-Last Saturday was a celebration of BIG horsepower. Jean Hertzberg, our
SOL-Colorado Front-Rangers combustion expert, invited Scotty and I to
join her engineering honors students on a tour of the F-16 jet engine
maintenence facility at the Denver's Buckley Air Nat'l Guard base. We
spent a couple hours getting up close and personal with a disassembled
GE F100 jet engine, peppering a very patient Master-Sgt with tons of
question and marveling at the simplicity and complexity of a modern jet
engine. Then we went out and saw their engine test facility, then
watched them roll an AWACS, a bunch of F16's, 2 F15's and 4 F4's. We
had to leave before the E-3 and the F18's launched. Needless to say,
my 6-year old airplane-fanatic son, Tristan, was in heaven. His dad
was pretty impressed too. Afterwards, over lunch, the following plans
were hatched:
-Some of us british-cars Colorado Front-Rangers are planning on getting
together up in the mountains for the Perseids meteor shower. There's a
neat old 1940's era log Bed and Breakfast 5 miles above Estes Park,
just off the Peak-to-Peak highway, within 100 meters of the Rocky Mt.
Nat'l Park boundary. It's called the Bald Pate Inn in honor of the
smooth, rock topped mountain which overlooks the place. Nearby,
there's hiking trails, a lake and some meadows and, if the weather
cooperates, it should be fantastic. There's also some camping sites
close by, one of which is the jumpoff point for hiking up Longs Peak.
Unfortunately, the Inn is booked up for the peak night of the meteor
shower, Sat Aug 12, so we've made our reservations for Fri Aug 11. If
anyone is planning a trip out here around that time, you're welcome to
join us. The number for the Bald Pate is 303-586-6151, their rates are
$60 a night and they serve a pretty nice dinner too.
-At long last, version 2.0.0 of the Daimler rebuild saga starts tomorrow
morning. Yeah! Coffee, donuts and air wrenches. I'll try to get
some pictures taken and scanned for the WWW homepage I'm building at:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/southern/my.html
-Does anyone know of an authoritative book about the Jag XK engine? I
opened an old 1958 book I have on jags and there was a chapter on the
development of the XK engine that I found very interesting. I'd like
to know more.
/\ Lawrence Buja Climate and Global Dynamics Division
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
\_________________________Boulder,_Colorado___80307-3000__________
|