Tag: missile

Grumman F-14A Tomcat (III)

Grumman F-14A Tomcat (III)

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Santa Cruz de El Seibo Part III

As beloved as the Tomcat is in many Navy aviation circles and in portions of the general public, there are a few remaining on active duty, but with a potential adversary—Iran.

Norman Polmar’s article goes into that. All I will share here is my work on the images of two of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF).

My primary source for the drawings was Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop’s Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat, #49 in the Osprey Combat Aircraft Series.

I also used a number of images from the internet, primarily from Airliners.net, which has many international contributors.

One interesting sidelight to the Iranian use of the Tomcat is their testing of U.S. Army MIM-23 Hawk missiles, provided to them during the Iran-Contra Affair, as air-to-air missiles.

This was unusual enough that I chose to include it on one of the drawings.

Here are the pair that resulted:

A 60-Year-Old Sleeper

A 60-Year-Old Sleeper

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buy gabapentin 100mg uk The Viking Rocket Story

by Milton Rosen

Harper, 1955. 242 pages.

 

In my research into the Vanguard program, this book appeared in virtually all the bibliographies. I had to find out why.

Wow!

Rosen may have been a real rocket scientist but he could actually do something else—write.

If you have an interest in rocketry and especially the United States’ early days in the process, you will not find a better book than this. Rosen not only talks about the nuts and bolts of the rockets, the engineering, and the science, but he puts it all in a very human perspective of what it took to launch rockets and push the space boundaries in the late 40s and early 50s.

This book left me with one minor disappointment and two big regrets.

The disappointment is that the book falls two rockets short of being a complete chronicle of the Viking program.

The regrets are that I found this book about 40 years too late and didn’t have an opportunity of speaking with Dr. Rosen. I would certainly have contacted him after reading this.

If rockets interest you, don’t pass this one by.

Reviewed June 2015

Good but overpriced

Good but overpriced

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Gemini (Space in Miniature, Number 2)

By Michael Eastman and Michael J. Mackowski

Space in Miniature, 1990. 36 pages.

 I got what I expected.

The overprice is because of the publication’s rarity and not based on an expansive and detailed presentation of the spacecraft’s physical details.

Designed for modelers, it touches all the bases. If you are building a Gemini capsule, this should be about all the info you need. You will have to balance cost vs. value.

Reviewed October 2013

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