12 semifinalists selected for Operation Rising Star singing contest 091028
Image by familymwr
PHOTO CAPTION: Thea Agnew performs August 21 during Fort Campbell's Operation Rising Star competition. (Photo by Nondice Powell, Fort Campbell Courier.)
www.armymwr.com
12 semifinalists selected for Operation Rising Star singing contest 091028
By Tim Hipps
FMWRC Public Affairs
FORT BELVOIR, Va. – Twelve members of the U.S. military Family have been selected to compete in the final week of competition in the Operation Rising Star singing contest, scheduled for Nov. 14, 16, 18 and 20 at 8 p.m. in the Wallace Theater.
Twelve judges selected the semifinalists after viewing the videotapes of local winners from 35 installations and duty stations worldwide. The Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command-backed contest, based on the premises of FOX television’s “American Idol,” will be broadcast by the Pentagon Channel Nov. 15, 17, 19 and 21 at 8 p.m. in the United States, Korea and Europe, and 10 p.m. in the Middle East.
Audience members and Internet viewers can cast votes online at www.OpRisingStar.com for 2 hours after each broadcast.
The semifinalists invited to attend the live elimination rounds are:
Thea Agnew, a military spouse at Fort Campbell, Ky., advanced with “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and “Just a Dream.”
“Music has healed the pains, comforted the sorrows, given hope in despair, put the ‘p’ in party and made me dance,” said Agnew, a fan of Martina McBride and 2005 American Idol winner Carrie Underwood.
Staff Sgt. Tyrone Basnight of Kaiserslautern, Germany, said music “helps me stay positive and upbeat when life gets stressful.”
Staff Sgt. Michael Gordon of Camp Humphreys, South Korea, who sang “Color,” said he feels like he’s on top of the world when on stage.
“All my problems or stresses go away when the first note comes out of my mouth,” said Gordon, who derives inspiration from country artist Randy Travis.
Pfc. Andrea Griffith of Fort Eustis, Va., sang “The Way We Were” on her qualifying video, said “music, along with God, has always been the center of my life.”
A1C Jamie Jarmon of Andrews Air Force Base, Md., is another Clarkson fan who said “music is something I loved to do with my dad. Singing always puts me in a great mood.” She sang “Stay” and “Simple Man” on her video entry.
Staff Sgt. Chad Kneller of Fort Bragg, N.C., says he began singing at age 2. He advanced with “My Savior” and “Truth.”
Sgt. 1st Class Denise Patterson of Fort Bliss, Texas, a gospel singer who prefers Fantasia, wowed the judges with her rendition of “Under the Boardwalk.” She said music “has helped me sing my way through several obstacles and triumphs.”
1st Lt. Sarah Payeur of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, said “there isn’t a single moment or time in my life that’s not connected to some song.” She appropriately advanced with “Life is a Cabaret.”
Lisa Pratt, an Army wife at Fort Carson, Colo., advanced with “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and says music defines her.
“I study it. I practice it. I live it,” Pratt said.
Sam Tang, a military spouse at Fort Irwin, Calif., who claims inaugural American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson as her favorite, used music to deal with teenage hardships. She qualified for the Operation Rising Star semifinals with “Chain Chain Chain” and “Run To You.”
Capt. Donald Williamson, a chaplain at the U.S. Army Garrison in Bamberg, Germany, sang “You Raise Me Up,” and said “music has brought joy to my life and those around me – from singing in church to performing in musicals to singing and leading songs in a field chapel in Forward Operating Base Afghanistan.”
Spc. Erin Sataloff of Wiesbaden, Germany, sang “At Last,” and calls music her sanctuary.
Sataloff, though selected as a semi-finalist by the panel of judges, will not compete in the live elimination performances because of a mission-related conflict. An alternate will be selected by the panel of judges.
“We’re disappointed Erin won’t be able to join us,” said Tim Higdon, Army Entertainment Division program manager for the competition.
“She’s a solid performer and would have been a great addition to the live shows,” he continued, “but these are Soldier programs, and mission comes first. We certainly hope to see her compete again next year.”
Following a week of rehearsals, vocal coaching and choreography training, the dozen semifinalists will be reduced to six on Nov. 14 at Wallace Theater, where they will be accompanied by the U.S. Army Band on a stage built by members of Army Entertainment Division. That show will be broadcast Nov. 15 on the Pentagon Channel.
The six finalists will be announced during the Nov. 16 live show at Wallace, which will be broadcast Nov. 17. On Nov. 18, three competitors will be eliminated (that show will be broadcast Nov. 19) and the winner will be revealed live at Wallace on Nov. 20. The finale will be broadcast on the Pentagon Channel Nov. 21.
The public is invited to join the studio audience at Fort Belvoir. General-admission seating is free, and reserved VIP seating is available. Visit www.oprisingstar.com for show times, voting policies, and details about VIP tickets.
The contest is sponsored by the General Motors Military Discount program. VIP tickets for the Nov. 18 finals will be available Nov. 10-12 at the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro display on Fort Myer, Va.; Nov. 14 and 16 and Nov. 16-18 at Fort Meade, Md.
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ks 110107
2005 Powwow
Image by Smithsonian Institution
Description: Powwows are large social gatherings of Native Americans who follow traditional dances started centuries ago by their ancestors, and which continually evolve to include contemporary aspects. These events of drum music, dancing, singing, artistry and food, are attended by Natives and non-Natives, all of whom join in the dancing and take advantage of the opportunity to see old friends and teach the traditional ways to a younger generation. During the National Powwow, the audience see dancers in full regalia compete in several dance categories, including Men and Women's Golden Age (ages 50 and older); Men's Fancy Dance, Grass and Traditional (Northern and Southern); Women's Jingle Dress, Fancy Shawl, and Traditional (Northern and Southern); Teens (13-17); Juniors (6-12) and Tiny Tots (ages 5 and younger). The drum groups are the heart of all powwows and provide the pulsating and thunderous beats that accompany a dancer's every movement. The powwow is led by three "host drums" that showcase three distinct styles of singing (Northern, Southern and contemporary) and represent the best examples of each style. The drum contest highlights groups of 10 to 12 members each, and they sing traditional family songs that are passed down orally from one generation to the next. The National Museum of the American Indian sponsored the National Powwow in 2002, 2005, and 2007 as a way of presenting to the public the diversity and social traditions of contemporary Native cultures.
Creator/Photographer: Walter Larrimore
Medium: Digital photograph
Culture: American Indian
Geography: USA
Date: 2005
Persistent URL: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?t=5&id=3606&q=081205WLPOWWOW0617
Repository: National Museum of the American Indian
Accession number: 081205WLPOWWOW0617
Historic Flight Foundation's P-51B Mustang... and there's another HFF Airshow on!
Image by AvgeekJoe
Kinda.
The Historic Flight Foundation out of Paine Field/KPAE has a photo submission request on for their 2012 calendar. I did submit mine and after the contest is over, I'll post my submissions here in full glory so hit subscribe please. I do ask that you please read the rules below:
1. All submitted images must have been taken during 2011
2. Photographers may submit three (3) images for consideration.
3. Only one image per photographer will be given final consideration.
4. Images of both airborne and static aircraft will be accepted but, preference will be given to airborne images.
5. Submitted images should feature aircraft from the Historic Flight Foundation’s collection or an aircraft that regularly participates in HFF events or gatherings.
6. Submissions must be representative of the original image. Images that have been composited or heavily edited will not be considered. Color adjusting and image sharpening to enhance original image is acceptable. Monochrome images (B&W) will be accepted as well.
7. Images must have been taken by and belong to the person submitting the images.
8. Initial images can be emailed to images@historicflight.org in a low resolution, 72 dpi for ease of viewing during initial selection.
9. Accepted images must be available in high resolution digital format, be no less than 300 DPI and, must be able meet a minimum size of 11x17 inches.
10. All images will be submitted voluntarily. No monetary compensation will be given. Those who have an images selected to represent a month will receive a copy of the calendar for their participation.
Oh and this picture is ineligible. I cropped it to 8x10 + cut the res to 150 dpi on purpose. :-) Still a great picture to print out!
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Yellow Northrop N1M flying wing airplane, in front of Northrop P-61C Black Widow and tail of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay", et al
Image by Chris Devers
See more photos of this, and the Wikipedia article.
Details, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy | Northrop N1M:
John K. "Jack" Northrop's dream of a flying wing became a reality on July 3, 1940, when his N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) first flew. One of the world's preeminent aircraft designers and creator of the Lockheed Vega and Northrop Alpha, Northrop had experimented with flying wings for over a decade, believing they would have less drag and greater efficiency than conventional designs. His 1929 flying wing, while successful, had twin tail booms and a conventional tail. In the N-1M he created a true flying wing.
Built of plywood around a tubular steel frame, the N-1M was powered by two 65-horsepower Lycoming engines, later replaced with two 120-horsepower Franklins. While its flying characteristics were marginal, the N-1M led to other designs, including the Northrop XB-35 and YB-49 strategic bombers and ultimately the B-2 stealth bomber.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1940
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Wingspan: 11.6 m (38 ft)
Length: 5.2 m (17 ft)
Height: 1.5 m (5 ft)
Weight, gross: 1,814 kg (4,000 lb)
Top speed: 322 km/h (200 mph)
Engine: 2 Franklin 6AC264F2, 120 hp
Overall: 72in. (182.9cm)
Other: 72 x 204 x 456in. (182.9 x 518.2 x 1158.2cm)
Materials:
Overall: Plywood
Physical Description:
Twin engine flying wing: Wood, painted yellow.
Long Description:
The N-1M (Northrop Model 1 Mockup) Flying Wing was a natural outgrowth of John K. "Jack" Northrop’s lifelong concern for an aerodynamically clean design in which all unnecessary drag caused by protruding engine nacelles, fuselage, and vertical and horizontal tail surfaces would be eliminated. Developed in 1939 and 1940, the N-1lM was the first pure all-wing airplane to be produced in the United States. Its design was the forerunner of the larger all-wing XB-35 and YB-49 bomber! reconnaissance prototypes that Northrop hoped would win Air Force production contracts and eventually change the shape of modern aircraft.
After serving apprenticeships with the Lockheed brothers and Donald Douglas in the early 1920s and designing the highly successful and innovative Lockheed Vega in 1927, Northrop in the late 192Os turned his attention to all-wing aircraft. In 1928, he left the employ of Lockheed and organized the Avion Corporation; a year later he produced his first flying wing, which incorporated such innovative features as all-metal, multicellular wing and stressed-skin construction. Although the 1929 flying wing was not a true all-wing design because it made use of external control surfaces and outrigger tail booms, it paved the way for the later N-1 M, which proved the basic soundness of Northrop’s idea for an all-wing aircraft. At the time, however, Northrop did not have the money to continue developing the all-wing idea.
In 1939, Northrop formed his own aircraft company, Northrop Aircraft, Inc., and as a result was in a position to finance research and development of the N-1M. For assistance in designing the aircraft, Northrop enlisted the not aerodynamicist Dr. Theodore von Karman, who was at the time Director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute Technology, and von Karman’s assistant, Dr. William R. Sears. Walter J. Cerny, Northrop’s assistant design chief, became the overall supervisor for the project. To determine the flight characteristics of an all-wing design, Northrop Cerny conducted extensive wind tunnel tests or flying wing models. Ultimately, the design of the N-1 M benefited from the new low-drag, increase stability NACA airfoils as well as improved flaps spoilers, and other aerodynamic devices.
After a period of a year, the N-1M, nicknamed the "Jeep," emerged in July 1940 as a boomerang-shaped flying scale mockup built 01 wood and tubular steel with a wingspan of 38 feet a length of 17 feet, and a height of 5 feet. Pitch and roll control was accomplished by means of elevons on the trailing edge of the wing, which served the function of both elevator and aileron the place of the conventional rudder was a split flap device on the wing tips; these were originally drooped downward for what was thought to be better directional stability but later straightened.
Controlled by rudder pedals, the split flaps, or "clamshells," could be opened to increase the angle of glide or reduce airspeed and thus act as air brakes. The center of gravity, wing sweep, arrangement of control surfaces, and dihedral were adjustable on the ground. To decrease drag, the aircraft’s two 65-hp Lycoming 0-145 four-cylinder engines were buried within the fuselage. These were later discovered to be lacking in sufficient power to sustain lift and were replaced by two 120-hp six-cylinder 6AC264F2 air-cooled Franklin engines.
The N-1M made its first test flight on July 3, 1940, at Baker Dry Lake, California, with Vance Breese at the controls. Breese’s inaugural flight in the N-1 M was inauspicious. During a high-speed taxi run, the aircraft hit a rough spot in the dry lake bed, bounced into the air and accidentally became airborne for a few hundred yards. In the initial stages of flight testing, Breese reported that the aircraft could fly no higher than 5 feet off the ground and that flight could only be sustained by maintaining a precise angle of attack. Von Karman was called in and he solved the problem by making adjustments to the trailing edges of the elevons.
When Vance Breese left the N-1 M program to test-fly the North American B-25, Moye Stephens, the Northrop company secretary, took over testing of the aircraft. By November 1941, after having made some 28 flights, Stephens reported that when attempting to move the N-1M about its vertical axis, the aircraft had a tendency to oscillate in what is called a Dutch roll. That is, the aircraft’s wings alternately rose and fell tracing a circular path in a plane that lies between the horizontal and the vertical. Although Stephens was fearful that the oscillations might not be controllable, he found that adjustments to the aircraft’s configuration cleared up the problem. In May 1942, Stephens was replaced by John Myers, who served as test pilot on the project for approximately six months.
Although the exact period of flight testing for the N-1M is difficult to determine because both Northrop and Army Air Forces records have been lost, we do know that after its initial test flight at Baker Dry Lake, the aircraft was flown at Muroc and Rosamond Dry Lake, and at Hawthorne, California, and that late in the testing program (probably after January 1943) it was towed by a C-47 from Muroc to Hawthorne on its last flight with Myers as the pilot.
From its inception, the N-1M was plagued by poor performance because it was both overweight and chronically underpowered. Despite these problems, Northrop convinced General H. H. Hap" Arnold that the N-1 M was successful enough to serve as the forerunner of more advanced flying wing concepts, and the aircraft did form the basis for Northrop’s subsequent development of the N-M9 and of the larger and longer-ranged XB-35 and YB-49 flying wings.
In 1945, Northrop turned the N-1M over to the Army Air Forces in the hope that it would someday be placed on exhibit. On July 12, 1946, the aircraft was delivered to Freeman Field, Indiana. A little over a month later, the N-1M was given to the National Air Museum and placed in storage at Park Ridge, Illinois. On May 1,1949, the aircraft was placed in the Museum’s collection, and a few years later moved in packing crates to the Museum’s Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. In 1979, the restoration of the N-1M began, and by early 1983, some four decades after it had made its final flight, the aircraft had been returned to its original condition.
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Northrop P-61C Black Widow:
The P-61 Black Widow was the first U.S. aircraft designed to locate and destroy enemy aircraft at night and in bad weather, a feat made possible by the use of on-board radar. The prototype first flew in 1942. P-61 combat operations began just after D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Black Widows flew deep into German airspace, bombing and strafing trains and road traffic. Operations in the Pacific began at about the same time. By the end of World War II, Black Widows had seen combat in every theater and had destroyed 127 enemy aircraft and 18 German V-1 buzz bombs.
The Museum’s Black Widow, a P-61C-1-NO, was delivered to the Army Air Forces in July 1945. It participated in cold-weather tests, high-altitude drop tests, and in the National Thunderstorm Project, for which the top turret was removed to make room for thunderstorm monitoring equipment.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Northrop Aircraft Inc.
Date:
1943
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Overall: 450 x 1500cm, 10637kg, 2000cm (14ft 9 3/16in. x 49ft 2 9/16in., 23450.3lb., 65ft 7 3/8in.)
• • • • •
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay":
Boeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments. Although designed to fight in the European theater, the B-29 found its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.
On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
Transferred from the United States Air Force.
Manufacturer:
Boeing Aircraft Co.
Martin Co., Omaha, Nebr.
Date:
1945
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Overall: 900 x 3020cm, 32580kg, 4300cm (29ft 6 5/16in. x 99ft 1in., 71825.9lb., 141ft 15/16in.)
Materials:
Polished overall aluminum finish
Physical Description:
Four-engine heavy bomber with semi-monoqoque fuselage and high-aspect ratio wings. Polished aluminum finish overall, standard late-World War II Army Air Forces insignia on wings and aft fuselage and serial number on vertical fin; 509th Composite Group markings painted in black; "Enola Gay" in black, block letters on lower left nose.
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