Gee - big surprise.... : ) A doppler weather RADAR would be a neat addition to my Oregon Scientific weather station. Here's more of a challenge: Anybody here have a lead on a Boeing B-29 Superfortress for sale or rescue ? I'd be happy with an RB- or KB- variant as well. A B-50 or TU-4 wouldn't be bad, either. you can always ask.... This list really cracks me up sometimes. : ) I used to work with vintage military electronic test equipment. I have a small collection of Korean and Vietnam vintage radio equipment. But that's another hobby altogether... - Matt At 07:00 PM 1/3/2003 -0500, you wrote: Matthew Sell Programmer On Time Support, Inc. www.ontimesupport.com (281) 296-6066 Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST! http://www.ontimesupport.com/subscribe_t&c.htmlhtml. "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...

It was A B-29. Nova did a program about it - it was very sad. The Superfort made an emergency landing after running low on fuel in a snow storm while on a "monitoring" mission. The crew was picked up, but since the B-29 was close to being retired, they just left it there. That was in 1947 or 1949, I believe. An explorer noted in his diary finding the plane while flying. He noted seeing a plane "similar" to a B-29 sitting on the ground intact. A hot-shot ex- test pilot named Darryl Greenamyer (sp?) organized an effort to bring the plane home. The plan was to repair it to the point where it could be flown to Thule AFB, and then shipped home to the US. The crew worked long and hard hours, fighting the short sping/summer period to get the plane operational. The hard work was partly responsible for one of the crew dying of pnemonia. When the plane was finally airworthy, Darryl took it for a taxi test around the site, and to get it lined up on the makeshift runway. During this taxi, he hit a large "bump", and an auxiliary fuel tank gravity feeding the APU (auxiliary power unit - it's pump failed, so they needed to gravity feed fuel to it) fell and dumped AVGAS on the APU. The tail section of the plane caught fire and nobody could get to a fire extinguisher in time. The plane burned to the ground on the ice of a frozen lake. Now the little that remains is at the bottom of the lake. I'd love to meet Darryl one day. I'd like to shake his hand for organizing the effort to get the plane in the air (it almost flew), and then punch him in the face for being careless and destroying one of the few -29's left that could be flyable. Did anyone here realize that the B-29 was the first aircraft to have a fire-control analog computer? This computer would take the gunners inputs from the sights and compensate for several factors and then aim whatever series of guns (up to four turrets) were assigned to him. As one B-29 pilot said, "The plane was real Buck Rogers back then". Neat stuff.... - Matt Matthew Sell Programmer On Time Support, Inc. www.ontimesupport.com (281) 296-6066 Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST! http://www.ontimesupport.com/subscribe_t&c.htmlhtml. "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...

On Sat, 4 Jan 2003, William Donzelli wrote: Indeed. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

Matthew Sell said: <snip detailed story> Thanks for the details, my memory failed me again. I didn't know about the fire-control computer but it somehow fits the image I have of it. The two planes I'd really like to try (as a passenger!) are B-29 and SR-71, but if I'd have choose I'd go on a B-29, no competition. -- jht

At 11:51 AM 1/4/03 +0200, you wrote: Theree are two differnt but similar documentaries that I know of. One shows where they tried to rescue a B-29 from (I think) Northern Canada. That's the one that caught on fire and burned up :-(. The other is about the rescue of a P-38 that crash landed on a glacier in Greenland. A group recently went there and bored through over two hunderd feet of ice, found and dismantled the P-38 and brought it to the surface a piece at a time. Since then it has been completely restored and is flying again. They're named it "Glacier Girl". The relevent part of this story is that there are six(?) more P-38s and two B-17s on (in!) the same glacier! It seems that the nazies were operating a fake radio station in the North Atlantic and caused the planes to go off course and use up all of their fuel and all of the planes in that flight had to crash land in Greenland. Now for a sad story. One of my former teachers was stationed at a B-29 base (Tinian?) in the Pacific when WW-II ended. He said B-29s from all over that part of the pacific were gathered there and that they were in such a hurry to dispose of everything and get home that as soon as the B-29s landed the crew was taken off and the planes were pushed into a huge ravine at the end of the runway. He said they destroyed hundreds of B-29s that way! He also said that NOTHINHG was taken off of them before they were dumped, no maps, no guns, no ammo, not even the fuel. He did say that he snuck into one of them later and removed a tool kit but that it was a court-marshall offense. Joe

I have a friend thats big time into collection all the old type radar detectors and such. All those old Fuzz busters and that type. He's got a neat setup. --- Brian Chase &lt;vaxzilla(a)jarai.org&gt; wrote: ===== Der Digital Kommisar

Who is this acquaintence? Maybe I know him. You can email me off list if you wish. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

I think the BeBox will be vintage (10 years old) in 2006. Time flies, eh? I used BeOS on my PC for several years, until the company took to lying to everyone about their future plans and folded due to bad management. -Jim Strickland On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 06:06 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote: -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- MacOS X Powered! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------

I think there are several of us here that collect Video Game systems. I didn't collect them until about 2 1/2 years ago. My wife and I have found that, unlike classic computers, game systems are a hobby we both enjoy. In fact she's the one that found the pride of our collection, our Neo Geo 4-slot Arcade system. More and more, I find myself limiting my Classic Computer interests to DEC equipment. Zane