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 !

O Christmas Tree !

Ok, I realize that Thanksgiving is today. Stores, though, all have had their Christmas decorations up since the end of Halloween!

Here are two video gems from 1984. The first is the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Years before NBC broadcast this event live for the entire nation, the New York flagship station (WNBC) taped it, and showed it an hour later for local viewers. The entertainment was so-so, but that old Rockefeller guy always pushed the red button (sometimes with help from some kids) to light up the tree.

The CNN coverage of the White House Christmas tree lighting is also a classic. Ronnie was at his best. He even stepped aside to let Nancy push the button.

Anyway, Happy Turkey Day!

Crash and Burn

After a short diversionary break, Vista-Vue Lounge is back! Let's take another journey in the way-back time machine to late November, 1984. The engineers at the FAA developed a nifty type of jet fuel that wasn't supposed to explode and burn upon impact (or so they thought). A full scale test was setup using a retired Boeing 720 jetliner. It was fully outfitted with crash test dummies, instrumentation, and probably the ultimate in radio control! A test pilot flew the aircraft remotely (sitting in front of a ground-based simulator), and purposely crashed it. As you can see from these two CBS news reports, the fireball was spectacular, albeit unintended!

Lets Go Mets

Ok, so they didn't do so well this past season, but years ago, they were something. In the fall of 2000, I took my son to his first major league baseball game....the World Series! Everybody was going nuts in New York (how could you tell!) for this subway series. In game 3, the Mets actually won this one against the Yankees.