Job transition/career shift

It has been a few months now since I left Plymouth Presbyterian and at least for now youth ministry as a career. I still want to stay involved with youth ministry as a volunteer, but plan to take a break and see if having a career outside of the church is how I am being called. It is amazing how much not working your perception of work and life changes. Work is a large part of ones identity and also for me at least provides stucture that I need at least a few days a week. I am hopeful that I will have my next step in my career known soon. I will have more to add to this thread soon, but it is time for dinner.

Light Sport Aircraft

In the most recent issue of the Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine, the issue is devoted to 10 new ways to Fly. The 10 ways include Blimps, and tilt aircraft ( the Osprey), but the one I want to mention in this post is the new aircraft classification Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). To be certified to be a LSA pilot is about 1/2 the cost of a private pilots licence and takes about 1/2 the time. There are restrictions for a LSA certification but this opens up the option of flying to some with medical conditions that prevent them from getting a private pilot license, or cost/time is an obstacle to flying. The SLA pictured above is the skycatcher from Cessna.

Boeing 787

Boeing had a huge celebration for the Premiere of thier new plane the 787 Dreamliner.  This plane is unique as it is the first commercial airliner made of composite materials. What this means is that it is quieter and uses 20 percent less fuel that plaes of compareable size.   The other neat thing about this plane is the way it will be assembled.  There are three large compoents that make up the fusealage, these will be assembled seprately and flown to the Everett Washington Boeing plant using this air freighter designed just for this purpose.  Once all the pieces are together it will take just a few days for the components to be assembled into the final plane.

 

Flyboys airplane models

I have not seen the movie yet, but found these "models" of the planes from the movie available. Since I have not done much with airplane models, I am not that familiar with scale of models, but these range from 1/12 to 1/4 scale and look very large in the pictures on the site. Check them out here To add to this post I found this website of an airplane modeler that builds WWI planes, some impressive work, wonder how much time goes into each one. On last item for this post, this site the Aerodrome has lots of great information related to WWI planes, pilots, etc.....

Honda is in the VLJ Business

I put a posted some information about VLJ's ( very light jets) a while ago. I have found out that Honda has their own VLJ . Check it out. Also Airbus seems to having some delays in the A380 that has cost them orders. They do have a cool website where you can do virtual tours of all of thier passgenger planes. I would love to be able to do a virtual tour or a real one of the Beluga.
Boeing also seems to being some exciting things with their 7x7 planes. The 777, 787 and the 747-8 are some excting products that will keep boeing competive with airbus. Boeing also has some neat videos , I think the 747-8 flythrough is very interesting.

Art fairs and train/planes art

Today I spent the day at three art fairs in Minneappolis. The largest and best known is the uptown art fair, we also went to the Loring and Powderhorn park art fairs. Except for the food I think the Loring and Powderhorn ones were the best. looked for some possible art pieces for my new townhome. Did not find anything but noticed there were no train or planes art so I thought I would post some good sites for these art catagories:

John Coker Railroad art
railroad art by Scotty ( anyone with my name should be good)
railserve ( with links to lots of railroad art)
Robert Taylor Aviation Art

Gotta have some Auburn Art too, so
Auburn Art

VBS 2006 completed

This past week 19 children took part in the vacation bible school held at our church. It was the first time I have led a VBS myself and it was both a rewarding, and exhausting experience. We used the PCUSA publishing's We Beleive VBS curriculum " A visit around the world in 5 days". This year we traveled around the USA via boat and had a lot of fun with the boat theme. I learned as much if not more this week than the kids. I learned about things like volunteer expecations being clearly defined, kids appetites, time management, difficultly levels of crafts based on kids ages, etc......... There seemed to be a great energy and buzz from the kids and families involved and I hope with this and the lessons I learned this year to have another great VBS in 2007.

Joshua House summer workcamp

Looking at a possible mission trip next year to Stubenville, OH, a native of Stubenville told me about a neat program there called JOSHUA (“Journeys Of Service Helping Upper Appalachia”) House. Seems the community saw the need of improving the housing conditions in the area they developed this program to bring youth and young adults from arounf the country in to help. While I was thinking of working with Youthworks again this is an intriquing program.

Very light jets ( VLJ)

Today in the Star Tribune's business section there was a short article about VLJ's very light jets. I was curious about these and did some research, here are some things I found.
2006: The year of the very light Jet
www.verylightjets.com

The most intriquing thing about VLJ's is the concept of air taxi serivce they offer. One company that has embraced this concept is Linear Air.

The picture above is of an Eclipse 500 one of the first VLJ's to be tested for FAA ceritification.