Emivest Flies S/N 007 From London To Dubai In Just Over 7 Hours
Hoping to attract some positive headlines for what has been an extremely troubled light jet program, Emivest Aerospace Corporation recently touted a new speed record for the SJ30 business aircraft -- flying from London to Dubai on November 10 in seven hours and seven minutes, including a 41-minute fuel stop in Istanbul.
Emivest -- which bailed out the former Sino-Swearingen earlier this year, acquiring an 80 percent stake in the company that was originally incorporated in 1997 as a 50/50 partnership between US planemaker Swearingen Aircraft Company and the government of Taiwan -- says the record was accomplished by serial number '007' as it flew to Dubai for the Middle East Business Aviation (MEBA) 2008 show.
If your eyebrows raised, too, over the preponderance of "7s" in the first two paragraphs... Emivest notes the record has already been certified by the National Aeronautical Association. The flight, captained by Action Aviation's Chairman Hamish Harding and co-pilot Emivest Aerospace's Bryan Dennison, covered a great circle distance of 3470 statute miles route at an average speed of 488 mph.
"As the world's fastest light business jet, the SJ30 is completely built for speed using innovative concepts in wing design ensuring it is aerodynamic and has the ability to cancel out gusts of wind. Since its first introduction, the SJ30 has been making world speed record flights including its record-breaking journey from Texas, USA to Dubai last year for the Dubai Airshow," said Emivest Chairman Buti Saeed Al Ghandi.
Billed by the company as the world's fastest, longest range and highest flying light jet, the SJ30 also retains a sea level cabin pressure up to 41,000 feet and reach a top flying height of 49,000 feet. The SJ30 is certified for single-pilot operations, with a range of 2,500 nautical miles and the highest cruise speed in the light jet industry of Mach .83 (486 kts).
The aircraft was certified in November 2005... but to date, only two production planes have been delivered to customers.
Friday, 21 November 2008
Flights
Stories of humans attempting to fly are almost as old as civilization. About 3400 years ago, according to Greek legend, Daedalus fashioned wings of feathers and wax so he and his son Icarus could fly from prison on Crete to safety in Sicily. When Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell to his death.
While this was a cautionary fable, there were undoubtedly other attempts to take to the sky. Some certainly ended as spectacular—and fatal—failures; others left the would-be aviators with injuries and ruffled dignity to testify to their imperfect understanding and inadequate engineering. Regardless, all reflected a stubborn refusal to accept the obvious truth that “man will never fly.”
Among those who refused was Abbas Qasim ibn Firnas.
One of the earliest scholars to come out of Córdoba in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), he was an eclectic thinker with a range of knowledge and interests. Born in Korah Takrna near Ronda in about 810, Ibn Firnas studied chemistry, physics and astronomy. He originally came to Córdoba to teach music, at the time regarded as a branch of mathematical theory. His accomplishments included the development of ways to cut rock crystal, which allowed al-Andalus to cease sending the mineral to Egypt for fabrication. He is also credited with inventing a water clock and a weather simulation room complete with stars, clouds, thunder and lightning. (Just how he did this without electricity is still a mystery.)
The citizens of Córdoba—Ibn Firnas possibly among them—had seen at least one earlier attempt to fly: In 852, another inventor, Armen Firman, had constructed a voluminous cloak with the intent of using its expansive “wings” to glide back to earth. Jumping from a tower in Córdoba, Firman survived with only minor injuries because his outfit caught enough air in its folds to break his fall. While he failed to glide, let alone fly, he had invented a primitive version of the parachute.
About 875, Ibn Firnas, who was by then 65 years old, built a flying apparatus by placing feathers on a wooden frame that he could attach to his shoulders and outstretched arms. His is the first documented record of a primitive glider.
Thanks to the 17th-century Moroccan scholar al-Maqqari, two accounts of Ibn Firnas’s flight survive. One states, “Having constructed the final version of his glider, to celebrate its success, he invited the people of Córdoba to come and witness his flight. People watched from a nearby mountain as he flew some distance, but then the glider plummeted to the ground, causing him to injure his back.”
The second account says that he jumped from a wall, flapped up higher than his starting point, turned, and then landed hard back on the wall, claiming afterward that he had not noticed how birds use their tails to land, and that he had omitted to put a tail on his flying apparatus.
Given that he did not attempt to fly again, the first and less successful version of his flight appears most plausible, especially as his death at age 78 appears to have resulted from an ongoing struggle with a back injury.
Word of Ibn Firnas’s flight, despite its failure, spread beyond al-Andalus. What now becomes interesting is that other stories follow, and they build on one another. By his own admission, Ibn Firnas’s failure was to overlook the importance of a tail. By 885, a new story was being told by the Vikings. Their hero, Wayland (or Welund, or Volund), fashioned feathered wings to escape an island prison, much as Daedalus and Icarus did. When Wayland’s brother Egil tested the wings, he crashed, but this time it was because he’d failed to launch himself into a stiff wind. An event in 1010 that involved Eilmer, an Anglo-Saxon monk of Malmesbury Abbey, was related in the 12th century by the English historian (and fellow monk) William of Malmesbury: Eilmer… was a man learned for those times… and in his youth had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze on the summit of a tower, he flew for more than the distance of a furlong [206 m; 660']. But, agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by awareness of his rashness, he fell, broke his legs, and was lame ever after. He himself used to say that the cause of his failure was forgetting to put a tail on the back part.
The story of Eilmer echoes that of Ibn Firnas, but it may point to something else that was learned. Firnas failed because he hadn’t given himself a tail with elevators to control stalling or to use to land “like a bird.” Egil didn’t launch into the wind. Eilmer failed because his glider, while appearing to have enough lift to carry him a longer distance than the others (even accounting for great exaggeration), didn’t have a rudder to provide lateral stability.
Still other flight attempts followed. In 1250, Roger Bacon tried (and failed) to invent the balloon. Leonardo da Vinci’s effort ended with a crash from the bridge in Florence on January 3, 1496 and led to his discovery that the cross-sectional shape of the wing was crucial to a bird’s ability to remain airborne—an insight that led later to the discovery of the airfoil.
In 1638, the Turkish engineer Ahmet Çelebi jumped from the highest point in Istanbul, the 62-meter-high (205') Galata tower, and—if the account is to be believed—glided some three kilometers (2 mi) across the Bosporus to collect a reward of 1000 gold dinars from Sultan Murad IV. (This ratio of height to distance far exceeds that of the best modern gliders.)
The final chapters in this tale of cumulative experience, of course, took place in 1890, when Clément Ader and his Éole first achieved a powered flight of 50 meters (160') near Paris—and crashed—and in 1903, on a blustery December day on an American beach, when Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved sustained, controlled flight, fulfilling the dreams that began in Córdoba more than a millennium ago.
Today, although the name of Ibn Firnas is hardly known in the West, he remains a popular historical figure in the Arab world. In Qatar, the Doha International Airport’s computerized systems management program is named “Firnas.” In Baghdad, a statue of Ibn Firnas stands on the road to the Baghdad International Airport, and a smaller airport in northern Baghdad is named after him. The legacy he would perhaps appreciate most, however, is that his name has been given to a crater on the far side of the moon—the farthest humans have yet explored.
While this was a cautionary fable, there were undoubtedly other attempts to take to the sky. Some certainly ended as spectacular—and fatal—failures; others left the would-be aviators with injuries and ruffled dignity to testify to their imperfect understanding and inadequate engineering. Regardless, all reflected a stubborn refusal to accept the obvious truth that “man will never fly.”
Among those who refused was Abbas Qasim ibn Firnas.
One of the earliest scholars to come out of Córdoba in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), he was an eclectic thinker with a range of knowledge and interests. Born in Korah Takrna near Ronda in about 810, Ibn Firnas studied chemistry, physics and astronomy. He originally came to Córdoba to teach music, at the time regarded as a branch of mathematical theory. His accomplishments included the development of ways to cut rock crystal, which allowed al-Andalus to cease sending the mineral to Egypt for fabrication. He is also credited with inventing a water clock and a weather simulation room complete with stars, clouds, thunder and lightning. (Just how he did this without electricity is still a mystery.)
The citizens of Córdoba—Ibn Firnas possibly among them—had seen at least one earlier attempt to fly: In 852, another inventor, Armen Firman, had constructed a voluminous cloak with the intent of using its expansive “wings” to glide back to earth. Jumping from a tower in Córdoba, Firman survived with only minor injuries because his outfit caught enough air in its folds to break his fall. While he failed to glide, let alone fly, he had invented a primitive version of the parachute.
About 875, Ibn Firnas, who was by then 65 years old, built a flying apparatus by placing feathers on a wooden frame that he could attach to his shoulders and outstretched arms. His is the first documented record of a primitive glider.
Thanks to the 17th-century Moroccan scholar al-Maqqari, two accounts of Ibn Firnas’s flight survive. One states, “Having constructed the final version of his glider, to celebrate its success, he invited the people of Córdoba to come and witness his flight. People watched from a nearby mountain as he flew some distance, but then the glider plummeted to the ground, causing him to injure his back.”
The second account says that he jumped from a wall, flapped up higher than his starting point, turned, and then landed hard back on the wall, claiming afterward that he had not noticed how birds use their tails to land, and that he had omitted to put a tail on his flying apparatus.
Given that he did not attempt to fly again, the first and less successful version of his flight appears most plausible, especially as his death at age 78 appears to have resulted from an ongoing struggle with a back injury.
Word of Ibn Firnas’s flight, despite its failure, spread beyond al-Andalus. What now becomes interesting is that other stories follow, and they build on one another. By his own admission, Ibn Firnas’s failure was to overlook the importance of a tail. By 885, a new story was being told by the Vikings. Their hero, Wayland (or Welund, or Volund), fashioned feathered wings to escape an island prison, much as Daedalus and Icarus did. When Wayland’s brother Egil tested the wings, he crashed, but this time it was because he’d failed to launch himself into a stiff wind. An event in 1010 that involved Eilmer, an Anglo-Saxon monk of Malmesbury Abbey, was related in the 12th century by the English historian (and fellow monk) William of Malmesbury: Eilmer… was a man learned for those times… and in his youth had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze on the summit of a tower, he flew for more than the distance of a furlong [206 m; 660']. But, agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by awareness of his rashness, he fell, broke his legs, and was lame ever after. He himself used to say that the cause of his failure was forgetting to put a tail on the back part.
The story of Eilmer echoes that of Ibn Firnas, but it may point to something else that was learned. Firnas failed because he hadn’t given himself a tail with elevators to control stalling or to use to land “like a bird.” Egil didn’t launch into the wind. Eilmer failed because his glider, while appearing to have enough lift to carry him a longer distance than the others (even accounting for great exaggeration), didn’t have a rudder to provide lateral stability.
Still other flight attempts followed. In 1250, Roger Bacon tried (and failed) to invent the balloon. Leonardo da Vinci’s effort ended with a crash from the bridge in Florence on January 3, 1496 and led to his discovery that the cross-sectional shape of the wing was crucial to a bird’s ability to remain airborne—an insight that led later to the discovery of the airfoil.
In 1638, the Turkish engineer Ahmet Çelebi jumped from the highest point in Istanbul, the 62-meter-high (205') Galata tower, and—if the account is to be believed—glided some three kilometers (2 mi) across the Bosporus to collect a reward of 1000 gold dinars from Sultan Murad IV. (This ratio of height to distance far exceeds that of the best modern gliders.)
The final chapters in this tale of cumulative experience, of course, took place in 1890, when Clément Ader and his Éole first achieved a powered flight of 50 meters (160') near Paris—and crashed—and in 1903, on a blustery December day on an American beach, when Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved sustained, controlled flight, fulfilling the dreams that began in Córdoba more than a millennium ago.
Today, although the name of Ibn Firnas is hardly known in the West, he remains a popular historical figure in the Arab world. In Qatar, the Doha International Airport’s computerized systems management program is named “Firnas.” In Baghdad, a statue of Ibn Firnas stands on the road to the Baghdad International Airport, and a smaller airport in northern Baghdad is named after him. The legacy he would perhaps appreciate most, however, is that his name has been given to a crater on the far side of the moon—the farthest humans have yet explored.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Best Vacation Rentals
Planning the vacation with your family is always precious since it happens once in a blue moon with your busy schedule and routine official constraints troubling you all the time. So if is the time for your vacation, it must be experienced in such a way that it remains evergreen in your thoughts for your lifetime. Vacation planning is a crucial process, as it requires thorough analysis of the place to visit and the reliable vacation rentals to look for. Staying in a hotel is always delicate thing, as it could never give you the freedom or sense of privacy as you can experience in vacation rentals. You could never feel your vacation unique as long as you stay in the hotels and so it is high time to look for the best vacation rental that can bring all your imagination into reality. The budget is the most important factor to look for when choosing a vacation rental. Also, you must choose the right vacation rental to stay with that lies closer to your vacation spots and never trouble you with obstacles and blaring sounds that you feel the sense of privacy in it. To keep you relaxed and free from looking for all these requirements, you could contact Rentalo.com who can take up all your burdens and in return provide you the best vacation rentals that you could have ever imagined, making your vacation the most juicy and fruitful. It is one place that accommodates all those essentials needed by a person willing to go for an ideal vacation. It is the best of online directors that could give the most appropriate information on the vacation rentals including your delicious food and breakfast. Ocean city Maryland is one place anyone would die to visit for its exquisite peace and serene atmosphere that can please anyone who visit the spot. You can also find the best palm springs vacation rentals with rentalo.com to make your vacation unique and different in the best possible way than staying in the hotels or other accommodations. Also, they will take care of your food routines and assure you to serve the most delicious meals and breakfasts as long as you stay with them.
Travel Safety Tips
While there are challenges to traveling during winter, that needn't stop anyone from making winter family vacation plans. There are many pros to it: extended school vacations, winter sports, Christmas markets and other holiday festivities. Simply do some planning for winter travel safety first.
Expect the Worst When it Comes to Winter Travel
The best and simplest way to be prepared is to assume the worst, and plan accordingly. What would it mean if a huge blizzard hit while you're at your destination? What would happen if they were calling for bad weather where you live at the time of your trip? Could you leave early to dodge the weather?
Here are a few ways to be ready in case the weather doesn't cooperate:
· Consider getting trip cancellation insurance, and also look closely at the rules to be sure your trip would be covered in a manner you're comfortable with in the case of weather or some other issue preventing your travels.
· Check cancellation policies closely. If you are taking a road trip, you could easily find a hotel room that could be canceled soon before the check-in date. Just hold off on buying attraction tickets, and halting your trip will be a breeze.
· Consider giving yourself some scheduling flexibility. For example, if you will have a week off from work you might plan a buffer day in the front and end of your trip to allow for leaving early to avoid bad weather, or stopping en route returning home if you hit a storm.
Basic Winter Road Trip Safety
Above all, you should hit the road prepared for bad weather and driving conditions. Even if you will be traveling in an area such as the South that rarely gets snow, it's a good idea to be prepared. Remember that areas that receive snow only rarely also tend to be ill-prepared or trained to handle it.
Here are some must-dos before a winter vacation:
· Have a basic safety car kit at the very least. It should have flares and jumper cables.
· You also should bring chains or other devices for traveling in the snow.
· Be sure to bring blankets for everyone in the family as well as water and food in case of getting stranded in a storm.
· Be sure you have some method of communicating if you do get stuck. If you don't have a cell phone, ask a friend to borrow one they no longer use but that still works and has a charger. You can call 911, even on phones that are not currently activated.
Expect the Worst When it Comes to Winter Travel
The best and simplest way to be prepared is to assume the worst, and plan accordingly. What would it mean if a huge blizzard hit while you're at your destination? What would happen if they were calling for bad weather where you live at the time of your trip? Could you leave early to dodge the weather?
Here are a few ways to be ready in case the weather doesn't cooperate:
· Consider getting trip cancellation insurance, and also look closely at the rules to be sure your trip would be covered in a manner you're comfortable with in the case of weather or some other issue preventing your travels.
· Check cancellation policies closely. If you are taking a road trip, you could easily find a hotel room that could be canceled soon before the check-in date. Just hold off on buying attraction tickets, and halting your trip will be a breeze.
· Consider giving yourself some scheduling flexibility. For example, if you will have a week off from work you might plan a buffer day in the front and end of your trip to allow for leaving early to avoid bad weather, or stopping en route returning home if you hit a storm.
Basic Winter Road Trip Safety
Above all, you should hit the road prepared for bad weather and driving conditions. Even if you will be traveling in an area such as the South that rarely gets snow, it's a good idea to be prepared. Remember that areas that receive snow only rarely also tend to be ill-prepared or trained to handle it.
Here are some must-dos before a winter vacation:
· Have a basic safety car kit at the very least. It should have flares and jumper cables.
· You also should bring chains or other devices for traveling in the snow.
· Be sure to bring blankets for everyone in the family as well as water and food in case of getting stranded in a storm.
· Be sure you have some method of communicating if you do get stuck. If you don't have a cell phone, ask a friend to borrow one they no longer use but that still works and has a charger. You can call 911, even on phones that are not currently activated.
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