At 11:38 PM 4/7/02, Julia wrote: >Alberto Monteiro wrote: > > > > Julia Thompson wrote: > > > > > >Arizona doesn't do DST. > > > > > Why not? It's not even a tropical state! > >It's HOT. It's incredibly hot in the summer when the sun is up. So >they don't really want the extra hour of daylight after work. As it is, >my parents-in-law get up around 5AM to go walking, because by 7AM, it's >hotter than they'd like to be exercising in.
If you recall my proposed smart-aleck response to those who called my number attempting to reach the base hospital, I said "� be on the flight line at 0300 tomorrow morning �" That is because during the summer we had to take off at 0330 because once the Sun comes up, the air heated up, expanded, and became too thin for us to do what we needed. We were using the desert south of the Great Salt Lake in Utah to test UAVs and UCAVs, i.e., earlier models of what eventually became the "Predator" which is currently being used in Afghanistan. Those earlier versions were not designed to take off and land on a runway: they were carried aloft attached to a pylon under the wing of a modified C-130 and launched like a missile. At the end of their mission, they popped a parachute (actually, a series of 5 chutes including drogue chutes, etc.) out of the tail can and hung from the canopy while a helicopter with a hook hanging out of the rear would fly along and snag the parachute with the hook, then reel the UAV in and later set it down gently. Of course, the sudden acquisition of several thousand pounds of weight did nothing to keep the helicopter airborne. The air over the high desert where ground level is perhaps 4000 feet above mean sea level is noticeably thin already (a regular airplane has to do a longer takeoff roll under such conditions than at sea level before the wings are generating enough lift to lift its weight), and hot air is even thinner than cool air, so the loaded C-130 would take off at 0330 so we could launch the UAVs at dawn so the helicopters could catch them by about 0700, before it got warm enough that the air would be so thin it would be dangerous for them to attempt such a "mid-air recovery" . . . -- Ronn! :) God bless America, Land that I love! Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam� God bless America! My home, sweet home. -- Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
