Airplanes

What I’m watching, reading..instead of working

January 12, 2011Harriet BaskasAir Travel, Airlines, Airplanes, aviation, Aviation history, Exhibits, Fun Stuff, History, Kids, Museums, Space, Sports, Unusual placesAir New Zealand, All Blacks, livery, National Air and Space Museum, rugby, Salvador Dali, Skylab, Smithsonian, Space, spiders

Don’t tell me this hasn’t happened to you.

You have stuff to do. Deadlines. Work someone will pay you for if you just, you know, do it.

So you pour a cup of coffee and sit down at the computer.

But then, dang, the Internet happens.

Here’s a bit of what got me distracted today.

Air New Zealand posted time-lapse video footage of its first new domestic A320 being built and painted with all black livery.

The paint job has something to do with the All Blacks rugby team, so of course I had to visit that site and then the Small Blacks site as well.

As long as I was visiting the Air New Zealand site, I had to check in on what that wild and crazy furry creature, Rico, was up to. I found this reel of bloopers.

A quick check of email and Twitter sent me off in new directions.

Florida’s Dali Museum was opening in its snazzy new building in St. Petersburg, FL. And as someone who first came upon that museum collection, by accident, when it shared space with a factory in Cleveland, Ohio, I of course had to visit.

While there, I came across this clip of Salvador Dali as a guest on the old TV show, What’s My Line?

Then, of course, it was time to check email and Twitter and catch up on my RSS feed.

A blog post by the folks at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum – 5 Cool Things at the Udvar-Hazy Center You May Have Missed – caught my eye because the Udvar-Hazy Center is just down the road Dulles International Airport.

And then I really got tangled up in the web. A comment on the museum blog post mentioned Anita, “the spider from Skylab.” I didn’t know about Anita so had to follow that thread.

It turns out that Anita and a companion spider, Arabella, were part of an experiment flown on Skylab, a space station launched in May 1973.

According the Smithsonian website:

Scientists and students interested in the growth, development, behavior, and adaptation of organisms in weightlessness provided a variety of biology experiments for flight in the orbital research laboratory. A common Cross spider, “Anita” participated in a web formation experiment suggested by a high school student. The experiment was carried out on the Skylab 3 mission, which lasted 59 days from July 28-September 25, 1973. Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott carried out the scientific research in space, reported the results, and returned this specimen at the end of their mission. NASA then sent Anita, a companion spider “Arabella,” and the experiment equipment to the Museum.

Anita is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Arabella is in storage.

BBC Fast Track & ANZ’s new Boeing 777-300ER

December 23, 2010Harriet BaskasAir Travel, Airlines, Airplanes, Airport guides, Food, Kids travel, Planespotting, Seating, Stuck at the AirportAir New Zealand, Airlines, airplanes, BBC, Boeing 777-300ER, cuddle class, on-line travel, Santa, Skycouches

On the BBC World News program Fast Track this week, Carmen Roberts offered up “Hi-tech ways to pass time at the airport.”

I’m delighted to find out that StuckatTheAirport.com was featured in the story, along with some other “online innovations that may just prevent that air rage from bubbling over.”

Please take a look:

And speaking of innovation….

In Everett, Wa. on Wednesday, Air New Zealand took delivery of its first Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The plane is on its way to to Auckland, with a planned touchdown on Christmas Eve morning.

Sadly, I couldn’t join that first flight, so I can’t report for sure whether or not Santa is on that plane, but I do know that the plane is equipped with the new lie-down Skycouch or Cuddle Class seating in economy class, induction ovens that allow the preparation of made-to-order meals, bathrooms with wallpaper depicting book cases, chandeliers and other home interior elements (photo coming soon) and an in-flight story-time for kids hosted by the cabin crew.

Going to the North Pole as an embedded elf

December 11, 2010Harriet BaskasAirlines, Airplanes, Airports, Events, Fun Stuff, Kids, Kids travelelf, North Pole, Santa, Spokane Fantasy Flight, TSA

Today, about 60 kids from the Spokane, Wa. area will be going on a flight to the North Pole.

Each year, with the help of more than 100 elves and incredible amount of local and regional support, the Spokane Fantasy Flight takes about 60 kids from shelters and community programs in the Spokane area to the airport, onto an airplane and, after about a 30-minute flight, to the North Pole for a full day of magic, complete with reindeer, all the candy you can eat, a visit with Santa and, of course, piles and piles of presents.

I went along as an embedded elf last year and it was so much fun that I’ve signed up to join the elves again.

Before we can get on that flight to the North Pole, of course, we’ll have to get through the security checkpoint at the airport.

And then, of course, we’ll have to make sure to find the right gate for our flight.

I’ll report back tomorrow on whether or not jingle-belled elves are subject to enhanced TSA pat-downs and, of course, I’ll let Santa know that you’ve been very, very good.

“Notes,” the embedded elf…

Daylight Saving Time: where to watch the clock

November 6, 2010Harriet BaskasAirplanes, Art, aviation, Aviation history, Events, Exhibits, History, MuseumsBily Clocks Museum, Charles Lindbergh, clocks and watches, Daylight Saving Time, Exhibits, Prague Astronomical Clock

(Boston: courtesy Marriott’s Custom House)

Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning when we “fall back” to standard time by turning our clocks back one hour.

As you rush around resetting the clocks on the microwave, the TV and the bedside alarm, imagine yourself watching time fly in one of the clock-worthy cities I included in the slide-show-style story I put together for msnbc.com this week: How time flies! Where to see the world’s clocks.

(Courtesy Metro-North Railroad)

The story includes the information booth clock at New York City’s Grand Central Station, clock and watch museums in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, what may be the oldest continually running town clock (in Winnsboro, South Carolina), and the Bily Clocks Museum in Spillville, Iowa, which is home to 43 intricately carved clocks, some more than ten feet tall, made by Joseph and Frank Bily over the course of 45 years.

The Bily Brothers’ clocks have themes ranging from art and religion to history and culture. The collection includes an American Pioneer History Clock, an Apostle Clock, a violin-shaped clock honoring Czech composer Antonin Dvorkak (above) and an airplane-shaped clock (below) made to commemorate Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight. (That propeller moves!)

(Courtesy: Bily Clocks Museum)

In researching the story, I also came upon this film documenting the incredible video mapping project done to mark the 600th anniversary of Prague’s astronomical clock in Old Town Square.

Museum Monday: The Shining at Mass MoCA

November 1, 2010Harriet BaskasAir Travel, Airplanes, Art, Museum Monday, MuseumsAirstream, All Utopias Fell, MASS MoCA, Micheal Oatman

Flying Airstream trailers? It looks like someone once thought that was a great way to get around.

Among the current installations at MASS MoCA, the giant Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA, is a three-part project by Michael Oatman titled All Utopias Fell.

The main part of the exhibit is an old Airstream trailer, complete with parachutes and solar panels, that looks as if it’s just crash-landed on the roof of the museum.

Titled The Shining, the Airstream trailer is open to visitors and, inside, “the craft” appears to be part domestic space, part laboratory and part library. Videos flicker on the cockpit’s instrumentation panels, books fill the shelves, postcards are tucked into shelving, and a 33 rpm record (The Doors, when I was there) plays over and over on a cheap record player.

There’s more to this piece. Much more. According to the museum website:

Once inside the craft, visitors will also be able to view Codex Solis, a massive field of photovoltaic (PVs) or solar panels. …In addition to this 230-foot long grid, mirrors are interspersed in the middle of the field, and suggest an absent text. The arrangement of mirrors and solar panels is based on a specific quote by an unnamed author, and will not be revealed by the artist; instead the public will be encouraged to spend time with the piece, watch the reflected sky, and solve the riddle as birds and planes, inverted, fly by.

Sounds a bit complicated, but take my word. Like everything you see at MASS MoCA, it may take a while to figure out what you’re looking at, but it’s all very cool.