1985 Rockin' Eve

Dick Clark was a fixture of New Year's Eve from the 70's through the mid 2000's. The original format were live shots of Dick in Times Square, juxtaposed with a taped Hollywood segment. Other shows tried to emulate his style (including MTV), but there could never be another substitute for the real McCoy. Here is the countdown to 1985 as it was broadcast live.

Year in Review

The end of the year is a busy time for the vistavuelounge video recorders. In years past, nearly all of the networks, along with CNN and MSNBC presented year end specials. Lately, they are few and far between. Most networks would broadcast a short capsulated year end summary at the tail end of the last newscast of the year. Here is a last segment from ABC news which was shown on 12-31-84.

Merry Christmas !

Another yule log on the fire

Judging by the number of views on youtube, vistavuelounge's yule log video is becoming a favorite. Some have posted requests for the show in it's entirety (around two hours). Due to youtube time constraints (along with copyright restrictions), I am presenting only two short segments. Here is part two of the WPIX Yule Log that was broadcast on Christmas Eve over twenty five years ago.

Christmas on the radio

Around this time every year, some of the New York FM radio stations start playing Christmas music around the clock. Years before they went to the "Jack" format, WCBS-FM played a great selection of classic pop and rock Christmas tunes. They even had a short jingle (presented here), mentioning nearly all of the DJs on air that year. After a short hiatus, WCBS station management came back to their senses and put the oldies music back where it belongs (and put the "Jack" music on their HD2 channel). I found this segment on an old cassette tape labeled Christmas Eve, 1985.

Foward Into the Future

The Air Force awarded Grumman a contract to construct two prototypes. Grumman assigned design number 712 to this new configuration, and began the detailed design work. It was conjectural whether this FSW would ever go into production. Just in case, though, Grumman designed hard points into the wing in order to hang various stores. Here is a concept drawing from 1979.



Both Rockwell and Grumman ran competitive advertisements in Aviation Week and Flight International. At this point in time, preliminary design was in an advanced stage.



The X-29A appeared at the Paris Air Show in 1985 as a static display. This ad appeared in Flight International.

FSW Wannabees...

Rockwell's entry in this competition was a brand new aircraft, the Sabrebat. Rockwell had won the previous HIMAT unmanned prototype aircraft contract, and hoped to succeed with this sleek design. The mockup appeared on the cover of Aviation Week.



General Dynamics based their design on an airframe that was already in production. This version of the F-16 had forward swept wings bolted on one of the YF prototypes.
Neither this, nor the Rockwell version made it past the design stage.

Grumman X-29A - 25th Anniversary

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first flight of the Grumman X-29A. In the late 70's, DARPA initiated an industry contest to develop an X-plane to be built with a novel forward swept wing (FSW). The Air Force's Norris Krone wrote his Doctoral thesis on using composites to strengthen wings (especially forward swept wings). His analysis made it possible to build a strong and lightweight aircraft. Bidders in this contest included General Dynamics (with a FSW F-16), and Rockwell (Sabrebat). Grumman won the award, and built two prototypes. The first took off at Edwards Air Force base on December 14, 1984. Here is the CBS coverage of that historic event.

WPIX Yule Log

The story behind this is that sometime during the 60's, a camera crew filmed the Gracie Mansion fireplace in New York (this is the Mayor's residence). For many years, WPIX (Channel 11) broadcast this film, which was basically put on an endless loop. During the 1980's, a sister FM station broadcast a stereo simulcast of Christmas music. The annual yule log show (always on Christmas Eve), was suspended for some time, but is now back (I think with newer footage).
So, from 1984, VistaVueLounge presents the Yule Log!

Crazy Eddie Christmas !

Ok, who remembers this? A fixture around the holidays was Crazy Eddie! He even had a Christmas in July commercial, too ! Crazy Eddie started out with a store in Brooklyn, but ultimately branched out to many locations in the New York tri-state area. I remember buying a Panasonic VCR at his Huntington Station, New York (i.e. Long Island) location. Sadly, due to intense competition (and a federal lawsuit if my memory serves me right) put him out out of business. This gem is from 1983. There have been many since that time....remember the Wiz !