TGIF! Busy Busy

[FootScoot]

[flysquasher1974]

Harry,

Spent the last part of the week in your neck of the woods. My son graduated from 31st Engineer Brigade at Fort Leonard Wood on Friday. We got there Wednesday and saw a sign next to our hotel that said Dixon 13 miles i thought of you. Guess we were all busy last week!

Dale

[crossovercrazy]

Referring to Uncle Reinecke's adventure, I used to work on base at Wright-Patt, a few blocks from the Museum. I remember a WWII V-2 rocket that sat outside my office door for years until they came and restored it (it looked like it came from Acme Rocket Co.). I also remember when the SR-71 flew around me as I stood on the runway, banking and looking like a UFO until it landed and taxied to the Museum for its permanent home. I recommend everyone go there - including to look at the Apollo space exhibit. It's the best free tourist site in the country.

When I started there in 1987, I generated lightning bolts indoors in a hangar to study their attachment to an airplane we had inside. We tore the multi-million volt power system to make it into a rail gun that we assembled under my office, to make things explode with little aluminum projectiles at hypervelocity. My main job was to shoot Russian artillery rounds at full size aircraft full of fuel, with 500 mph+ airflow over them via 7 jet engines we ducted over the plane - it would make a nice 100 foot fireball when you hit a full tank. My job was to design weird science stuff to stop that from happening.

I loved designing manikins and shooting them in F-15 airplanes, making their ejection seats go off, shooting oxygen bottles on the planes and the like. But, my favorite project was arranging with a drag racing fire extinguisher company to bring in a regular competing McDonald's Funny Car to the base, designing a test set up to blow up the engine with high pressure nitromethane, oil and 1500 F headers, and 250 mph air blown over the car, to create a realistic fire down the track to test and verify a new Halon replacement extinguisher system for it. The NHRA came and witnessed it and approved it, and it is in use today. The other treat was having Smokey Yunick to come to the base at my invitation and interview me for Circle Track Magazine - all the Air Force scientists thought he was some yokel and tried to talk down to him, but it became clear that he knew much more about their business than all of them!

[dreinecke]

Mike, see - I knew you were a closet celebrity! Very cool stuff! Saw the V2 restored. No longer looks like Acme...