Win an ultralight helicopter

The Mosquito XE Ultralight Helicopter has a unibody construction made of fiberglass in a vinylester matrix, and is powered by a Compact Radial Engines MZ202.

The Australasian distributor is currently running a promotion that could win you a Mosquito Helicopter and a $10,000 rotorcraft training voucher. To enter, you purchase "tiles" that cover a picture for AU$50 each.

You can place your name, message, picture or corporate logo and link to your website on the tile(s) you have purchased.

There are 50 instant giveaways under the tiles, but when the entire picture is exposed a drawing will be held for the helicopter.

A great little video of the Mosquito in flight is available. Watch this and you'll want one for yourself!

Air Show Buzz

AirShowBuzz has been a "Featured Site" on Thirty Thousand Feet. This great site has air show videos, photos, and air show schedules. It has active forums that focus on topics such as aircraft, teams, performers, parachute teams, photography and videography, and mishaps.

Recently a representative for AirShowBuzz contacted Thirty Thousand Feet with an update:

There's a Dreams of Flight contest going on right now giving away an FJ Cruiser to the overall winner, along with many other really great prizes. The site is also the exlusive content provider for everything related to the upcoming Gathering of Mustangs and Legends in September.

In June, the web site's founder and well known air show pilot, Ed Shipley, flew across the Atlantic in a P-51 to cover the flight of the historic P-38 WWII plane Glacier Girl for the web site. Unfortunately, Glacier Girl didn't make it all the way due to right engine issues, but Ed soldiered forward in his P-51 Miss Velma, which he showcased at Flying Legends Air Show in Duxford, England. There's lots of great content related to his adventure on the site.

AirShowBuzz is definitely worth a look.

You can find other airshow-related sites in the Thirty Thousand Feet Aviation Events section, and more photos in the Aviation Photos, Images, and Artwork section.

Bruno Misonne combines aircraft sounds with music

Bruno Misonne is a composer from Belgium who creates great soundscapes by combining airplane sounds with his musical creations. No one else I know of has done this.

The works include such titles as, "Airbus A-380 deep freeze testing," "Aerobatics," "Early morning landing at Heathrow," and "Turbofan Adrenaline."

He's been creating recordings for a number of years and now Bruno has produced a compilation CD which you can purchase from CD Baby, or directly through Bruno if you prefer.

(I've used CD Baby myself in the past to purchase indie CD's and I've been very impressed with their prices and service.)

There is a promotion running where you buy the CD before the end of 2007 and answer two questions to enter a drawing for some prizes.

For the technically interested, Bruno uses a computer equiped with a E-MU 1212m soundcard that runs FL Studio 6. His plugins include Sytrus FM synthesis, Steinberg Hypersonic I and II, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra, Steinberg Halion Symphonic Orchestra, Vocaloid Miriam, Zero G Wired and Morphology.

Give him a listen and support his work with a CD purchase!

How to find aviation photographs

Airtight Interactive is the personal showcase site of Felix Turner that features news about Flash, games, digital photography, web development, and anything else that interests Felix.

He has created a wonderful Flickr image search engine that is a very cool way to discover photos about any topic, but you can use it to locate aviation images.

Start by typing "aviation" or any other term into the search box. You'll be presented with an array of photographs from Flickr in the center of the screen, but if you mouse away from that you'll see a surrounding ring of related search terms or "tags."

Click on any of those tags to narrow (or shift) your search and the center array is replaced with thumbnails of images that relate to that term. Click a thumbnail and a larger image appears, along with a link to the corresponding Flickr page.

It's an amazing and very effective interface that allows you to drill into a subject and locate images that relate to your topic of interest. You really must try it to appreciate how valuable a tool it is.

The link is: Flickr Related Tag Browser

Farnborough memorabilia and historic artifacts

Historic Farnborough is a non-commerical website with Farnborough information, a virtual tour, image gallery, and other historic content.

Besides being home to the international airshow, Farnborough is also a home to aviation - it's where Samuel Cody made his first flight, and where the former Royal Aircraft Establishment was based.

Historic Farnborough is seeking photos and memories (particularly those that are aviation-related) to be included on their website to help preserve aviation history. They tell Thirty Thousand Feet that all content submissions will be acknowledged.

Help them if you can.

Blakey on PBS

Federal Aviation Administration official Marion Blakey recently spoke to PBS about U.S. airline delays and what the government is doing about them. PBS says:

It's been, to say the least, a trying year for travelers: 900,000 flights delayed, 93,000 cancellations. They've dropped the airline's and industry's on-time performance ratings to the worst they've been in 13 years, according to a report yesterday from the Department of Transportation.

Blakey, when asked for the top three reasons for the delays responded, "congestion, congestion, congestion." The air traffic control system just cannot handle the volume. The hub and spoke structure is not very tolerant of disruptions, like weather. With 90% load factors and tight schedules designed to minimize costs, the likelihood of a disruption is high.

The FAA's solution, which doesn't deal with the underlying foundation of the system, is next generation air traffic control. That means different technologies that can handle the loads. A satellite-based system is expected to handle the load, provide greater safety margins, and even operate the system in a more fuel-efficient manner. The billlion dollar a year decision is up to Congress.

So there are things we're trying to do near term, but the long term is to change out the system to the NextGen, and Congress has got to step up to that, because it's a billion-dollar-a-year investment that our country needs to make to be able to do that, and to tell you the truth, to keep up with what's going around the world, because everywhere else they're changing out to a satellite-based system, as well.

The total NextGen price tag is $30 to $40 billion. Other necessary investments include more runways and greater airport passenger capacity. Who pays for all this?

Right now, the passenger, the guy who's sitting back in 22-C, is actually paying more than his fair share of the cost of the system. We have looked at this. We've done a very careful accounting for how much it's costing to run air traffic control.

That, of course, leads us to user fees:

...what's happening is that you find that the commercial carriers are paying more than the cost that their requirements imply and, at the same time, frankly, we've got a lot of growth in the business jet area, which is great. You know, again, this is important for our economy. But right now, they are paying relatively little into the system, and that needs to be addressed to be able to have a more equitable sharing of the cost. So everyone has to step up.

Read the transcript or listen to the interview at FAA Official Discusses Flight Delays Across United States.

A380 ride auction on eBay

Singapore Airlines has got quite a promotion going. They are auctioning off seats on their first commercial flight of the Airbus A380, scheduled for October 2007. The winners will ride on both legs between Singapore and Sydney.

Singapore Airlines will be the first airline to fly the huge A380 and they decided to conduct the charity auction after receiving "requests from people all over the world to be passengers on the first flight."

Proceeds from the auction will be donated to The Community Chest in Singapore, Sydney Children's Hospital, and Doctors Without Borders.

The actual auction dates will be determined when the delivery date for that first aircraft is firm.

To learn more visit http://www.a380.singaporeair.com, where you can sign up for auction updates by email.