As if we haven’t already seen enough about snow paralyzing poor ol’ Seattle, now we have this story making the Emerald City look even more helpless–if that’s even possible at this point.

Yes, we get it, CNN. Seattle can’t handle snow to save its life. Thanks for rubbing it in. Again. And with an included video no less!

Speaking of Chicago, I saw something a little disturbing at O’Hare last Monday. Thanks to typically horrid Chicago-winter weather, my flight to Seattle was delayed several hours. When we finally managed to get on the plane and got all settled to leave, we had to wait another 20 minutes for the airport folks to deice the plane. Now, I grew up in Chicago, so I’ve seen and sat through my fair share of plane deicing. Something struck me on this particular instance though. As I stared out the window to watch the deicing (yes, I’m a sucker for these sorts of things) I noticed that there was a fellow manually deicing the bottom of the wing. “That’s interesting,” I thought. “I’ve never seen them spray deicing fluid on the bottom of the wing before…”

Naturally, of course, my next thought was, “why in the hell is this the first time I’ve ever seen them manually deice the bottom of a wing?!?” If, as is apparently the case, you’re supposed to deice the top and bottom of the wing, I am really just shocked and kind of mortified that I’ve flown on planes that were only partially deiced. Even worse, since I’ve seen dozens of deicing procedures, and not once have I ever seen them deice the bottom of the wing, it was apparently standard procedure at one point to incorrectly deice planes. It’s not like deicing a plane is some evolving science where the more we experiment the more we learn — you should either deice the whole bloody thing or not, right!? I’d really, really like to believe there is a perfectly rational and justifiable explanation for all of this but… well, that’d just be too rational.

Happy flying!

This probably seems like a slightly odd hobby to most of you, but then again, aren’t most hobbies? I’ve been at this hobby for about three and a half years now – I received my first model in January 2005. It was a United L-1011 from Dragon Wings ordered from eBay. This is definitely an addictive little hobby, and as you might imagine, there’s a very active online community of collectors. Some of the more heavily populated sites are:

1. 400 Scale Hangar
2. DA.C and
3. Wings900

I’m sure there are more, but I think those are the big three, with 400SH and DAC probably being the most active.

Chicago, we’ll see you in the playoffs.

Anyway, it’s time for some updates. First, I’ve (finally) uploaded pictures from the Star Trek convention I went to about a month ago. Head on over to the gallery to check them out (note: the album is limited to registered users).

Second, I was in L.A. a couple weeks ago for my cousin’s birthday. I snapped a lot of pictures that I’m … sure I’ll be uploading in due course (which, as you can see from above, probably translates to about a month late… but better late than never!)

Finally, I attended my first Airline convention yesterday! It was at the Museum of Flight, and I added a couple models to the collection – a Thai A340-600, and a United Airlines Cargo DC-10-30. My United collection is now up to 58 pieces. It may be time to upload some pictures soon.

Well, I’m spent.

1) A retro beauty: United DC-6 delivery colors
2) A sleek modern: United Express ERJ-145

Check them out here:

• United 747SP “Friendship One”
• United 747-400
• United DC-8-71 “Super 8 of the Aloha State”
• United DC-8-61