Hoppie goes Worldflight Light

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Survived it. Now I can crashzzzzzzz

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

And thanks to the wonderful crew of UA154 who nursed me all the way through while I nursed their satcom unit  :-)

[Will]

Thanks for sharing the pic. Looks like a good trip so far.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Still in Guam ... working on SATCOM stuff.  It is not always easy to claim an aircraft to work at, so we are at the mercy of the planners.  Tonight we'll have another go at it.






Hoppie

[emerydc8]

Be careful on the ramp at night. I ran around Anderson AFB for 45 minutes back in 2002 looking for anyone who could tell me what "BTS on ramp" meant. It looks like they've since removed it from the NOTAMS. Maybe they dropped sufficient Tylenol-injected mice. Nice pic. Cheers.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I did not see any brown tree snakes, but on the whole perimeter fence there's a snake trap every 20 meters. Every trap has a live mouse with grain pack in it. They are really clamping down on these snakes, likely also to prevent them from hitchhiking to Hawaii.


Hoppie

[emerydc8]

I wasn't aware of this, but it looks like they already have.

Brown Tree Snake

The brown tree snake is a non-native, mildly venomous, highly aggressive and unwelcome invasive species of snake that presumably made its way to Hawaii via aircraft from Guam. While only a handful of brown tree snakes have been found to date, brown tree snakes pose a serious threat to Hawaii's fragile ecosystem. Hawaiian officials strive to protect their native species by carefully screening all incoming aircraft and visitors for snakes and by forbidding locals and visitors from keeping pet snakes of any species.

http://animals.mom.me/snakes-spiders-inhabit-hawaii-6302.html

[Hardy Heinlin]

While only a handful of brown tree snakes have been found ...

They must be very small ...

[emerydc8]

No venomous snakes was one of the nice things about hiking in Honolulu.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Adventure almost over. Typing this post from a UAL 777 halfway from Guam to Honolulu.

The first bird with new software flew Guam-Tokyo-Guam with zero issues and I do no longer need to be present in the Pacific as the detailed data log has proven sane and very useful. Hats off to the people who run the operation down there. They can practically fix everything.

I will sift through photos to see whether there are interesting ones to post here.


Hoppie

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

The entrance ticket.


The preplanning at Starbucks.


Let's go South-West and then ask somebody.


Island ops are always interesting.


Kwajalein, the world's ICBM magnet.


Typical cabin view 99% of the time.


Parking a bit extra away from the terminal building . . .


. . . but mountains and terminal are still not far enough away to allow unhindered satellite views.


MY engine.


Hoppie

[Will]

Great pics! Thanks for sharing. Here's a time lapse photo of MIRV's doing atmospheric reentry over Kwajalein that's completely frightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile#/media/File:Peacekeeper-missile-testing.jpg





hoppie added a small version of the photo

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

After studying it a bit more I think it isn't actually time lapse, but extended exposure. The MIRVs are driven down towards (but not into) the atmosphere on the common platform that has steering and aiming capabilities. It steers towards the target for MIRV 1, releases it, then steers for nr. 2, releases it, etc. and eventually the platform just burns up as it isn't streamlined. The MIRVs independently drop down, ballistically, they are unguided once released from the platform I understand.

Hence, the releases are not very far apart and if you would extend the visible lines on the photo to the upper-right, they meet all in nearly the same spot, not so far above the surface. Probably close to 100 km. So I presume that you would actually see most if not all of the MIRVs coming down nearly at the same time, Mach 6 contrails. A simple 5-second exposure likely will do it.


Hoppie

[Will]

Thanks for the analysis. In many ways, that's even more frightening.