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* The biplane was clearly an obsolete concept by the beginning of the Second World War; and so it is somewhat surprising that one biplane, the British Fairey "Swordfish" torpedo bomber, proved a highly effective weapon. The Swordfish remained in first line-service through the entire war in Europe. Fairey followed the Swordfish with two more torpedo-bombers, the "Albacore" and the "Barracuda". Neither achieved the prominence of the Swordfish, and in fact the Swordfish outlived the Albacore in service. This document provides a history and description of the Swordfish, Albacore, and Barracuda.
* The Swordfish started out in 1933 as a private venture by Fairey Aviation Company Limited, in the form of the three-seat "Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance I (TSR.I)" aircraft, developed by a team under Marcel Lobelle, a Belgian who was Fairey's chief designer. The TSR.I was a biplane of frame-and-fabric construction, powered by a Bristol Pegasus IIM nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine with 475 kW (635 HP). The TSR.I first flew in March 1933, and was put through a successful series of tests. Unfortunately, in September of that year, during spin tests the prototype failed to recover from a flat spin that took it into the ground. The pilot was able to bail out, if with some difficulty, but the aircraft was destroyed.
The TSR.I had seemed promising enough to justify further work, and when the British Air Ministry issued Specification "S.15/33", requesting a carrier-based torpedo bomber and scout aircraft, Fairey built a second prototype, the "TSR.II", which first flew on 17 April 1934. The new aircraft included an uprated Pegasus IIIM3 engine, providing 515 kW (690 HP); aerodynamic changes to improve spin handling; a longer fuselage; plus slightly swept back wings to compensate for the longer fuselage and shift in center of gravity.
Land trials went well, and in November 1934 the TSR.II was fitted with floats for sea trials, which culminated in catapult launch and recovery by the battle cruiser HMS REPULSE. The floats were then traded back to landing wheels for final evaluation. The Air Ministry was suitably impressed and placed an order for three pre-production machines.
The first of the three preproduction aircraft, with the type now named the "Swordfish", was flown on 31 December 1935. The last of the three was fitted with floats for service trials on water. The three prototypes were followed by a production order for 68 Swordfish "Mark I" aircraft.
By 1938, the Swordfish had replaced all other torpedo bombers in the service Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA). By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, thirteen squadrons had been equipped with the Swordfish, with twelve of the squadrons at sea on the carriers HMS ARK ROYAL, COURAGEOUS, EAGLE, FURIOUS, and GLORIOUS. By the end of the war there would be thirteen more operational squadrons flying the Swordfish. The last operational squadron was established in June 1943, and was staffed by Dutch naval personnel fighting in exile. Twenty training squadrons were built up as well.
* The Swordfish was, as noted, a frame-and-fabric biplane with the frame mostly made of steel tubing. The Pegasus IIIM3 radial engine drove a three-bladed fixed-pitch metal propeller, though the TSR.2 had been fitted with a two-bladed propeller. The aircraft had fixed landing gear, which could be easily exchanged for floats, and its wings could be pivoted back along the fuselage for compact storage on board a carrier or cruiser.
The Swordfish had accommodations for three crew members: pilot, observer, and radioman-gunner. The observer stayed behind on missions that didn't require his services, freeing up space for an additional internal fuel tank. The Swordfish was armed with a single fixed Vickers 7.7-millimeter (0.303-inch) machine gun firing forward, and a rear-mounted Vickers K or Lewis 7.7-millimeter gun handled by the radioman-gunner.
FAIREY SWORDFISH MK.II / MK.III: _____________________ _________________ _______________________ spec metric english _____________________ _________________ _______________________ wingspan 13.9 meters 45 feet 6 inches wing area 56.39 sq_meters 607 sq_feet length 10.4 meters 35 feet 8 inches height 3.8 meters 12 feet 4 inches empty weight 2,130 kilograms 4,700 pounds max loaded weight 3,410 kilograms 7,510 pounds maximum speed 225 KPH 140 MPH / 120 KT service ceiling 3,260 meters 10,700 feet range 880 kilometers 550 MI / 480 NMI _____________________ _________________ _______________________ This data is for a Swordfish with no floats and fitted for torpedo bombing.
Alternative armament fits for the Swordfish included:
While the Swordfish looked stodgy even in its prime, pilots enjoyed flying the aircraft; it was not only very docile, a big plus for carrier operations, but also extremely agile, as well as capable of taking off from the smallest carrier decks. In addition, it was easy to manufacture and maintain. In service, its utility would lead to the nickname "Stringbag", in reflection of the handy general-purpose bag often carried by British women of the era.
* Production of the Swordfish was shifted from Fairey to Blackburn Aircraft LTD in early 1940, with Blackburn-built Swordfish sometimes known as "Blackfish". Blackburn continued production of the Mark I until 1943, when the "Mark II" was introduced, the major enhancement being fit of underwing rails to carry eight 27-kilogram ("60-pounder") rockets or "rocket projectiles (RPs)". Later Mark II production also featured an uprated Pegasus 30 engine, with 560 kW (750 HP), instead of the Pegasus IIIM3.
The "Mark III" added a Mark X "Air to Surface Vessel (ASV)" radar pod between the landing gear, as well as fittings for rocket-assisted takeoff gear (RATOG), allowing a heavily-laden Swordfish to get off the decks of the smallest carriers. The ASV radar pod meant the Mark III couldn't carry a torpedo or other large centerline store. The "Mark IV" was a Mark II retrofitted with an enclosed cockpit, for operations in Canada; apparently the "Mark IV" designation was informal, they were officially still Mark IIs.BACK_TO_TOP
* The Swordfish saw little action during 1939 and the first few months of 1940, operating mostly in convoy escort and for naval cover. Its first real action was in April 1940, when it served in the confused naval battles that accompanied the Nazi invasion of Norway. Norway was lost, though the German surface navy was badly mauled in the operation. On 11 April, Swordfish operating off the carrier HMS FURIOUS launched a torpedo attack on two destroyers at harbor in Trondheim. The attack was ineffectual, but it was the first airborne torpedo attack of the war.
Two days later, on 13 April, a Swordfish floatplane launched by catapult off the HMS WARSPITE flew up Ofot Fjord, which led to Narvik, and spotted seven German destroyers for the WARSPITE's guns. All the destroyers were sunk, or so badly damaged that they had to be scuttled. There were no casualties on the British side. The Swordfish in question also discovered a German submarine, the U-64, and sank it in a dive-bombing attack. It was the first U-boat sunk by an FAA aircraft in the war.
Over the next two weeks, Swordfish conducted constant sorties in Norwegian waters, performing strikes, reconnaissance, and antisubmarine patrols under severe weather conditions. Flying in bad weather was particularly unpleasant because the Swordfish didn't have an enclosed cockpit.
At the same time, Swordfish attached to the Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command were operating out of the UK on mine-laying missions against German ports. The next month, the Nazi "Blitzkrieg" against the Low Countries and France forced the British to call on every resource they had to stave off disaster. Four squadrons of Swordfish in all were attached to Coastal Command and put to every task for which they were capable: mine-laying, bombing of naval and ground targets, spotting, and reconnaissance.
Swordfish operating out of the south of France took part in bombing raids against Italian targets in June, when Italy declared war against the French and British. A number of Swordfish left France and eventually ended up on the island of Malta, where they would successfully harass Axis shipping during the battle for North Africa.
When France fell, on 3 July 1940 the British took ruthless action to prevent French military assets from being used against them, striking at and demolishing the French fleet at dock in the harbor of Oran, in Algeria. Twelve Swordfish from the carrier HMS ARK ROYAL launched a torpedo attack on the battle cruiser DUNKERQUE, putting it out of action. On 8 July, Swordfish from the HMS HERMES hit the French battleship RICHELIEU at port in Dakar, Senegal, scoring a single torpedo hit on it.
The next month, on 22 August, three Swordfish operating from land attacked Italian warships sitting in the port of Bomba Bay, in Libya, destroying two submarines, a submarine tender, and a destroyer. The attackers sank four ships with only three torpedoes -- the destroyer was not hit directly, but went up when its tender exploded. The success of these attacks on ships in harbor led the British to consider a much more aggressive operation against the Italian Navy: a torpedo-bomber attack against the Italian Fleet at Taranto, the main naval base on the Italian mainland, in the "arch" of boot-shaped Italian peninsula.BACK_TO_TOP
* An attack on Taranto had actually been considered in 1938, when war was becoming inevitable. In 1940, the strike plans were dusted off and updated. The main Italian fleet consisted of six battleships, consisting of two of the new LITTORIO class and four of the recently rebuilt CAVOUR and DULIO class, plus five cruisers and twenty destroyers, all based at Taranto. Attacking the Italian fleet at anchor required high quality and up-to-date intelligence and reconnaissance, not merely to determine what ships were present but also to know their positions. The British strike force would also have to move silently to achieve surprise.
The plan, codenamed Operation JUDGEMENT, specified a night attack to reduce losses, and so Swordfish crews were put through a rigorous schedule of training for night flight and combat. The mission was scheduled for 21 October 1940, but was delayed to 11 November because of other naval commitments. A few days before the mission, the carrier EAGLE ran into trouble with her fuel systems. Several of her Swordfish were transferred to the carrier ILLUSTRIOUS, which then sailed from Alexandria, Egypt. While these forces were in transit, the Royal Navy was also conducting several convoy operations in the Mediterranean, most prominently a resupply convoy to the island of Malta; it was believed, correctly as it turned out, that so much activity at the same time would confuse the Italians about British intent.
Aerial reconnaissance performed by Martin Maryland bombers operating out of Malta on the morning of 11 November indicated that five Italian battleships were in Taranto harbor, with three cruisers at dock protected by antisubmarine nets. The sixth battleship was seen to enter the harbor later that day. By 8:00 PM that evening, the ILLUSTRIOUS and her escorts were in position, about 270 kilometers (170 miles) from the port. Twelve Swordfish were fitted up for the first wave of the attack: six carried torpedoes, four carried bombs, and two carried a combination of bombs and flares. The rear gunners were left behind, since the rear position was taken up by an additional fuel tank.
The first Swordfish took off at 8:35, and by 9:00 they were all in the air and on the way. Just before 11:00 PM, the two flare-droppers split off from the formation. One put a line of flares over the harbor from 2,300 meters (7,500 feet), and then bombed an oil storage depot. The strike aircraft attacked in two groups. The flight leader's plane was hit by flak and went down, but multiple hits were scored on several of the battleships.
In the meantime, a second wave had taken to the air about a half hour after the first. The second wave consisted of five aircraft armed with torpedoes, two armed with bombs, and two armed with flares and bombs. One had to turn back because of a technical problem, but the other eight arrived at about midnight and repeated the performance of the first wave, slamming torpedoes into the sitting battleships under the glare of the flares. Another Swordfish was lost to flak.
All the aircraft, except the two that had been shot down, were back on board the ILLUSTRIOUS before 3:00 AM that morning. Post-strike reconnaissance conducted two days later indicated that:
It was a brilliant action, inflicting massive damage on the Italian fleet with minimal losses to the British. The Italians withdrew their fleet to the north, effectively removing it from the Mediterranean game board. The Japanese had been had been thinking of more ambitious operations along similar lines as the Royal Navy; the following May, Japanese Admiral Koki Abe visited Taranto to assess the raid.
* The Swordfish saw further action in the Mediterranean and the Mideast into the spring of 1941, but the aircraft's next shining role was in helping to sink the German battleship BISMARCK. On 23 May 1941, the BISMARCK was observed steaming south through the gap between Greenland and Iceland; British fleet elements steamed out to intercept her.
On 24 May, the new carrier VICTORIOUS launched nine Swordfish at 10:00 PM in the evening, but weather conditions were bad and the torpedo bombers only scored a single hit. The BISMARCK escaped, only to be spotted again by an RAF Coastal Command Consolidated Catalina flying boat on 26 May. Fifteen Swordfish were launched by the carrier ARK ROYAL that day, but attacked the British cruiser SHEFFIELD by mistake. Fortunately, another error balanced the first: the torpedoes of the aircraft had been armed with magnetic detonators, which were hopelessly unreliable, and the SHEFFIELD, maneuvering wildly in rough seas, escaped unscathed.
There was no time for recriminations and the fiasco proved valuable. Late in the day, fifteen Swordfish were launched in a storm, carrying torpedoes armed with much more reliable contact detonators. They scored two hits on the German battleship: one did no damage, but the other struck the vessel in her steering gear, forcing her to steam in circles. None of the aircraft were lost in the attack, though a German officer said: "It was incredible to see such obsolete-looking planes having the nerve to attack a fire-spitting mountain like the BISMARCK." The BISMARCK was sent to the bottom by Royal Navy gunfire the next day.
* One of the results of the sinking of the BISMARCK was that it convinced Hitler that his own surface fleet could not stand up to the Royal Navy and deployed them cautiously, under plenty of protection. When the German battleships SCHARNHORST, GNEISENAU, and PRINZ EUGEN left the French port of Brest on 12 February 1942, moving to Northern European ports where they would be less vulnerable to air attack, six Swordfish attacked and were all shot down by covering fighters. Of the 18 crewmen, only five survived. Lieutenant Commander Esmonde, who led the attack, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
The Swordfish suffered another setback on 5 April 1942, in the course of a Japanese Navy raid on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the Indian Ocean. Six Swordfish flew out of Colombo to attack the Japanese strike force, with all shot down and only a few survivors. The Stringbag was never again used as a torpedo bomber. However, it had already been and would continue to be employed in another role against Hitler's main weapon in the Battle of the Atlantic: the U-boat.BACK_TO_TOP
* The Swordfish had been equipped with ASV radar as early as October 1940, to help it hunt down German U-boats cruising on the surface. Two months later, on 21 December 1941, a Swordfish operating from Gibraltar was the first aircraft to sink a submarine at night. A year and a half later, on 23 May 1943, a Swordfish was the first aircraft to prove the effectiveness of rockets in antisubmarine warfare when one Stringbag sunk the U-752 off the coast of Ireland, even though the U-boat put up a determined defense with its quadruple 20-millimeter flak guns.
May 1943 was the turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Swordfish was one of the many weapons that inflicted enough losses on the German submarine force to finally give the Allies the upper hand in the battle for the sea lanes. The Swordfish was relatively easy to fly off tiny escort carriers, and so could provide cover for convoys from start to finish. The Swordfish proved particularly effective in escorting the Murmansk convoys to Russia through frigid Arctic waters.
In August 1944, Swordfish IIs operating from the escort carriers VINDEX and STRIKER as part of the Murmansk convoy JW.59 took on a wolf pack of nine U-boats attempting to attack the convoy. One U-boat was sunk, another damaged; the defense was so energetic that none of the ships in the convoy was sunk. When the carriers escorted a return convoy back from Russia, no U-boats attempted to attack it. The Swordfish would be credited with the sinking of 12 U-boats in all.
The final Swordfish was delivered in August 1944. Fairey had built 692 and Blackburn 1,699, for a total of 2,391. The last operational squadron was disbanded on 21 May 1945, shortly after the fall of Germany, and the last training squadron was disbanded in the summer of 1946. Despite its obsolescent appearance, the Stringbag had proven an excellent weapon, though its usefulness would have been far more limited if it had ever faced significant fighter opposition. The Swordfish today is represented by a handful of museum pieces and a few flying examples. Those finding a derelict Swordfish airframe today would indeed have a prize on their hands.BACK_TO_TOP
* Work on a successor to the Swordfish began in 1936 when the British Air Ministry issued Specification "S.41/36" for an improved torpedo bomber. Fairey's proposal was accepted "off the drawing board", with the Air Ministry ordering two prototypes and 98 production items of the "Albacore", as it was named, on 12 December 1938.
The first prototype performed its initial flight on 12 December 1938, with the type going into production in 1939. The overall configuration of the Albacore was very close to that of the Swordfish. The Albacore was a three-seat biplane, with fixed taildragger landing gear, and three crew consisting of pilot, navigator, and radio operator / rear gunner. It even resembled the Swordfish in adopting the same back-folding wing scheme.
It differed, however, in being larger, with an empty weight over half again as great as that of the Swordfish, being powered by a more powerful Bristol Taurus 14-cylinder two-row air-cooled radial engine driving a three-bladed variable-pitch propeller. Initial production was fitted with a Taurus II engine providing 795 kW (1,065 HP), while later production featured the Taurus XII with 845 kW (1,130 HP). Speed was incrementally better than that of the Swordfish, while ceiling and range were almost doubled.
It also featured such niceties as an enclosed cockpit with cockpit heating, a windshield wiper, and an emergency dinghy that was deployed automatically on ditching. Gun armament consisted of a single fixed 7.7-millimeter (0.303-caliber) machine gun mounted in the right wing, plus twin rearward-firing 7.7-millimeter Vickers K machine guns on a flexible mount in the rear cockpit. External stores consisted of a single 730-kilogram (1,610-pound) torpedo on the centerline; or six 115-kilogram (250-pound) bombs under the wings; or four 225-kilogram (500-pound) bombs under the wings.
Although one of the prototype Albacores was tested with floats in 1940, the trials did not prove successful, and the Albacore never served operationally with floats.
FAIREY ALBACORE: _____________________ _________________ _______________________ spec metric english _____________________ _________________ _______________________ wingspan 15.24 meters 50 feet wing area 57.88 sq_meters 623 sq_feet length 12.14 meters 39 feet 10 inches height 4.32 meters 14 feet 2 inches empty weight 3,289 kilograms 7,250 pounds MTO weight 4,745 kilograms 10,460 pounds maximum speed 259 KPH 161 MPH / 140 KT service ceiling 6,310 meters 20,700 feet range, loaded 1,497 kilometers 930 MI / 809 NMI _____________________ _________________ _______________________
Despite the fact that the Albacore was clearly more modern in appearance than the Swordfish, it didn't prove to be that much of an advance. The initial service evaluation of the type reported that its controls were very heavy and that its stall behavior left something to be desired, though it was stable in a dive and steady in torpedo drops. The enclosed cockpit also didn't prove as much a benefit as might be expected, since the front cockpit was a "hotbox" in even mildly sunny weather, while the rear cockpit was drafty and chilly. It is still hard to believe that the enclosed cockpit wasn't superior to the open cockpit of the Swordfish, particularly for winter operations. In addition, some sources claim that in service pilots found it pleasant to fly, suggesting that the handling problems were worked out.
Albacores were rolled off the production line anyway, with a total of 800 built in all, including the two prototypes, all manufactured at the Fairey plant in Hayes. The type reached operational service in March 1940 and initially operated from ground bases. Albacores performed their first combat action on 31 May 1940, attacking German E-boats -- torpedo boats -- in the North Sea and hitting ground targets in Belgium. By the end of the year, the Albacore was flying off carriers, and performed its first torpedo-bombing attacks during the Battle of Cape Matapan, off the coast of Greece, on March 27:29 1941, in which the Royal Navy got the jump on the Italian fleet and badly bloodied it. Albacores off the HMS FORMIDABLE performed attacks on the Italian battleship VITTORIO VENETO during the battle.
The Albacore reached its peak strength in mid-1942, with the type equipping 15 FAA squadrons and service in all the war zones in which the Royal Navy was seriously involved. Albacores participated in Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa, in November 1942, flying ocean patrols and attacking coastal targets. Apparently some of them were given American markings for the operation. The type was generally phased out of service in 1943, to be replaced by the more modern Fairey Barracuda and, to a lesser extent, the Grumman Avenger.
Although modern sources tend to be unkind to the Albacore, its short service life might have simply been due to the fact that a biplane combat aircraft was an idea whose time was generally past, even though the Swordfish was able to continue on in combat since it had found an effective niche in convoy escort. FAA Albacores remained in service in second-line squadrons in Africa and the Middle East for the rest of the war. Some Albacores were obtained by or passed on to the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force, and performed actions over the English Channel during the invasion of Normandy in the spring of 1944. At least one Albacore survives, at the FAA Museum at Ilchester in the UK.BACK_TO_TOP
* By the later 1930s, the concept of a biplane torpedo-bomber was becoming clearly stodgy, and in response to British Air Ministry Specification "S.24/37", Fairey submitted a design for a monoplane torpedo bomber. Fairey won the award in July 1938, receiving an order for two prototypes.
The first prototype of the "Barracuda", as the type was named, performed its initial flight on 7 December 1940, with the second flying on 29 June 1941. Although performance was much superior to the Swordfish and Albacore, the program moved along slowly, partly due to repeated changes in production priorities as forced by the pressures of war. Initial deliveries of the production "Barracuda Mark I" weren't until early 1942 and it didn't go into operational service until much later in the year. It was still the FAA's first operational monoplane torpedo-bomber.
The Barracuda Mark I was a high-wing monoplane with taildragger landing gear, the main gear retracting outward into the wing and the tail gear being fixed. It was of all-metal construction, except for some fabric-covered control surfaces. There was a yoke-style arresting hook in front of the tailwheel. The three crew -- again consisting of pilot, navigator, and radio operator / rear gunner -- sat in a "greenhouse" style canopy. There were two windows on each side of the fuselage, one directly under the middle of the wing and one at the trailing edge of the wing. Auxiliary lower seating was provided to allow use of the windows for observation.
The wing featured large underslung "Fairey-Youngman" flaps, the flaps also serving as dive brakes. The wings folded; it is unclear what the folding arrangement was, though there were pull-out handles under the outer wing to help the deck crew perform the folding. The tail configuration of the initial prototype had been conventional, but interference from the flaps under certain conditions led to moving the tailplane to near the top of the tailfin. The tailplane featured strut bracing, added when the tailplane position was raised.
Although the aircraft had been originally designed to use a Rolls-Royce 24-cylinder water-cooled inline "X" or "Vulture" engine with 895 kW (1,200 HP), that engine development program proved troublesome and was abandoned, and the Barracuda Mark I was powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin 30 12-cylinder water-cooled inline with 970 kW (1,300 HP) and driving a Rotol (Rolls-Bristol) three-blade variable-pitch propeller. The engine change was another reason for delays in the program. Unfortunately, the Mark I had suffered from excessive weight gain from the original design and was underpowered. Only 30 Mark Is were built before production switched to the "Barracuda Mark II", which was generally identical to the Mark I except for fit of a substantially more powerful Merlin 32 engine, with 1,225 kW (1,640 HP), driving a four-bladed Rotol variable pitch propeller. The Mark II would become the main production model.
Defensive armament of the Barracuda consisted of two 7.7-millimeter (0.303-caliber) machine guns on a twin flexible mount in the rear of the cockpit. Offensive stores could be carried on the centerline and under a pylon under each outer wing. Possible offensive warloads included a single 735-kilogram (1,620-pound) torpedo carried on the centerline, or an equivalent load of bombs, depth charges, mines, flares and smoke markers, and sonobuoys.
Detail illustrations of the Mark II also display stores such as a target-towing winch, as well as gear for the air-sea rescue (ASR) role, with underwing inflatable life raft dispensers. It is unclear if it the Barracuda was ever formally used as a target tug or for the ASR role, though a picture does survive of a Mark II carrying a lifeboat on the centerline in a strictly experimental fit.
FAIREY BARRACUDA: _____________________ _________________ _______________________ spec metric english _____________________ _________________ _______________________ wingspan 14.99 meters 49 feet 2 inches wing area 38.46 sq_meters 414 sq_feet length 12.12 meters 39 feet 9 inches height 3.73 meters 12 feet 3 inches empty weight 4,907 kilograms 10,818 pounds MTO weight 6,464 kilograms 14,250 pounds maximum speed 386 KPH 240 MPH / 210 KT service ceiling 5,060 meters 16,600 feet range 1,850 kilometers 1,150 MI / 1,000 NMI _____________________ _________________ _______________________ Performance figures are given "clean", without external stores.
Co-production of the Barracuda was arranged at Blackburn, Boulton Paul, and Westland, but Westland only built a small handful before the company was redirected to other aircraft production. A total of 1,688 Barracuda Mark IIs was built by the production pool.
* The Barracuda went into formal FAA service with Number 827 Squadron on 10 January 1943. By January 1944, there was a total of 12 Barracuda squadrons. The type performed a particularly significant action on 3 April 1944, with 42 dive-bombing the German battleship TIRPITZ and inflicting serious damage. They came back over the next few months to inflict more. By that spring, Barracudas were also in service in the Pacific, performing their first attack on Japanese targets at Sabang in Sumatra on 19 April 1944.
* The "Barracuda Mark III" was essentially a Mark II fitted with centimetric ASV.X radar in a blister radome under the rear fuselage. Some pictures of Mark IIs seem to suggest that at least a few were fitted with the earlier and less effective longwave ASV.II radar, with a Yagi-style "fishbone" receiving antenna above each wing, though the antennas might have actually been part of some sort of radar-homing gear. The first Mark III prototype, rebuilt from a Mark II, performed its initial flight in 1943, with production of the Mark III beginning in early 1944. The Mark II remained in production in parallel. A total of 852 Marks IIIs was built by Fairey and Boulton Paul. It was used on escort carriers for antisubmarine duty, performing takeoffs with RATOG.
Plans for a Mark IV fell through, and so the last production variant was the "Barracuda Mark V". Even with the improved Merlin 32, the Mark II/III was still seen as underpowered, and so Fairey engineers looked to the new Rolls Royce Griffon vee-12 water-cooled engine. However, development of a Griffon-powered Barracuda stretched out, with the first prototype, a modified Mark II, performing its initial flight on 16 November 1944, when the war in Europe was clearly approaching its final stages.
The Barracuda Mark V featured a Griffon 37 engine providing 1,515 kW (2,030 HP) and increased fuel capacity, as well as a wing with increased span and squared-off wingtips to handle the greater weight, plus a larger tailfin to compensate for the increased torque of the Griffon engine. Crew was reduced to two and the rearward-firing Vickers guns were deleted, with a single fixed forward-firing 12.7-millimeter (0.50-caliber) Browning machine gun in their place.
Only 30 Mark Vs were completed before the end of the war in the Pacific led to the end of Barracuda production. The Mark Vs served in training roles until 1950. Most of the Mark II/III squadrons were disbanded after the end of the war, but some Mark II/IIIs remained in service as hacks and the like into the early 1950s.
The Barracuda seems to have been a creditable enough aircraft, though it remains obscure compared to its far more famous contemporary, the Grumman Avenger. It would be interesting to find a comparison between the two types by a pilot who had flown them both in FAA service. Apparently no Barracudas have survived, though an interest group is collecting pieces of wrecks in hopes of putting together a static display item.
* Late in the war, Fairey also developed a bigger and more formidable torpedo and dive bomber, the "Spearfish". It was designed in response to specification "O.5/43" as a replacement for the Barracuda, and the first prototype performed its initial flight on 5 July 1945.
The Spearfish was a mid-wing monoplane, with two crew in a greenhouse canopy, powered by a Bristol Centaurus 57 two-row 18-cylinder radial engine, providing 1,930 kW (2,585 HP) and driving a Rotol variable-pitch five-bladed propeller. It was a taildragger machine, with all landing gear retractable, the main gear retracting outward into the wings. The wings featured hydraulic folding. It had two fixed forward-firing 12.7-millimeter (0.50-caliber) Browning machine guns, and two more 12.7-millimeter Brownings in a remote-controlled barbette for rearward defense. It had an internal bombbay but could also carry 16 rocket projectiles under the wings, total offensive warload being of 900 kilograms (2,000 pounds). It was fitted with ASV radar in a retractable "dustbin" under the rear fuselage, and had provision for RATOG.
FAIREY SPEARFISH: _____________________ _________________ _______________________ spec metric english _____________________ _________________ _______________________ wingspan 18.3 meters 60 feet wing area 49.2 sq_meters 530 sq_feet length 13.8 meters 45 feet 4 inches height 5 meters 16 feet 6 inches loaded weight 10,000 kilograms 22,050 pounds maximum speed 482 KPH 298 MPH / 259 KT range 1,440 kilometers 900 MI / 783 NMI _____________________ _________________ _______________________
Five Spearfish prototypes were built, but only four flew, with the program terminated by the end of the war in the Pacific. The prototypes were used for trials for a time after the war.BACK_TO_TOP
* The story of the blundering Swordfish attack on the HMS SHEFFIELD and the failure of the magnetic detonators is part of another interesting story. Magnetic detonators were designed to cause a torpedo to explode while it was passing underneath the hull of a ship, without actually striking it. The idea was that this would inflict greater and more devastating damage than a torpedo hitting the side of the ship.
The idea sounded nice in principle, but failed miserably in practice, and most European nations quickly got rid of the magnetic detonators. In the early days of the war in the South Pacific, however, American submarine commanders were specifically ordered to use magnetic detonators. They protested at length that the detonators didn't work, but the brass stubbornly insisted. Submarine commanders resorted to leaving port with magnetic detonators fitted to their torpedoes, only to replace them with contact detonators once they got to sea and no longer had to put up with inspections.
* As concerns copyrights and permissions for this document, all illustrations and images credited to me are public domain. I reserve all rights to my writings. However, if anyone does want to make use of my writings, just contact me, and we can chat about it. I'm lenient in giving permissions, usually on the basis of being properly credited.
* Sources include:
* Revision history:
v1.0 / 16 aug 97 v1.1 / 01 feb 98 / Review & polish. v1.0.2 / 01 jan 02 / Review & polish. v2.0.0 / 01 jan 04 / Added Albacore & Barracuda. v2.0.1 / 01 jan 06 / Review & polish. v2.0.2 / 01 dec 07 / Review & polish. v2.0.3 / 01 nov 09 / Review & polish. v2.1.0 / 01 oct 11 / Additional Swordfish details. v2.1.1 / 01 sep 13 / Review & polish. v2.1.2 / 01 aug 15 / Review & polish. v2.1.3 / 01 jul 17 / Review & polish.BACK_TO_TOP


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GW Solar Walk
Loudoun County, VA
To provide a pedestrian connection to two of the University's educational buildings. Facilitate charrette with stakeholders and students. Incorporate the student's design concepts for the Solar walk while reducing conflicts with existing site conditions. The design is the first piece of the University's new master plan and will provide solar covered trellis's that will help to minimize one of the education building's overall energy consumption. Sustainable solutions include 100% native plant materials, multiple rain gardens, permeable pavements, bioswale, solar volatic panels and rainwater collection from trellis roofs.

subset: commoncrawl


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W. L. Weller 12 Background
Named after William Larue Weller, Weller 12 is the 12 year expression in a line of wheated Bourbons from Buffalo Trace Distillery. Wheated means the mash recipe uses wheat and not rye as the secondary grain. The majority is still corn and a little malted barley to convert the mash. Buffalo Trace's lineup also includes Old Weller Antique at 107-proof and W.L. Weller Special Reserve at 90-proof. Weller 12 year here is also at 90-proof but about twice as old as the other products. There is also William Larue Weller as part of the annual Antique Collection that probably could be considered a selection of Weller 12 at barrel proof. So, there's a good range of expressions produced.
Weller is credited as the first to use a wheat recipe for Bourbon. The resulting recipe makes for generally a sweeter and milder whiskey. The character isn't directly related to the use of wheat as much as the lack of rye. Another bonus of using wheat is it's thought a wheated Bourbon ages better. Thus, we get the most popular wheated Bourbons in the heavily aged Pappy Van Winkle line.
Speaking of Pappy, Weller 12 has gotten a lot of press as a Pappy alternative. Pappy and the Wellers use the same mash bill and they share the Sitzel-Weller Distillery legacy. Either currently or in the near future all Pappy should share the same Weller juice as barrels from Buffalo Trace come to age. Difference between all these Bourbons is basically bottling proof and barrel section, in addition to age.
12 year age statement. Bottled at 90-proof. Wheated grain bill with no rye. MSRP – $24.99 (2016 Price)
Bunch of charred oak and vanilla. Caramel, black cherries. Cola. Tobacco.
Ample oak and vanilla with buttery flavors. Charred wood in there. If you're a barrel fan, this is tasty. Cherries, toffee. Rich sweetness. Oak astringency and that's taming the sweet. And some tartness. Getting some medicinal on the back-end that's got me cleansing my palate a bit.
I had a sample of this a while back and enjoyed the barrel influences. It was my first longer aged Bourbon and it's what really turned me on to Bourbons. It took me a while to get my hands on this bottle and I'm still impressed with the rich and oaky experience. Nice complexity and it's a bit of a departure from a lot of the other Bourbons out there. The finish is a little rougher than I remember, but is still quite enjoyable.
Compared to Old Weller, Antique, Weller 12 seems a little flatter, but with nice oak complexities. The higher proof and younger Old Weller Antique I think is just more lively even if rougher around the edges. Even still, I still prefer Weller 12 to Old Weller Antique for the age and barrel flavors.
Right now I'm vatting a couple samples of Weller 12 and Old Weller Antique. I'm curious to sit down with those. One is 50/50 and the other is 60/40 Old Weller/Weller 12. I sneaked a sip and the more feisty Old Weller and the rich complexities of Weller 12 seem to go well.
Weller 12 can be hard to find and I'd guess it's not going to get better. Being the same juice as Pappy, significant age on the bottle, and a great price, I'd guess people are going to keep scooping it up. When I managed to track some down, I stocked up. I'd suggest buying a bottle if you can find it, and if you like it, run back to buy another.
Buy Again – 4.0/5 Rating
(My 5 point scale: Pass, Try a Glass, Buy a Bottle, Buy Again, Shut Up and Take My Money – Bottle price is taken into consideration for recommendations.)


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Medics took at 29-year-old man to Harborview Medical Center with cuts Thursday afternoon after he claimed someone threw a knife at him in the International District.
The man was fighting with three or four other men just before 3:30 p.m. in a parking lot at 12th Avenue South and South Weller Street, according to Seattle police reports.
One of the men threw a knife at him, which cut him in the back, he told officers.
The man did not provide much suspect information.
His injuries did not appear to be life-threatening.


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cover only a fraction of the costs of mounting exhibits, staffing, utilities, maintenance and associated expenses.
To help cover our operating costs we rely on voluntary
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If you have a paypal account you may donate by simply clicking thePayPal button below to make your tax-deductable
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text: Ride the rails that President Lincoln rode on his way to Gettysburg to deliver the Gettysburg Address and the trail voted number one in Pennsylvania. Steam Into History boasts an 1860s period steam locomotive with period cars and a mid-1950s Pennsylvania Diesel. Tour Availability: Thursday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Rides are at 11 a.m. to Glen Rock, and 12:30 p.m. to Hanover Junction About the Tour: Tour Length: 1 to 2 ½ hours Guided Tour: Yes Public restrooms: Yes Handicap Accessible: Yes Cameras Permitted: Yes Minimum Age Requirement: No Retail/Factory Store on-site: Yes Admission Charge: Yes, Tickets are between $15.00 t0 $29.00 Conditions/Restrictions: None Motorcoaches: Yes


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Looking for a siberian husky
Have any animals or animal supplies for sale or for free? Post them here.
Moderators: mokangena, scottab, fish2222
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10 posts • Page 1 of 1
- Posts: 331
- Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:31 pm
Looking for a siberian husky
wanting a siberian husky so if u have one plz let me know
siberian husky
My friend has a siberian husky...she needs to find him a place where he has room to run and not be on a chain. He is 7 months old and AKC registered. Good bloodline. She is asking $250 but I think the price is negotiable if he's going to a good home. Here are some pictures of him. His name is Shadow.
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Duke university is shutting down it's Usenet server.
Monday Duke University announced that it will be shutting down a piece of Internet history by switching off the home of the first electronic newsgroups. Thursday, May 20 will mark the day Duke's Usenet server finally goes offline after more than thirty years, originally launched by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, as a means to exchange messages and files (via modem) between computers located at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
The Users Network, or Usenet as we know it today, quickly grew to become an international electronic discussion forum consisting of more than 120,000 newsgroups. Dietolf Ramm, professor emeritus of computer science, said that the Usenet played a large role in the growth and popularity of the Internet. However, not every parent, student, or general consumer could jump "online." Connections were expensive and required a research contract with the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
Ramm, who worked with the students responsible for developing and launching Usenet, said that the ARPA had funded a few schools to begin the early stages of the Internet. "But most schools didn't have that," he said in an interview. "Usenet was a pioneering effort because it allowed anybody to connect and participate communications."
Despite the legal sweep made by the RIAA and MPAA as of late, Duke didn't decide to terminate its Usenet server based on piracy. Instead, the relic will be laid to rest thanks to low usage and rising costs. Applications such as Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook and more have made communication a bit more user-friendly since the days of Usenet, making it obsolete.
I haven't had a Usenet account in years, heck in over a decade, so I guess it is obsolete. And 30 years is a LONG time in Internet years. But this is just one server. I think Usenet will be around a while still.


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Blotter: Two gas runs made at H-E-B Plus!
Aug. 15, 2014 at 5:27 p.m.
Updated Aug. 15, 2014 at 10:31 p.m.
Arrested • VICTORIA - Coltin Lane Austin, 22, of Yoakum, by deputies Thursday on a warrant charging him with credit card or debit card abuse.
• VICTORIA - A 39-year-old Victoria man by officers Thursday on suspicion of fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest and search or transport.
• VICTORIA - Helen Mae Caraker, 53, of Port Aransas, by deputies Thursday on warrants charging her with impersonating a public servant, bail jumping and failure to appear in court for a criminal trespass case.
VICTORIA - Cosme Espinoza Jr., 61, of Victoria, by officers Thursday for violation of probation on a warrant charging him with driving while intoxicated.
Burglarized • VICTORIA - A home in the 100 block of Red River Street between Tuesday and Thursday. Assorted action figures in packages valued at $800 and an air conditioner valued at $160 were reported missing.
• VICTORIA - A vehicle in the 1500 block of Rio Grande Street between Monday and Wednesday. An iPhone 4s valued at $450 and an iPhone valued at $600 were reported missing.
VICTORIA - A home in the 100 block of Berkshire Lane on Wednesday. Credit cards or debit cards and cash valued at $1 were reported missing.
VICTORIA - A vehicle in the 1600 block of East Brazos Street on Thursday.
Editor's note: An indictment is not an indication of guilt. It is a finding by a grand jury that enough evidence exists to warrant a trial.
VICTORIA - A Victoria County grand jury returned indictments on the following people Aug. 7:
Rodolfo Rolando Carabajal, 47, of Victoria, on a charge of burglary of a building on April 12.
Angel Jay Pena, 17, of Victoria, on a charge of burglary of a habitation on March 25.


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Re: Edward Klink - NY/NJ
In reply to:
Edward Klink - NY/NJ
My grandfather was Edward Klinck.He was born in 1884.I'm not sure if he was born in Germany or the US.He grew up in the Buffalo, N Tonawanda area of NY.Moved to Philadelphia and then to southern New Jersey. He died in 1971.I was never told much about his early life.I do remember him having a barber shop when I was growing up.
Just thought I would share this info.I would love to know more about his life.Donna Klinck Adkins


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A MAN was found dead after taking a toxic cocktail of drink and drugs.
Steven Shepherd was discovered collapsed and unresponsive at his flat on Siddow Common, Leigh, on January 5 after concerned friends broke into his flat.
Bolton Coroner's Court heard how the 31-year-old had met up with his father, Joseph Shepherd, two weeks earlier and had been in "the best mood he'd been in for a long time".
Joseph Shepherd said he had even invited his son to spend Christmas Day with him at his home in Heywood, but then received no response to any calls or messages after December 22.
Steven's friends, Debra Thompson and Trevor Williams, told how they had become increasingly concerned for his welfare after not seeing him for two weeks. Mr Williams then used a hammer and a pair of pliers to get into the flat where he found him collapsed on the floor.
He also told how Mr Shepherd had taken amphetamine daily when he first met him via the Railway Road project 18 months earlier. He said Mr Shepherd would also take crack cocaine and heroin "on occasion" and had become increasingly difficult to communicate with as his drug-taking escalated.
On one occasion he collapsed and nearly died after taking an overdose while living at the Railway Road hostel. A team leader there also confirmed Mr Shepherd had once used razor blades to cut his wrists but had only suffered superficial injuries.
Pathologist Dr David Barker recorded the cause of death as "the combined toxic effects of morphine (heroin), cocaine, alcohol, amphetamine and methadone". Police had quickly confirmed there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
Coroner Alan Walsh ruled that Mr Shepherd died "from the misuse of illicit drugs with alcohol". He said: "Steven Shepherd may have been affected by times of sadness in his life and there were times when he made an effort to change - but he couldn't succeed. He never freed himself from the life he chose to lead."


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January 30, 2013
It's Now Do or Die for BlackBerry
Scott Martin, USA Today
AP Photo
RIM relies on deep roots with enterprise customers. For years, the BlackBerry was considered more secure and gave it prominence among IT departments. That has made it a hit with government customers. But advances in security software, combined with worker demands for support of iPhones and Android-based devices, have changed things. RIM still wants to court its business customers. At the same time, it wants to expand into consumer markets. So it has created something of a hybrid smartphone appearance that allows people to toggle between business and consumer smartphone appearances and their apps.
TAGGED: Research In Motion, BlackBerry 10


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Originally posted by lcbjr1979
reply to post by Starwise
I dont know a lot about them but I am assuming that since the bleeding had a stopped and they drained the blood that was around the lung then the hemo was gone. The doctor said I could go home after 3 days there, I took his word for it. Believe me if I start to get any symtpoms that make me believe it is back I will go in to the ER immediately.
Originally posted by cerebralassassins
Glad to see you back in, in my religion in such circumstances we say you had some angel looking over you.....
Originally posted by lcbjr1979
reply to post by caladonea
Thanks for the kind words but I really dont think of myself as a hero, I am just a paramedic who was doing his job.


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ALBANY — Lance Calkins, a 24-year veteran of the Stockton Fire Department was approved by the City Council July 15 as the new chief of the Albany department, succeeding Ed Tubbs, who retired from the department in May.
Calkins, 48, handled practically every duty for the Stockton department, including firefighter; engineer; captain, battalion and division chief; fire marshal; emergency medical services and heavy rescue.
"We were really impressed with him," Albany Mayor Peggy Thomsen said. "He has already been working with the staff and the department to get to know each other. We're very excited about having somebody new who seems very excited about coming here. He has a lot of energy and a lot of experience and I think it will be a good fit."
Calkins said he thought Albany was a good fit as well.
"During the interview process, I was very impressed at the teamwork and dedication of the council and the city employees to the community," he said. "I felt very welcome. That really made my mind up."
Calkins was born in Sacramento and was then adopted by a family in Stockton, where he grew up. He worked as an auxiliary firefighter in Stockton as a teenager. He has since earned a master's degree in leadership with an emphasis on disaster preparedness and executive fire leadership, and has a bachelor's degree in fire management, according to a city staff report.
Calkins said he has been fortunate during his career in Stockton.
"I've been lucky I've been able to get into those positions to really learn them," Calkins said. "It's rare that you get an opportunity to go through all of those spots. It was a timing thing with the openings, I was there at the right time."
Calkins is looking forward to bringing that experience to Albany. He said moving to a smaller department was appealing to him. He began his career with a 1½-year stint for the Waterloo-Morada Fire Protection District, a smaller district on the northeast corner of Stockton.
"I like the small town community, where you're able to know people and they know you," Calkins said. "You're able to network. I really miss that from the fire department that I was working in Morada. There's a lot of positives for working for a smaller department."
Calkins said some of the challenges with a smaller department include resources.
"There's less staff," he said. "There's a lot of administrative staff in a bigger department. You don't have as much of those resources in a smaller department. It's real challenging to be cost-effective when you're training with a small group of people. You have to really rely on firefighters to do extra duties that aren't normally required. A lot of administrative work needs to be done at those lower levels."
Calkins has been working hard to begin the transition. Before attending Monday's council meeting, he had dinner at the fire house with one of the shifts.
Calkins is married with a grown daughter and two grown stepchildren and is looking for a house in Albany or nearby. He said he expected the higher rents in the area but not such a limited number of houses available.
On the other hand, he said Monday, the Bay Area weather is hard to beat, especially on an afternoon in Stockton when it was supposed to be 110 degrees.


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CDC: Helicopter crashes fuel oil industry work deaths. helicopter crashes – account for 51%.
Wendy Koch, USA TODAY4:14 p.m. EDT April 25, 2013
Do explosions cause most job-related deaths for oil industry workers? Actually, they and fires account for only 13% while transportation accidents – especially helicopter crashes – account for 51%.
Catastrophes such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion get headlines, but most work-related deaths for oil industry workers result from transportation accidents — especially helicopter crashes, U.S. officials report Thursday.
Employees of the U.S. oil and gas extraction industry had a fatality rate seven times higher than all U.S. workers (27.1 vs. 3.8 deaths per 100,000 workers), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC found 128 workers were killed during offshore operations from 2003 to 2010, based on data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Transportation accounted for 60 (or 51%) of these deaths, 75% of which resulted from helicopter accidents in the Gulf of Mexico. "Contact with objects and equipment" accounted for 16% of the deaths, fires and explosions for 13% and exposure to harmful substances 13%.
The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010, off the coast of Louisiana, which triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history, killed 11 workers and injured 16 others.
CDC's findings are consistent with a 2011 study that identified mechanical failures and bad weather as the most common factors for helicopter crashes in the Gulf of Mexico from 1983 to 2009. The earlier study also found that two-thirds of all forced or precautionary landings resulting from mechanical failures occurred in water.
There's good news, however. To improve safety, the Federal Aviation Administration worked with the oil and gas industry to deploy satellites that better track flights and weather conditions. Since late 2009, when such technology was implemented in the Gulf of Mexico, CDC says no weather-related fatal helicopter crashes during oil and gas operations have occurred as of the end of 2012.
The CDC recommends that pilots, passengers and life rafts should have emergency beacons, people should wear life jackets on flights over water, flotation gear should inflate automatically on impact with water, and life rafts should be externally mounted.


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Notice is given to the shareholders of Componenta Corporation to the Extraordinary General Meeting to be held on Friday, 23 September 2016 at 8 at the Company's headquarters in Käpylä in the auditorium of the Sato building at the address Panuntie 4, FI-00610 Helsinki.
Notice to the extraordinary General Meeting of Componenta Corporation
Each shareholder, who is registered on 13 September 2016 (the record date of the General Meeting) in the shareholders' register of the company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd., has the right to participate in the General Meeting. A shareholder, whose shares are registered on his/her personal Finnish book-entry account, is registered in the shareholders' register of the company.
Such notice can be given:
a) by e-mail email@example.com;
b) by telephone 010 403 2202; or
c) by regular mail to Componenta Oyj / Pia Juntunen, Panuntie 4, FI-00610 Helsinki.
Proposal by the Board of Directors to EGM
Resolutions of the Extraordinary General Meeting


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We are encouraging the community to join us in giving back by dropping off any gently worn or new shoes to our office during business hours and we will ship the shoes to Soles4Souls.
Highlands Ranch, CO (PRWEB) November 17, 2013
Randy E. Johnson - State Farm Insurance, the first insurance agency to open in Highlands Ranch, CO, recently celebrating twenty-seven years in business, offers all types of insurance.
The agency is thrilled to officially become a Soles4Souls drop-off location, collecting shoes on behalf of the organization at their office located at 8925 Ridgeline Blvd, Suite 101 in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. "We are encouraging the community to join us in giving back by dropping off any gently worn or new shoes to our office during business hours and we will ship the shoes to Soles4Souls. We are proud to be partnering with this organization doing so much here in the United States, as well as globally," said, owner Randy Johnson.
Experts estimate that approximately 300 million children worldwide – almost as many as the entire U.S. population – live without shoes on their feet. Lacking proper footwear, countless children will not be able or permitted to attend school. And tens of millions of these poverty-stricken, barefoot boys and girls will be infected with soil-transmitted parasitic diseases like hookworm, causing lasting suffering and lifelong debilitation. This partnership will enable Soles4Souls to continue working to prevent this distress and better the lives of those in need.
Please join Randy E Johnson - State Farm Insurance in their effort to support Soles4Souls. For more information about the Randy E Johnson - State Farm Insurance, please call (303) 791-8883.
About Randy E Johnson - State Farm Insurance
This is a locally owned and operated State Farm Insurance Agency proudly serving the Highlands Ranch community for many years. State Farm is the number one auto and home insurer in the nation. Randy and his staff strive on living by the "golden rule".
About NALA™
The NALA (National Association of Local Advertisers), a small business association, is for local business owners offering new online advertising & small business marketing tools, great business benefits, education and money-saving programs, as well as a charity program.
PR Contact: Tiffani Tendell
805.650.6121, ext. 361


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|Thaddeus Young, SF 23 MIN | 3-10 FG | 0-0 FT | 2 REB | 1 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 2 TO | 6 PTS | -29Like the rest of the Sixers, Thaddeus Young failed to get into any sort of rhythm on the offensive end. The Warriors are known for their run-n-gun style of play, but let's not forget they have a double-double machine in David Lee and a banger in Andrew Bogut. Tough matchup for the undersized Thad, and it showed.
|Evan Turner, SF 25 MIN | 7-12 FG | 4-5 FT | 7 REB | 1 AST | 3 STL | 0 BLK | 5 TO | 18 PTS | -26E.T. had a quick flashback to the Doug Collins days in the first quarter, starting the game 0-5 from the field. He eventually found some flow as the game wore on (and got out of hand). His counterpart, Andre Iguodala, hit a career high seven three pointers and was wide open for just about every one of those threes. Needed a better defensive effort from E.T. tonight, especially on his defensive rotations.
|Spencer Hawes, C 26 MIN | 1-6 FG | 2-4 FT | 8 REB | 3 AST | 0 STL | 1 BLK | 3 TO | 5 PTS | -41This was just a tough matchup for Spencer. He looked hesitant on the offensive end, and failed to make any impact defensively. See the By the Numbers below.
|Michael Carter-Williams, PG 35 MIN | 4-17 FG | 9-12 FT | 6 REB | 4 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 6 TO | 18 PTS | -23MCW played nearly the entire fourth quarter despite his team being down as many as 37. Every minute is a learning experience for the franchise point guard. The recently named Eastern Conference Player of the Week went only 1-7 from beyond the arc. His misses often led to long rebounds and leak outs, resulting in easy buckets for the Warriors. Tough night, but he'll process it and move on.
|Daniel Orton, C 17 MIN | 0-2 FG | 1-3 FT | 6 REB | 1 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 2 TO | 1 PTS | +15Daniel Orton enjoys contact, and it shows in his game. He'll never wow you on offense, but you see the potential when you watch him play. Tonight he was the most active big for the Sixers, grabbing six boards and getting to the line three times.
|Darius Morris, PG 19 MIN | 2-6 FG | 4-5 FT | 2 REB | 5 AST | 4 STL | 0 BLK | 2 TO | 8 PTS | +15Morris played well in garbage time, consistently going hard at the rim. Brett Brown needs to see what he has in his backup point guard, and tonight Morris took advantage of the opportunity.
|Tony Wroten, PG 22 MIN | 6-14 FG | 1-5 FT | 3 REB | 1 AST | 0 STL | 0 BLK | 0 TO | 14 PTS | -10Wroten provided some needed energy off the bench in the first quarter, scoring five early points. He did a good job of getting to the line, but could only go 1-5 from the charity stripe.
|Brett Brown
The Sixers looked out of control on the fast break and completely lost on the defensive end. The unforced errors (including 14 first half turnovers) against Steph Curry and co. really did the the Sixers in tonight. The Sixers played fast, but not smart basketball, and at times this game looked like a 30 and over rec league game at the local YMCA.
By The Numbers: Spencer Hawes had a plus/minus of -41 in only 26 minutes.
Quote of the Game: "All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired." ~ Chuck Palahniuk
Parting Shots: Smart people would call this game a "regression to the mean." Man, did the Sixers regress. Curry and Klay Thompson actually got off to a slow start, and the Sixers were once again finding ways to hang around early in the second quarter. The game turned in the last six minutes of the first half and the first six minutes of the second. In that time, Iggy tied and then surpassed his career high in three pointers and Stephen Curry found his shooting stroke. Ball game.


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Chinese Laundry coupons, Chinese Laundry coupon, Chinese Laundry coupon codes


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Assemble machinery components.
What does a Subassembler do?
Assembles machinery components, such as operating cylinders, electric control cases, transmissions, clutches, and special tools, according to specifications: Transports specified parts from storage to work area manually or by using overhead crane. Removes burrs and rough surfaces from metal parts with hand file or portable pneumatic grinder. Brushes lubricant on moving parts and fits parts together on bench, following blueprints. Inserts shims between parts to realign or level parts and verifies alignment and clearance of parts, using micrometers, scale, and gauges. Bolts, screws, and rivets parts together, using handtools. May operate hydraulic press to force bearings into sleeves and flatten rivets. May set up and operate drill press, bench lathe, and speed lathe. May connect electric wires to terminals of subassembly, using screwdriver. May move subassembly to storage area, using overhead crane.


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Classic Clear Streaks - Jet Black Polarized
- Dual-color gloss black and clear durable frame with metal hinges
- Polarized, shatter-resistant Grey Lenses with 100% UV protection
- Includes Microfiber Cleansing Pouch + vinyl brand decal
- Lifetime Craftsmanship Warranty & Free Replacements if Lost or Broken - just pay S+H fee for lost/broken replacements.
- Every order provides 11 meals to fight hunger in the U.S. through Feeding America
- Completely Free, Easy Returns if not 100% satisfied
Size Specs: Front Height: 44 mm (1.75 in.), Front Width: 140 mm (5.5 in.), Bridge Width: 18 mm (.7 in.), Temple Arm Length: 146 mm (5.75 in.)


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About UsWe love cars, we love our work and we love transmissions! It might sound weird, but we are passionate about what we do. With over 20 years in the Automotive and Transmission Industry, we have the knowledge, experience and tools to provide quality, dependable service to all of our customers in and around San Diego County.
About Us
Transmission ExpertsAn automotive transmission, whether manual or automatic, is a complex piece of machinery that works with the other systems of your engine to get you where you are going. Here are some important things to know that could provide a better understanding of how it all fits together.
Transmissions 101
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Full Services List


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Bill was looking for an apartment. We were looking for a tenant. He was very friendly. We were very relieved. It was a lovely apartment. We had just finished cleaning and painting it. The hardwood floors gleamed. The rent was modest and the utilities were included. We lived downstairs and looked after the property. Other buildings on the street had been similarly converted into multi-family units, but the owners were usually from out of town. They didn't care who moved in. They didn't care how their properties appeared. They were investors. They looked at the bottom line. But as I explained to my wife, the best policy was to be conscientious as landlords and respectful as individuals. It didn't matter if the other houses on the street were falling into decrepitude or if they were occupied by the criminal or insane. Treat others with kindness, I explained, and they will return it with gratitude.
When Bill arrived he was the personification of gratitude. He was quiet and neat and always greeted us when he saw us outside. But it wasn't long before he suffered hard times. He soon found he could no longer afford to live there, and informed us of his intention to leave. He had paid first and last month's rent when he arrived, so he was paid up until his scheduled departure. But a poor credit history kept him from finding a suitable place to move, and he decided to stay on a month-to-month basis. Of course he could no longer afford both first and last month's rent, so I agreed to let him stay without paying his final month in advance.
Not long afterwards, he injured his arm in a car accident. Unable to work with one arm, he went on disability. For some reason he didn't strike me as especially disabled. He went to summertime festivals; he carried his laundry and groceries around; he even managed to change the fan belt on his car. But he was a long time in healing. I asked him what was wrong with his arm and he said it was a mystery. The doctors were puzzled. He was scheduled to undergo an MRI, but that wasn't for another few months.
Because he was on disability, he found himself unable to pay his full month's rent all at once. He began paying half on the 1st and half on the 15th. Eventually even this became too much and he informed me of his renewed intention to move. He gave me a portion of his half-month's rent and promised the rest when his cheque arrived.
My wife and I had already decided on a change of lifestyle. Being landlords just wasn't very rewarding. We found a buyer and needed only to pass a building inspection to finalize the deal. I told Bill that a building inspector would be going through his apartment the next evening. Unfortunately, I was out of town when the inspector arrived and Bill wasn't home. As I had the only other key, there was no way to enter his apartment—except through a window that he had left open. Entry was made; the apartment was inspected; conditions on the sale were waived; the house was sold.
But Bill discovered from a neighbour that someone had entered his apartment through the window. His anger was unexpected. I explained the situation. I reminded him that he had been given notice of our intention to inspect his apartment at that time, and that he had given his approval. He explained that he had only given permission for keyed entry. I explained that since there was no key available, entry was made through the window. He pointed out that when he left, the storm window was open and the sash window was closed; but when he returned, the sash window was open and the storm window was closed. He could have been robbed, he said. I asked him if anything was missing. He explained that it wasn't the point. I asked him if anything was damaged. He explained that he was victimized. He accused us break and entry. He said he was calling the police. He had a friend who worked on the police force for over twenty years. He knew the law. I asked him what damages he had suffered. He screamed that someone had broken into his apartment. I asked him if he could accept my apologies. He demanded to know the name of the individual responsible for the crime.
A few days later I went upstairs to see if he had any money to pay his rent. He explained, again, in a rather exasperated tone, that he was waiting for his cheque. I told him that I had been waiting for quite some time. He reminded me that he had been waiting quite a while for the name of the individual who broke into his apartment. I asked him why he wanted to make a scene. There was nothing to gain. He told me that it was already a police matter. It was out of his hands.
We have only one mailbox, and I usually bring Bill's mail upstairs myself. So when an envelope arrived that appeared to hold a cheque, I was quite relieved. I admit I held it up to the light to make sure it was a cheque: it was. So I brought it upstairs and cheerfully announced the good news. Bill did not look cheerful. He explained that it would be good news only if it were in fact a cheque and not something else. It was difficult to disagree. I suggested he open it and see. He agreed, and while I waited at the door, he went into his kitchen to open it. He came back a few minutes later with a telephone bill in his hands and announced that it wasn't a cheque after all. I told him I was sure the envelope contained a cheque. He asked angrily if I was calling him a liar. He loudly warned me that he would sue for slander. I told him that I could see through the envelope that it was a cheque. He told me it was a crime to go through his mail.
I asked him if he was being fair. I reminded him that I had done my best throughout his tenancy to ensure that he was comfortable. He scoffed at this and pointed out that during the winter the furnace hardly brought any heat to his bedroom on the third floor. I explained that I knew he supplemented the heat with portable electric heaters, so it was always warm in his apartment. I also mentioned that in the summer I allowed him to install an air-conditioning unit and never demanded money for the electricity it consumed. He reminded me that I told him not to turn the air-conditioner on when he wasn't home. I mentioned that I had an electrician install extra outlets so the breakers wouldn't trip when he made popcorn. He pointed out that he never asked me to do that, and suggested that it was a matter of my own convenience: I no longer had to climb down to the basement to reset the breakers. I later overheard him on the phone telling someone that I was being an idiot. He told his friend how astonished he was when I once went upstairs and asked him to smoke his marajuana on the balcony so that it wouldn't drift down into my foyer. He explained to his friend that it was his apartment and he could do whatever the hell he wanted. He paused as his friend asked a question to which he replied: oh, less that an ounce: let him call the police if he wants; there's nothing they're gonna do about it.
I was demoralized. I was growing worried that he might refuse even to vacate his apartment and that I would be forced to go through the long, tedious process of getting him evicted. My wife suggested we offer to forgive his rent in exchange for an early departure. Fortunately, that wasn't necessary. At the end of the month he rented a truck and started moving out. His brother came by to help him carry the furniture down the back stairs. Watching them lug the heavy pieces into the truck, my wife came up with a brilliant idea. Instead of dwelling on the negative, she said, we should count our blessings. Among our blessings is a modern, compact digital camera. She suggested we take some pictures as a memento. I was truly impressed with her ingenuity. Bill had his shirt off, and his muscles bulged as he struggled to carry a large book shelf down the stairs. Focused on the task at hand, his injuries were a forgotten memory. I stood at the window and started snapping pictures. I tried to stay out of sight, because I was embarrassed to be seen standing there with a grin on my face, taking pictures like a silly fool.
But Bill spotted me. And what a reaction! At first he was furious. I went outside to have a cigarette. He mumbled to my neighbour about how he wished he had a shotgun. When asked why, he made a gesture like he was holding a camera. As he walked by he asked in a rather venomous tone if I liked taking pictures. I know it's considered rude, but I replied with a question: I simply asked if he had my rent money yet. His response was inaudible but distinctly unfriendly.
The next day, however, a miracle occurred. He had been thinking things over. He sent a note promising to send money in the next few days. He was deferential, acquiescent: a strangely driven bundle of energy that mopped and cleaned his apartment with hitherto unseen enthusiasm. I attribute it to my changed attitude. No doubt he could sense the change: my renewed confidence, the smile that had returned to my face, the swagger in my walk. I had shrugged off the negativity and instead of grumbling about my deadbeat tenant, I concentrated on the simple pleasure of photography. I didn't even need to blackmail him.
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text:
Product: AeroCut Quatro
Place: Braeside, VIC Australia
Company: Doran Printing (Website)
Reviewed by: Mr. Shawn Hammersley (Managing Director)
We would like to give you a testimonial for the recent purchase of a Uchida AeroCut Quatro.
The machine was purchased on the fantastic demonstration of your customer PrintExpress and the feedback he gave on the machine.
In seeing the machine, we were convinced that the Uchida is the right solution for our digital printing department and better than the direct competition from Duplo.
The machine is very versatile, easy to operate and user friendly.
We especially like the ability to cut 350gsm substrate which is also laminated, something we didn't expect.
Shaun Hammersley
Managing Director
We use our AeroCut Quatro with plug-in software,
allowing us to send jobs directly from our computer to the machine.
Product: AEROCUT QUATRO, Tapit-WII+
Company: Implementa boutique grafica
Distributor: Antalis Chile (Website)
Location: Santiago, Chile
Implementa is a local printing factory, located in Santiago, Chile. Several years ago, they decided to invest on Konica Minolta digital press, bizhub C1070P and C1100, to add shorter run, faster turn around options to their portfolio in addition to a Heidelberg offset press they have had used for the long time.
The main applications they produce are menus for restaurants, business cards, flyers and post cards. After starting to use digital presses, it didn't take long for them to realize that finishing digital prints is a bottleneck of production. Compared to quantity of jobs and profits they deserve, finishing part used to take a long time and labor work, such as to guillotine 100pcs business cards, hand crease menu pages etc.
Antalis Chile, the dealer for Konica digital press and Uchida finishing equipment in Chile, found that AeroCut Quatro and Tapit WII+ would optimize the workflow, and offered these products as solutions. They decided to make investment, and it resulted in great improvement beyond expectations.
As the Quatro stores a lot of job memories, it can finish printed pages right away. It allows an operator, used to be attached to guillotine and hand creaser, to walk away from the machine when it's running and do something else, like round cornering, packing etc.
Tapit WII+ helped streamlining packing and delivery procedures for small format products. For example, as soon as post cards are finished by the AeroCut Quatro, an operator can put batches on the Tapit WII+, bundle these and bring them to delivery section. It also succeeded to save a person from doing routine labor for all day long.
Now they are trying to create new value-added applications, expanding their portfolio that they can offer to customers.


text:
Mission Motors At Bonneville
It appears Mission Motors was in Utah doing speed runs at the Bonneville Salt flats in August. Two videos of the Mission One at Bonneville in it's TTXGP race fairing wearing the number 1117 were posted on YouTube with the text "electric motorcycle 160 mph". A 160 mph recorded speed would be nice to back up Mission Motors claims of the Mission One being a 150 mph electric motorcycle. As this is far from an official report so we will have to wait for official word from Mission. Updates will be posted as they surface.
Update: A comment left on YouTube mentions the riders name was Seth. This is most likely Mission Motors Senior Engineer Seth LaForge who has been seen testing the Mission One in past videos.
Update 2: The rider was actually former AMA and AFM racer and Mission Team member Jeremy Cleland.
Videos of the speed run are posted after the break.
Source: YouTube
In: Mission Motors · Tagged with: 01a, 1117, Bonneville Salt Flats, Mission Motors, Mission One, Salt Flats, Top Speed
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Do you know yet if any others were out there?
Not that I am aware of. Word on the street is we will hear more about this from Mission soon.


text: Hey folks, I'm new to Ridgid tools. I have a new TS 2410 LS. I am very happy so far and haven't had any issues with setup except for one problem. I can't get the blade to bevel a full 45 degrees. It only bevels about 43 degrees. It will actually go back beyond zero a couple of degrees. I suspect there must be an adjustment for this but I can find it. If anyone knows the solutions to this your help will be much appreciated.


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March 15th, 2013 by Judd Ballard
The Government Sequester: How did we get here? And was this really supposed to happen?
Pre-game Super Bowl flyovers… probably a thing of the past. Depending on your level of patriotism, this may or may not hit home. Still seen as a prideful, show-of-force ritual at some of the country's most anticipated sporting events, government spending cuts will likely put the clamps on this and other similar patriotic acts funded by the Pentagon. Unfortunately, that's just the beginning of the spending cuts that took effect Friday,
March 1st.
All eyes are focused on March 27th. Can the government get a deal done to avert a shutdown? Without the houses of Congress coming to a deal, current government funding will run out by March 27th. Without passage of a funding bill, a potential government sequester may remain in effect until September 30, 2013 (or, ummmm, possibly forever). The House, appears to have done their job momentarily. The largest hurdle at this point is the Democrat's insistence to raise taxes, but what for? The Democrats wish to fund the government, while the Republicans wish to cut the deficit.
House Speaker, John Boehner, insists the tax hike portion of the fiscal cliff deal is as far as he's willing to go. Will he hold true to his word? I think a lot of people including Boehner and other Republicans would feel a lot better about their position if the effect on the economy were more foreseeable. Supposedly-independent economists have warned a potential loss of 750,000 jobs, something White House Economic Advisor, Gene Sperling, has taken the high road on.
The wasteful spending has got to go; I think everyone can agree on that. Didn't we just hear the same thing two years ago? But have we even made a dent in the problem? Maybe for the time being, we should be thankful that this time the cuts were automatic, albeit abrupt. While still untouched as of this week, according to President Obama, even federal entitlement spending (i.e., Social Security, Medicare, etc.) may face cuts.
In my opinion, what's most concerning are the roughly 13% cuts in defense spending through the end of September, creating increased exposure to potential national security crises during a time of such unrest in Africa, the Middle East and, most recently, southeast Asia. If any one of those regions spiral into further turmoil, it is sure to send the economy down the drain (faster than eliminating unemployment benefits already being abused by
some recipients). There's no question we're all too familiar with that possibility during an unstable economy.
Finally, if you've kept up on the Sequester at all, and cared to read what the White House is posting, I think the most comical piece you'll read is the following statement from the Office of Management and Budget that says, "The President's 2013 Budget is built around the idea that our country does best when everyone gets a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules."
Lost in translation must be the definition of fair. I haven't read the detailed list of cuts top to bottom, but I would hope somewhere in there are the millions upon millions of dollars paid in aid annually to countries that detest the United States.


text:
I'm getting closer to a compelling demonstration of same-syntax semantic extension for RDF. Here is my approach: 1. I view RDF as a sublanguage of FOL. I use Otter's FOL syntax, and a few straightforward syntactic conventions. The N-Triples line _:x <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://example.com/animals#Dog> . translates to FOL/otter as exists x (rdf(x, rdf_type, '<http://example.com/animals#Dog>')). RDF as a sublanguage of FOL has just conjunction, existential quantification, and a ternary predicate called "rdf". I have not established a system for handling literals yet, because it seems unneccesary for this exercise. 2. I define another sublanguage of FOL, called LX, which is a superlanguage of RDF including the other standard logical operations (disjunction, negation, conditional, biconditional, universal quantification, and existential quantification). I have not yet included arbitrary predicates and function terms, but I see no significant problem with doing so. I also write LX with otter syntax, but of course one could use any FOL syntax easily enough. 3. I define an RDF vocabulary/ontology [1] for describing LX sentences. This is similar to Drew McDermott's vocabulary for describing FOL sentences [2][3], except that I include a limitted truth predicate, allowing one to describe particular LX sentences as being true. As with wtr in KIF3[6], this truth predicate does not allow arbitrary nesting. (See [5] for details.) 4. To explore my understanding of this layering, I have written a set of axioms [4] for LX-described-as-true-in-RDF. I use otter with these axioms to perform inference on reified-as-true LX; I also use otter to prove the axioms are satisfiable. My axioms are still flawed. After considerable effort I still have not been able to use them to produce certain more-complicated proofs involving quantification. So I cannot claim that the axioms are correct while being satisfiable, but I do think producing such axioms is very probably possible. I don't want to go that last mile (feeling a little like a blind man in a maze -- I find this kind of thinking very difficult) unless it's really necessary. (After writing that I went another quarter mile, doing another set of axioms to investigate the liar paradox more closely. See [5].) So my question is: is there a flaw in this kind of layering? If so where? If you're sure there is, but can't say where, then what more details and evidence do you need? (Note that I was calling this work "Positive Triples Logic (PTL)" for a while, until I decided negation was worth the problems it might cause. I see no major obstacle to extending LX up to full FOL.) -- sandro [1] http://www.w3.org/2002/08/LX/RDF/v1.n3 [2] ftp://ftp.cs.yale.edu/pub/mcdermott/papers/noworry.ps.gz [3] http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/bibs/2342/23420250.htm [4] http://www.w3.org/2002/08/LX/RDF/ax3.20020822T1630.html [5] http://www.w3.org/2002/08/LX/RDF/ax4.20020822T1630.html [6] http://meta2.stanford.edu/kif/Hypertext/node35.htmlReceived on Thursday, 22 August 2002 17:12:23 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.1 : Wednesday, 2 March 2016 11:10:38 UTC


text:
We all want to be more creative, have more songs in the catalog, and feel satisfied that we're getting things accomplished. It's just that reality doesn't always work out that way. More often than not…
- We don't have any good ideas for new songs.
- We're not sure what kinds of songs we should be writing and for what market.
- We get stuck working on one song that's in trouble.
- We're scared our songs aren't good enough so we don't finish them.
We all know that good quality has to be maintained, but I bet you could write more songs and keep the quality at the level you want or even improve it. Here are a whole bunch of ideas for writing FASTER and BETTER.
This is the quickest way to solve a lot of the problems I just listed. Spend at least one to two hours per week listening to songs on the music charts, or songs used in Film & TV. Of course, you won't like everything you hear. You may have to dig a while before you uncover a song you want to learn from. But it's worth it and it's an essential part of the job of songwriting.
Too often we think of our songwriting career as ONLY the act of songwriting, but there's so much more. Laying the groundwork for new songs, learning how others creatively use song craft, getting inspired, feeling like you could beat those songs – all of these are ways you can up your game. Get your ears used to hearing what's successful out there and your songwriting will improve.
READ THIS: Here's an article on my website with a list of resources where you can find successful artists and bands in a range of styles to listen to.
Embed current songs to give yourself an instant feel for the style
When you find a song you like, get a copy of the lyrics. (you can find them online or take them down by ear.) Practice singing along with the track until it's comfortable for you. This may not be as easy as it sounds. Many current singer-songwriter songs have complex melodies and phrasing. Just learn it one section at a time. If the song isn't in your vocal range, talk-sing along with it until you get a feel for the rhythm of the melody. These days, the rhythm of the notes is as important as note pitches.
Look up the chords online or take them down by ear and learn to play the song. Sing along as you play to get a feel for how the melody and lyric lines fit into the chords.
The more familiar you are with contemporary chord progressions, lyrics, and melodies, the faster your songs will come together, the quicker you'll break out of old habits, and the less time you'll spend wrestling with elements that sound dated or don't fit into a genre. You want to aim your song toward a genre as early as possible. Embedding the sound of today's songs physically and mentally will help you target the sound and style you want in your first draft and then keep it on track.
READ THIS: Here's an article on studying a genre with a few suggestions on chord, melody, and lyric elements to listen for.
Here's a great way to get a head start on your next batch of songs. A template is an outline, something to provide you with a place to begin and a structure for moving forward. Of course, every song will be different. It will express things in a different way, have different problems to solve, and reflect your personal vision and taste. But you can create a template to shorten the process. If you already invented the wheel, why do it again… and again… and again?
RECORDING TEMPLATES: Make it easy to record your ideas. When you record rough ideas or demos on your computer, be sure you have a template file that's all set up the way you like. All you need to do is flip the ON switch and start singing. Be sure you have your favorite vocal mic plugged in and ready to go. If you found a good vocal sound last time you recorded, be sure all those EQ settings, reverb, and compressors are in place on your vocal track. Same for your guitar or keyboard settlings.
LYRIC TEMPLATES: A great way to start or develop a lyric is to make lists of QUESTIONS, PHRASES, IMAGES, and ACTION words that are suggested by your song's title or opening line. Keeping a simple text template is a great way to get started or break through a roadblock. Just create a section for each type of raw lyric material:
What QUESTIONS does your title or first line suggest to you?
Describe the SITUATION in short phrases.
What EMOTION are your expressing?
How would you describe that emotion in short PHRASES, IMAGES, and ACTIONS?
Make a list under each heading. While you work on your song, come back to it often. It will feed you new ideas and keep your song from veering off track – something that can take hours or days to discover and correct.
SONG TEMPLATES: If you're really feeling ambitious, try recording a few different song layouts. Use rhythm loops and chords to indicate verses, choruses, and bridge. Listen to a few karaoke tracks for recent hits and try stripping them down to the essentials. Rough out the tempo, groove, and chords. Later, you can change chords and rhythm as needed. It will give you a place to start and some practice in creating basic song structures. Consider putting together tracks in time signatures that are frequently used: 3/4. 4/4, and 6/8.
Songwriters spend a lot of time trying to fix things – a chorus lyric that doesn't have a strong payoff, a melody with high notes that only a dog can hear, or a bridge that takes you so far away from the key you can't get back again. If you're banging your head against the wall trying to fix a song with a problem, ask yourself if you're just spinning your wheels. If you are, consider putting that song aside for awhile. But before you do that, try to solve the problem with a little active R&D – research and development.
1. Listen to successful songs to see how they solved a similar problem.
- Got a boring transition into your chorus? Look at how a few hit songs handle transitions and try that.
- Can't finish your lyric? Use the Lyric Template suggestion above or check out how your favorite songwriters handle that difficult second verse. Where did they go with it?
- Listening to succcessful songs can remind you that a short, repeated melodic phrase could be just the thing to add tension to your pre-chorus.
These techniques are all used in hit songs and successful Film & TV songs. Spend some time feeding your brain with fresh ideas that could help you solve your problem.
2. Ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish. What effect do you want to achieve? Think of at least two ways to do that and try both. If you don't like the result, undo it and start over.
3. If you can't find a solution, stop trying. Put the song away and come back to it in one week. Listen to the song with fresh ears to see if you really do have a problem after all. If you do, then go through steps 1 and 2 again.
Nothing helps pick up your speed like having someone who's waiting to hear from you. A couple of co-writers can keep you busy at your songwriting instead of opting for the TV. While you can work with someone locally or online, it's always a good idea to get to know the music scene in your area. Musicians, clubs, studios, open mics, festivals, music stores, and schools, all of these can provide you with valuable resources for writing and recording.
READ THIS: Here's an article that will help you find and work with song collaborators.
P.S. It's probably NOT about your gear
Songwriters can have a lot of fun playing in their gear, buying new gear, learning new software. Yes, it's exciting and it can inspire new ideas, but it can also slow your songwriting down to a snail's pace. Make a deal with yourself. Write three songs and finish them before you buy or learn a new piece of gear. As you learn the gear, keep in mind that its primary use is to support your songwriting and inspire new songs. Before you buy a new piece of gear, ask yourself: How will this help me write better and faster? It's ALL about the songwriting!
Good luck and may your songs flow… faster and better!
by Robin Frederick


text:
The race to replace Eric Cantor as House Majority Leader is turning out to be not much of a race after all, as current Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy is cruising to an easy win over Tea Party favorite Raul Labrador. Not all Republicans are happy about McCarthy becoming majority leader, since he's less conservative than the man he is replacing in a party that is still shifting steadily to the right.
But there's a more pointed matter of representation being raised: the lack of Southerners in the House leadership.
It's coming into play in the race for McCarthy's current position as whip, where Louisiana's Steve Scalise is facing off against Peter Roskam of Illinois and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana. Some members from the South argue that the region that forms the Republican party's base ought to be represented in the leadership of the house of Congress that the Republican party holds.
They have a pretty good case to make. The GOP's center of gravity is now most assuredly in the South. If we consider the South as the 11 states of the Confederacy plus Oklahoma and Kentucky, members from those states make up 106 of the party's 234 members of the House (its other area of strength is the Midwest). One hundred and thirty-three of the 206 electoral votes Mitt Romney won — or 65 percent — came from those states. And in the Deep South in particular we see the most intensely Republican areas, where as many as nine out of ten white voters casts their ballot for Republicans.
Given that, it's at least a little surprising that the top two spots in the House leadership are held by representatives from Ohio and California. It wasn't always this way. In the mid-1990s, almost the entire Republican congressional leadership was Southern. Newt Gingrich of Georgia was the Speaker, and Dick Armey and Tom Delay of Texas were Majority Leader and Whip. Senate Republicans were led by Trent Lott of Mississippi, with Don Nickles of Oklahoma serving as whip.
The GOP of today is even more reliant on the South than it was then, as the realignment that began with the civil rights movement of the 1960s — which sent conservative Southern Democrats into their new ideological home in the Republican party — is now all but complete. After Republicans took over the Virginia state Senate two weeks ago, they control the legislature in all 11 former Confederate states for only the second time since Reconstruction. While control in the closely divided state of Virginia could certainly swing back, the Republican entrenchment in the South is undisputed.
The home states of congressional leaders may not have much practical impact, but it has symbolic importance. And there's a quandary for Republicans, in the fact that many people — including independent voters — in other parts of the country hold some stereotypes and negative impressions of the South. Southerners argue that those beliefs are unfair (quick tip, though: it wouldn't hurt if you just let go of the Confederate Flag), but whether they are or they aren't, their existence is undeniable. So there's some political risk, even if it may be minor, in having prominent spokespeople with Southern drawls representing your party in the national media.
Everyone should of course be judged as an individual, and for all I know, Steve Scalise could win the whip race and turn out to be the best advocate the GOP ever had (not that the majority whip is the first person the media turn to for the party line, but still). At the same time though, Republicans must know that putting a Southern face on their substantially Southern party reinforces some of the biggest challenges they face on a national level, as an extremely conservative, almost entirely white party in a country that is growing more racially diverse and progressive on social issues.
They may get caught in a vicious cycle, where the less diverse their party is, the more central the South becomes to holding on to what power they have, and the more central the South is, the more the rest of the country sees them as just a regional party.


text:
"I was 7 wks when I begun to have a brownish discharge. I knew something wasn't right and went to the hospital straight away. They said that there was nothing they could do if I were to mc but it was normal to have some sort of discharge ..."
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