The Golden Age of Jet Travel?

Sydney in November

Dubai in November

Click on the image and it'll enlarge to show detail.



Click on the image and it'll enlarge to show detail.



Hey Folks. These images are what you see if you open Google or Blogger while in Dubai. What's not immediately evident is that you need to read these pages from right to left. With that in mind, when you log into Blogger, for example, you put your user name in the right hand blank. Then you put your password in the left hand blank.

Hong Kong in November

After repeatedly flying around and in between and maybe even sort of through the various typhoons that are ubiquitous in Asia in late summer and fall, it's very nice to be here in Hong Kong when the weather is simply beautiful. While on our layover, we took advantage of the nice weather and visited "the big Buddha" (a.k.a. the Po Lin Monastery) on Lantau Island.

Getting to the Po Lin Monastery was pretty easy. I asked the hotel concierge how to get to "the big Buddha" and he quickly and efficiently gave us directions. We took the subway to the base of the mountain and then took the lift to the peak. I think the cost for a round-trip lift ticket was 88 HKD (about $12 USD). If you like, you can instead take a bus to the peak. I don't know the cost for that and am sure it takes quite a bit longer than the lift. If you're really adventurous, you can hike to the peak or you can take the lift up and then hike back down. I know a number of folks who've done the hike. It's not for the faint of heart. We took the lift both ways.

<<< --- The subway




In short order you'll know way more than I do about the statue and the monastery
if you study this (Po Lin Monastery) site. I'll add some pix below. The visit is worth the time if you're in town. We enjoyed the trip and got to visit with some interesting folks both directions on the lift.

If you look closely, you can see the trail for the hikers directly below the lift. Sorry about the reflection in the glass.

I'll post more pix as soon as Blogger lets me do that again. I've run into some kind of glitch and can't load anymore right now. Maybe more later?

The Love to Weight Ratio

Being a pilot and a bit of a geek, when our six-pound Chihuahua got really sick this week and I got choked up at the thought of losing her, I couldn't help ruminating on the idea of a love to weight ratio. It just popped into my head. I'll call it the LWR from here on out.

Airplanes have what is called a thrust to weight ratio. It's a comparison of the thrust provided by the engines versus the weight of the airplane. The T-38, for example, is a supersonic, twin-engine, afterburning, sexy little trainer used by the USAF and NASA. The total thrust is in the neighborhood of 7,700 pounds. The total weight is about 12,000 pounds. That makes its thrust to weight ratio something less than 1.0. While it cannot accelerate while going straight up, since you need better than a 1.0 ratio for that, it was quite the screamer in its day, setting four time-to-climb records in the 1960's.

By contrast, today's F-22 produces an amazing 70,000 pounds of thrust, while weighing anywhere from about 30k pounds to 60k pounds or so. Even at max gross weight, then, its thrust to weight ratio is better than 1.0. To give you some idea of what that means, think of taking off in your airliner and getting to cruise altitude. It generally takes about twenty-five minutes or so. The T-38 could probably get there in less than two minutes with a thrust-to-weight ratio less than 1.0. The F-22 has double that kind of climb performance. Think of that. And without afterburner. Amazing.

All of which is to give you an idea of where I got the idea of the whole LWR thing. Here's this little pooch that weighs just about six pounds. She's about the size of one of my shoes, but with little spindly legs and cute little feet. It simply amazes me how full grown humans can so completely and helplessly adore such a tiny little creature. Six pounds of pooch versus tons of love. What kind of LWR does that give you?