This morning, with every intention of writing a short column, as I’ve been promising myself, I sat down to a bowl of leftovers for breakfast and finally started to read through the latest issue of AOPA Pilot that’s been sitting on the counter gathering dust. Too much work, too little time.
This issue was particularly interesting to me because it features seaplanes and years ago (like back in the 1970’s) I did the voiceover work for Kenmore Air’s seaplane flight training series. This was back in the days of cassettes, mind you.
Seaplanes and I have some very fond memories: The first one I flew was a J-3 Cub on floats, but after that I moved up to a Lake LA-4-200 amphibian. When landing on water, the retractable gear stays safely tucked away. But when landing at Boeing Field in Seattle, the gear dropped down and the plane landed on very short, but solid “legs.”
The only oddity of the Lake was that it featured a pusher prop mounted on a pylon over the cabin and above the wing. Which required a bit of getting used to: Normally when you’re on final approach for landing, if you pull the power back a bit, the nose will come down and often very little adjustment to trim is needed.
On the Lake, though, when you pull power, the nose comes UP…and depending on how big the power change is, that can be (how to we say this?) an exciting experience.
Getting back to our story: so there I was replaying seaplane adventures in my head and looking through the ads in the magazine and I noticed the word RISE has been adopted by the folks down in Kerrville, TX who make the finest/fastest gas prop-driven airplane in production at the moment, Mooney, and their latest does a screaming 242 knots. Roughly 278 miles an hour.
My, how cool! Mooney is on track and meeting the needs and of the aviation market, along with great American companies like Cessna, Beech, Piper, Carbon Crafters…you know the list.
Then disaster struck on page 31.
The ad said Rise, also, but as I looked down the ad (with an airplane on the left side, and a large group of what looked like outdoorsmen sitting around a campfire), my eye was drawn to the company name that produces the plane: Mahindra Aerospace Group.
Mahindra? The folks that make the tractors (dark fire engine red) that are taking over large segments of the agricultural farm equipment market? Yep, same folks.
And with reason, I might add: Back in 2004 when I was making a decision on which tractor to buy, a four-wheel drive 25-30 HP class diesel was then pretty well down to a Mahindra (new to the market then) and a Kubota (the bright orange brand).
In the end, I opted for the Kubota because one of our Peoplenomics subscribers at the time worked for Kubota in Georgia, where the US tractors are made. (Used to be all out of Japan.)
The Mahindra was a solid tractor, though: Very dependable and though perhaps not as “refined” as the Kubota, within the first 200-hours (at my East Texas Tractor Abuse Festival) the Kubota was in for $1,200 worth of repairs to the clutch/ transmission, which should never have failed as it did.
To this day, I’ve been telling myself maybe I got a lemon, but it’s held up fairly well since. Still…this Mahindra outfit tractors have earned (the hard way) a very good reputation hereabouts.
And this gets me to the point of this morning’s story if you work up in the square states and work for the airplane makers: Read up on GippsAero in Wikipedia:
Gippsland Aeronautics was founded by Peter Furlong and George Morgan. The company started operations at the Latrobe Regional Airport in Morwell in the 1970s as an aircraft maintenance and modification business working for large organisations such as the National Safety Council of Australia and Esso Australia, as well as local commercial operators.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Peter Furlong and John Brown were pilots, builders, fabricators and maintenance personnel for, amongst others, the Latrobe Valley Aircraft Club and the Ultra Light Club of Australia. The company builds single-engined utility aircraft. These include the multi-role GA8 Airvan and the agricultural GA200 Fatman. The company is owned by Indian conglomerate Mahindra Group. In December,2009 Mahindra Aerospace Pvt. Ltd. (MAPL), belonging to Mahindra Group of India acquired a 75.1% majority stake and the company was renamed GippsAero.
And now…this month… the AirVan 8 is showing in America’s leading pilot/flying magazine. We could argue that, since I’m also an Experimental Aircraft Association member and chapter VP, but my point is keep an eye on Mahindra.
The AirVan 8 is not particularly fast (just 8 MPH faster than our old Beechcraft wide open when the AirVan is in cruise). Specs and be found over here. But huge payload. I could get all my readers onto one flight!
I haven’t priced the AirVan, either. But I’ve seen how Mahindra on the Ag side has built a good tractor and gone world-conquering with it.
So the point this morning is simple: “Watch your ass, Wichita…new kid on the block may give you trouble, especially companies like the one that’s been moving some of its single-engine work down to the wrong side of the Mexican border.
Love the internet all you will.
But it’s made it possible for companies all over the world to come here with lower unit labor and materials costs and eat our lunch of many fronts…including Detroit, if you ask around up there, like we did a couple of years back.
And now they’re coming for Wichita…at the very heart and center of the country that invented flying, for crying out loud.
Oh….and if the world of intellectual property licensing was really legit, America would still be licensing that.
I know, I know…that kind of thing wouldn’t serve the corporatist banker spawn but we did invent flying and assembly lines….and it’s a hell of a commentary on “People losing it – badly” to see us go from world’s kick-ass inventors to bank-slavery chumps in a short 100 years.
So the word to the wise this morning? Watch it, Wichita.
Dreams and Futuring
My bad.
Didn’t post Chris McCleary of www.nationaldreamcenter.com being on Coast to Coast last night with George Noory. (Bad dog George…go to your kennel!)
Did get a fine email with some interesting interpretive points on Chris’ Report 5 if you’re interested…
Hi George,
Have read Project August 5 as suggested. Like the guy in charge there, I likewise hold 2 masters [I’ve mentioned to you before: MA, & MAEd. – know you don’t remember]. What I get from the dreams is:
o 2 references to flashes, New Mexico dreams, & working in a garden when the”ash will fall next” is: fiery escalation & “flashes” as the New Mexico WIPP Facility goes up in smoke. A cache of the Escalating stories is on EneNews & in the media reports from news outlets in New Mexico.
o I also get from the references to the number 5, 50, & 50,000 multiples that this is the currrent unfolding of Israel-Gaza: it’s a late hour right now, but if I’m not mistaken, approx 500 people have died & 50,000 Israeli troops have been called up into service. Also this would account for the dreams of men running in the night through what seemed like underground or possible descriptions of what seemed like tunnels in the earlier dreams on the page. And feeds into how we will afford any more wars if the country needs to get into one.
o The references to B. O. & a third term [while constitutionally impossible] would have to result from a cat astrophe in the world so bad that it would have similar effect to Rudy Giuliani remaining as mayor in ’01. Elections impossible & not an appropriate time to be bringing in new staff/administration learning the ropes. Remotely, it could mean [with a grain of salt] & emphasis on “term” that the country becomes so angry with how events are being handled in D C – & that removal from office is unlikely – that some nut undertakes the third takedown in history of a sitting P res. It would also go along with the words black, first.
o There could be a bad hurricane this year. I hope not.
Also your time woo last week is interesting! I had been experiencing it too the last 10 days or so – less the last couple days. What would normally be 1 hour of work [physical or paper work] or planning has passed seemingly normally, but a glance down at the computer clock showed at one point that only 6 minutes had passsed! But I also am experiencing what should be 15 minutes of work & glance at the clock and 2 hours have passed – & not because i’ts fun. Seems that this part of timespace is turbulent – maybe rippled like waves up & down, so quick & slow. It makes me wonder if the behind-the-scenes good-evil forces rematch has escalated like the events we see are.
If you’re looking for another triangulation helper for prediction, have you ever looked into the Bible Code? These days I find the world so chaotic that I just keep thinking about & on the forces of Good. We need some hope that it all works out well in the end.
BTW – didn’t SIRI predict the Gates of Hell on 7/27 [ Nostradamus-ly?] before that vanished???? Interesting week maybe.
Yep…funny how when “great predictors” make predictions that are wildly scary – and they fail- they blame everything in sight for the failure.
But we keep tuning method…and one of my tasks today is to write the algorithm for Grady so we can evolve what’s essentially a “second derivative function” out of the www.nostracodeus.com software (which is what Chris uses for the Dreambot3 content). Great conversation about how we evolve this…so ought to be very cook when Grady bakes up the code…
OK, off to wait (anxiously) for the CPI report. Can’t wait to find out if it’s going to be a “buy the news” or “sell the news” event…but buy the news would certainly fit.
Oftentimes, you’ll see when on a Monday the market gets a little slap down on Monday that it means the week-traders will plan on making their score by Thursday mid session.
If you watch closely. Not a perfect pattern, but one to be aware of.
Peoplenomics tomorrow and more here Thursday… in the meantime, write when you break-even.
George george@ure.net