I expect to be in my usual place in Oshkosh rather than at the meeting this month.

The Sport Pilot rule is out. Details can be found on the web at sportpilot.org. They did raise the max gross weight to 1320 lb (1430 for seaplanes) so that most of the old light aircraft comply. Max speed is 138 mph with a 51 mph stall.

It was nice to see Carl DeFranco back at a meeting again. He's been around longer than most everyone and paid his dues.

Dick Sollner is in the middle of another round the world trip, this time in a Cessna 210 with his friend Ed Galkin. They will be in Australia when you read this and hopefully the HF radio will be fixed so they don’t have to use the satellite phone at $1.75 a minute for everything. He called from Samoa last Friday night to let us know how they were doing. The 19 hour flight from Easter Island to Tahiti with nothing but ocean must have been a real endurance test. Anyhow, rather than using his old web site he made a new one, aroundtheworldagain.com where you can follow their exploits and share their adventure.

I bought a book on the Vickers machine gun to answer the many questions I had about the 11 mm ballon gun. They referenced an earlier book, "Early Aircraft Armament" by Harry Woodman which I would love to find. Anyway it started with the French loading incendiary bullets into 11 mm Gras cases and converting Hotchkiss and Vickers guns to fire them. The US thought this was a good idea, so in 1918 Colt made about 2400 of them, half of which were converted from guns originally made for Russia. A third of them went to the French. This was a late in the war development and our squadrons would have used French ammo since most of the US ammo was made in 1919 and 1920. After the war, balloon observers became obsolete and the guns were stored. The reason that everyone has one, except me of course, is that in 1938 , Fiala Outfitters in NYC offered them for $7.75.

The reason that the Lewis and Hotchkiss guns couldn't be syncronized is that they fire from an open bolt and thus their lock time is comparable to a propeller revolution which made timing too variable to be successful. The French converted their ground Vickers for aircraft use and our plan was to replace our ground Vickers with Brownings and convert the Vickers for aircraft. The Vickers lost out to the Browning between the Wars as an aircraft gun because it could fire faster; the max Vickers rate was 900 rpm. Surprisingly, the cowl guns on the Japanese Zero were Vickers and in British .303 calibre too. The example in the NASM has one British Vickers and one Japanese made Type 97 Vickers.

CYGNET CHATTER Alvin Sager

19S is now residing at Central Jersey in the ultralight area. I can actually get out and fly after dinner, it is that close to home. Dave sent me this link with great photos of Rutan’s Space Ship One and Whit Knight at work. http://www.rokits.org/gallery/slideshow.php?set_albumName=x-prize Worth a look.

Steve spent 3 hours in the back seat of a F-16B while on ops in SC. Sounds like he is still up there. Great fun. Says you don’t feel any bumps, I wonder why?