for her feels like it's just insufficient to let her know how much I love and appreciate her. Despite not being destitute, I just don't have the budget to buy the whole world, so we'll start with a song:
Who doesn't like a good tale of lost treasure? I can't help it, anytime there's a tale of "gold being up in them there hills", it will always get me interested. These type of tales are some of my favorite, despite the fact that a lot of them are likely just bogus. So again, slap on some head banging spooky music and read on, but don't get too comfy, as another post on them will come soon.
A Biblical-adjacent mystery of a metal plate among the dead sea scrolls describing the possible lost treasure of the Jewish temple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Scroll
Well, can't say I'm surprised. Considering Microsoft's history and reputation, I hope those composers take them to the cleaners. Preferably while playing the Halo soundtrack as they enter the courtroom.
Being that I am a big fan of aviation, history, and mystery, the website Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields is the perfect intersection of all three. If you have a similar penchant, it's more than worth a visit and will certainly lead you down a rabbit-hole of reading, and I felt it deserved it's own post.
I remember finding this site almost decades ago, around 2003 or so, and am glad it still up and going. From what I see, the author still provides regular updates and there is a really good amount of information on a MASSIVE list of (2,574 according to the author) unused airfields in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. This was the site that I sourced much of my info about the Hurricane Mesa test facility yesterday, and it has far more info than I was able to provide on it.
Despite the list being what I would call "exhaustive", some fields just don't have a lot of info available about them, as he may still be looking for info on them, or there isn't much into to find in the first place. Most others however, will have some very fascinating and lengthy write ups on their history with a litany of pictures of the airfields in their prime, and what they look like today, some of them not even existing anymore. The place is not only a great historical resource on these sites, but also a great safety resource for pilots to know of places to make emergency landings at places with a lessened risk to pilots, the plane, and potential bystanders.
The site is a one man operation, and is primarily supported by visitors like you, so he does have an option to make paypal donations. It's also neat that the site is partially supported by the American Aviation Historical Society as well.
Since the site has been in operation for almost 23 years, I wonder if is there is any way to gauge if it's one of the oldest personally owned and still operated/updated sites on the net.
The places he talks about are all arranged by state, and his long-form write ups are very well written, so go check it out and see if you have something interesting near you, or near any place you have an interest in!
As an added note, the AAHS website is another fantastic goldmine full of interesting stuff worth checking out, despite looking a little dated.
