• Ryan COIN

    Ryan art of a Counter Insurgency (COIN) concept from the 1960s. This aircraft is somewhat similar to the OV-10 Bronco but with the important distinction of having a rotor for VTOL capability. For forward flight the 3-bladed rotor would largely stow within a large saucer-shaped rotor hub to decrease drag. Unfortunately, this is all I…

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  • The limits of gloating

    In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, a LOT of people found themselves with exciting opportunities to explore new career options after posting gleeful nonsense online that their employers didn’t like or were downright horrified by. And while I’ve long been opposed to “cancel culture,” this simply doesn’t bother me. If you found that…

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  • Great great great grandfather

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    So a very distant relation in Sweden is working on fleshing out his family history and managed to get in touch with my mother regarding my mothers fathers fathers father, who left Sweden in 1852 and came to Illinois. Included in what we have so far is a translation of a letter the guy sent…

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  • July 2025 APR Rewards

    Rewards for July, 2025 have been released. These include: Document: “GETOL Technical Merits & Status,” General Dynamics/Convair, AD-VTOL-41, February, 1963. Report on Ground Effect Take off and Landing studies. Document: “Flying Cranes,” Sikorsky, 1959. Brochure describing and illustrating heavy lift helicopters built and projected. Document: “Nova and Post-Nova Propulsion Summary,” Rocketdyne presentation, 1962, describing extremely…

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  • Class Y Courier

    A fan concept of a Star Wars Y-wing but brought into the Star Trek universe as a courier. Only the one view, but to me it looks awesome. It’d make a neat model. It certainly seems to make sense from an aesthetic standpoint, looking like something that might serve the Runabout role during the TOS…

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  • Forgotten dead, remembered again

    A Tweet about the Pixar movie “Coco,” which I have not seen, got me thinking (and I think re-iterating an idea I blathered about on this blog years ago but can’t be bothered to look up again). https://x.com/cirsova/status/1945885686768230903 An interesting theology: you continue to exist in some form so long as someone remembers you, then…

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  • Buttons & Abby

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    Buttons is about 16. While nowhere near the oldest a cat can get, it is, sad to say, old for a cat. All my prior cats made it to 10 or at best 11, so Buttons has outlasted them all. And sadder to say, he has some medical issues that, left unchecked, will end him…

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  • Ebay is getting expensive

    For about 20 years I’ve been buying aerospace documentation on ebay. For a good chunk of those I’ve crowdfunded the purchases of really expensive stuff. And by “really expensive” I’ve meant something like “hundreds of dollars for a single report.” Split the purchase price between one or two dozen people, send all of them high-rez…

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  • 200 K

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    Sadly not $200,000 or 200,000 followers willing to do my bidding, but 200,000 miles on my car a few days ago. Not much of a milestone I suppose, but it’s what I got.  

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  • Hello? Is this thing still on?

    Yeesh, it’s been months since I’ve blog posted much of anything. Of course all my yapping is now done at Twitter (@UnwantedBlog), where I post a handful of things a day. But even with that, I write a hell of a lot less than during my blogging days. It’s a lot easier to tweet. Question:…

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