Shore Leave

From Stratfor The Obstacles to the Capture of Osama bin Laden By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart Al Qaeda's As-Sahab media arm released a video Sept. 11 to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Although the 47-minute video features a voice-over introduction by Osama bin Laden, the bulk of it is of Abu Musab Waleed al-Shehri, one of the suicide bombers who crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center's north tower. That recording was made prior to al-Shehri's travel to the United States in the spring of 2001. There is nothing in bin Laden's audio segment to indicate it was recorded recently. The production does include a still…

History Channel: Dogfights

I purchased a handful of 1980's RN/Argentinians surface and aircraft a while back, and more modern US/various. While aircraft are 1/1250 (I'm pretty certain), the ships are 1/6000. I finally got around to painting some, and last nights victims were a gaggle of Type 22 FF's. Wow, these guys are tiny. I did the hulls, no problem, did the extreme tops of the superstructure...ok. Tried to put a thin black line along the "waterline". Unreal. Luckily I'm paralleling these with 1/2400 so we'll see how that goes. Anyone else have any experience with either 1/6000 or 1/2400 ships? Pete

For what its worth Larry Bond's new web site

cool link

Final Flight video

I've asked on chat, but wondered what everone else thought about GDW's Air Superiority/Air Strike (which morphed into The Speed of Heat from Clash of Arms - publisher of our beloved Harpoon 4.1 and the rest of the Admiratly Trilogy. AS/AS models individual planes in the 80's and 90's. Each hex is 1/3 of a mile, 12-15 seconds per turn, targets, err I mean ground units (in Air Strike) include fireteams/platoons and individual vehicles, along with a slew of counters representing everything from bridges, dry docks, port facilities, POL, command postsfactory/warehouses, rail yards, power stations, airfield/facilities, shelters, etc. I've been toying around with it for…

Friends, If you are interested in trying your hand at writing some material for rpgs, please check out... http://e23.sjgames.com/gurps-wish-list.html As you will see, for a number of the proposed titles "the value of this series resides almost entirely in the quality of the research"--they don't want people who are just making things up, they want authors who actually know their stuff. Naturally, I thought of you guys. Some of the books will discuss government agencies, military history, political hot spots, civilian and military vehicles, and building-sized locations like oil rigs and military checkpoints. Again, you can see why I thought of you guys.…

Just received my copy of IEEE Spectrum in the mail today and see that there is a fairly long article essentially chronicalling EM guns and recapping the current state of affairs. "One day in 1977, researchers at Australian National University were putting the finishing touches on an experiment that they hoped would cap nearly a decade’s worth of groundbreaking research on electromagnetic guns. Tantalized by the prospect of unleashing the pure power of electromagnetism to accelerate projectiles at rates never before achieved, countless ­researchers had been pursuing the technology since the turn of the century. But without much success." http://www.spectrum.ieee.or…

This is why F-15s and/or Israeli pilots kick butt http://www.sonnyradio.com/F15.html Absolutely amazing, even the Holy Cow mooed for this one

Brains setting up for the final kill of the night ...

How on topic for my H4 exploits. "Spotlight: Submarine Warfare"

Today, in partial payback for the Long Island Children's Museum, I dragged the fam over to the Cradle of Aviation Museum at Mitchel Field (an area known as museum row so just a brief walk). Some take-aways: take advantage of the knoweldge and experience of those who have gone before us before they are all gone forever. Given Long Island's history in aviation, and particularly military aviation, the majority of the museum workers are fomer Grumman and Fairchild-Republic retirees. What a wealth of information if one would just stop and listen. The F6F Hellcat is enormous up close. Here are some photos of the modern stuff of interest to some, if not most, of us …

Can someone (er... Tony) please provide, in extreme layman's terms how one goes about registering, or re-registering their nickname on newnet? I for the life of me can't seem to crack the code and may need to give up all things harpoon if this cannot be remedied for this aging, knuckle-dragging grunt.

Trying to gauge if the site is working well for people, and if not, any comments on geez this is frustrating and such are appreciated. This does not mean whether IRC works for you, just if the website itself (www.harpgamer.com) comes up for you or not.

Time for me to rant a little more about gun control. The VT shootings are more tragic madness, I'm afraid, which will undoubtedly be exploited in ridiculous, despicable fashion by the gun haters. They'll have much less success in the United States, I'm sure, which by most measures is far more advanced in its gun laws than the rest of us poor sods, but it will be milked to the hilt by the liberals up here in Canuckistan. To summarize how I feel, if it wasn't obvious to you already, is what I think constitutes a properly worded online poll question: "If a mass killer was executing you and your friends one-by-one, would you prefer to have a properly-trained and licensed,…

From Army Times Soldiers warned about sensitive info in blogs By Lolita C. Baldor - The Associated Press Posted : Thursday May 3, 2007 5:58:22 EDT WASHINGTON — The Army is taking stronger steps to warn soldiers they will be punished if they reveal sensitive military information on Web sites or blogs. While the possibility of punishment is not new, the Army spells out in recently published regulations the range of actions if soldiers “fail to protect critical and sensitive information.” Some Web logs, also called blogs, raised alarms this week, suggesting the Army was cracking down anew on soldiers who have blogs. But the bulk of the regulations releas…

10 December 1941: Had been assigned command of the Porpoise class USS Permit (SS-178) in the Asiatic Fleet, stationed in the Philippines. Departed this morning enroute to patrol in the Sulu Sea. Weather fair. Early in evening received radio message that Japanese had sunk the British battleships HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales in the South China Sea, but morale aboard the boat was still high. Later that evening COMSUBPAC advised that we were to engage enemy merchant shipping in the vicinity of the Philippines. USS Permit underway on 10 Dec 41 11 December 1941: Arrived in patrol area before dawn. At midday came under attack from a Japanese H6K search p…

Long but interesting narrated navy F-14, and A-6 mishap ejection video. Might have been Discovery Channel footage.