Fun factmay not get much traction

My friends and I invented a game called "Skid the Bottle" in the late 80's/early 90's.

We would collect as many 2 or 3 liter bottles as we could and fill them to the very top with water. A little side street in the neighborhood would serve as the "playing field". We would stand 10-15yds away from each other and skid the bottle back and forth. Eventually the label would shred off. Then the plastic bottles would develop small leaks fom the many abrasions. Once the water was about half gone we would just throw the bottle as high as we could and watch it fall and burst all over the blacktop. Of course we would occasionally call out "CAR!" when we saw one. 

Good times!

    I remember watching footage of S-2 Trackers having their wings fold off in California. Still tough duty, lots of stress on any airframe, not to mention the nerve of those pilots. We have a flight if FireBoss float planes stationed up here in Deer Park. Couple of those turbo powered bug smashers flew low over my house on the way back to base.....made my heart piter-pater.

    Back in the Carter Administration I developed a Universal Money System, tried to make a plan to simplify international trade. Many years later along comes the EU.....glad I'm not the one who saw it completely through.

I remember a visit to Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona, back in '69 or '70. B-17's, TBM's and Dakotas on the ramp, along with a couple of C-117's and DC-4's.

Then a few years later in Southern California it was C-1 Traders and lots of helo's. That's when I started thinkng about the crop dusters .  .  .

   Quick correction, I thought it was a modified Hellcat....the more I probe my memory I believe it was a TBM that was used for precise water drops. Retardent came not to long after.

They used WWII birds for retardant drops all through the 60-70's, and even later.  Lot of TBF's, and I even saw a 17 at an airport one year up around Chehallis, WA.  Trouble was the airframes were showing their age from wartime service and the "G's" of hard pullouts on drops.  Too many crashes, and not much in the surplus pipeline from the 50-60's to replace them.  They thought jets couldn't get slow enough to be effective.  They got a few C130-A's that were about to fall apart, and a few crashed due to spar cracks, pretty much shut down the program for a couple years.

Now they know that jets can work, and Erickson has a few DC-9 type airframes awaiting conversation and engines.

I love Idaho. I worked two summers for the USFS as a civilian contractor, the first year in the Sawtooths outside of Stanley, the second in the Selway outside of Missoula.

I was an assistant camp cook. 

Bill

   I think the thought of aerial firefighting started wirh a Navy pilot and a modified Hellcat, no true answer why it took so long to take off but that Global Super tanker is quite the machine. I unfortunatly turned diwn an opportunity to work as maintenence crew on those aircraft...747, and DC-10. Just don't have the travel bug anymore. Nice segueway HooYah

I know I can't possibly be the only one, but back in the 1970's I though the key to wild fire combat was crop dusters, 'single engine air tankers'. It just plain made sense to me.

Now, forty-some odd years later, they are one of the 'standards' in the wildfire arsenal.

So, to me, the big question is; "Why did it take so long?" 

    It might be worth mentioning the Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington was from my neck of the woods too. Rough and tumble Marine. The local civil airport carries his name....finally.

My brother was stationed at Mt Home AFB.  After his service he worked for Zilog - a semiconductor firm who are famous for the Z80 microprocessor which powered many early computers and arcade games like pacman.

He lived in Caldwell just west of Boise.  Pleanty of super smart folks in Idaho.

armornut

    Things have change since 1987 when I went to the Navy. City planners were caught of guard by the steady influx of folks looking for the simple life so the infrastructure has suffered greatly. Back then one could travel fro downtown CdA to Hayden, 5mi north, in about 15min, today it is double or more.

Yup.  You can find "the simple life" right up until everybody else gets the same idea.

GMorrison

He came home a week early this year. Too hot and too smoky.

I've lived in the Boise area for the last 16 years. It's growing that's for sure and the housing prices are higher than in Cal at the moment. But all that said, it's a beautiful relaxing state. I love it and probabl won't ever leave. The only other place I'd live is Texas where I was born and raised.

GM, it's always hot and smoky here in the summer.....Every year, over 100. It's just something you come to expect when you live in the Northwest. In the winter, the valley gets an inversion so we get fog (thicker than San Fran) for a week or two....and cold, sometimes below zero. Again, you just learn to live with it. We don't get a lot of snow though except in the mountains so we don't shovel much and we have water all year long from the snow caped Rockies. Enough to water your lawn all day if you wish and irrigate the agg land.

Stick, we may be known for potatos, but here in the Valley the farmers grow corn, wheat, onions, mint, kale, hops and alfalfa. The potatos come for the centeral and eastern part which also grow sugar beets.

The year... 1971

I" invented" the remote control.

It was a stick about 5 feet long , and had a notch cut into the end that would fit the knobs on my TV.

Yep, ... just a small town boy from Dilly Oregon, and I'm responsible for the biggest breakthrough since sliced bread ....

( my grandma invented that...)

There's no running away from anything any longer. A good friend of mine goes to Montana every July to fish for a month. He came home a week early this year. Too hot and too smoky.

In 1900 60 % of the US population lived in rural areas. In 2010 it dropped to 19%.

Bill

    The town I grew up in had a "politically incorrect" group of peole, hence when I finally made it into a more blended society one of the first questions asked was"you a Nazi"?

    The whole state has a beauty all its own , I grew up near Coeur d' Alene in North Idaho. Mountians all around, lakes, forests, and used to be 5min out of town and you were in a isolated place.

    Things have change since 1987 when I went to the Navy. City planners were caught of guard by the steady influx of folks looking for the simple life so the infrastructure has suffered greatly. Back then one could travel fro downtown CdA to Hayden, 5mi north, in about 15min, today it is double or more.

   Don you are correct. The one thing that stuck with me in the documentary was Philos patent protection. If I heard it correctly he lived to see the Apollo 11 landing in '69. Was said to have said" Thus makes it all worth it".

Farnsworth's fame was largley because of a book written by his wife- not the most objective book.  Remember,his dissector tube was not used much in commercial television.  Like most inventions, modern tv was the work of many people and organizations. I believe Zworykin,s iconoscope was a bigger influence on modern TV.

Now why would anyone snub folks from Idaho? Yes it's famous for potatoes. I can think of worse things to be famous for. It's also famous for its outdoors life and natural beauty. More than a few guys that I worked with retired to or plan on retiring to Idaho to escape the madness of big city life and the rat race of So.Cal. And I can't blame them one bit. Quality of life in CA is in a spiraling nose dive with no positive change in sight. I doubt that the same can be said of Idaho.

    I agree Stik, most of the greatest things ever invented came from the most humbke of places. Proves that perseverance and determination can overcome almost any obsticale. The gentleman who run RCA was a Rusdian immagrant who sold news papers in New York.

      I have been snubbed by many because I hail from North Idaho however I am proud of my state....evenif I can't afford to live there. We should all be proud of our roots and embrace the contrabutions our fellow statesmen(women) have made to make this a great place to live.

I'd be curious to see how many folks involved with "great" things of a similar nature come from such roots.

Obviously the folks in the Manhattan Project were not from White Sands New Mexico. Some of the greatest minds of that time came from all over the world from every imaginable part of society.

   Well Stik, Philo Farnsworth was from Rigby, unfortunatly the program did not specify if he was a "transplant". He did move to San Fransisco to work on his invention after High School and he did have a huge battle with RCA over patent rights.

    I just thought it cool that someone who changed the world came from such a humbke place and beginnings. No hostility persieved good sir.

armornut

Well here I sit watching History Channel, the episode about how modren TV came about. Turns out a young man fro Rigby Idaho was instrumental in its development.

Now the question is, was he born there and later moved elsewhere to help its development at somewhere like RCA or MIT, or did the development take place in some facility in Idaho as well? Not knocking Idaho in any way, but does it have more to do with the tale aside from being a birthplace?

Yeah, I thought of the adaptive cruise control back in the late 70's when cruise control came, but didn't know how to implement it at the time 

Give it some thought, then give it a try, you never know.