My first model

IAR 80.

Builder                         Ion Grosu

Manufacturer                Industria Aeronautică Română

Production                    1939 - 1943

Lenght                          8,90 m

Wing Span                    10,50 m

Hight                            3,60 m

Wing Surface               15,97 m²

Engine                         IAR K14-1000A – 14 cylinders double star engine

Power                          764 kW / 1025 HP

Maximum Speed          550 km/h at 3970 m   (4^th place in the world at that time)

Combat ceiling             10 500 m

Autonomy                    940 km

Weight (empty)            1780 kg

Weight (flight)              2550 kg

Crew                           1 Pilot

Armament                    4 - 6 MG

Armament (bombing)    450 Kg.

      During the beginning of World War Second, Romania had one of the best fighter planes in the world, being able to match the more famous Spitfire or Messerschmitt.

In April 1939 this plane had it’s maiden flight as an unpainted prototype, that had in it’s cockpit the test pilot Captain Dumitru “Pufi” Popescu. The first prototype had an open cockpit and two Browning FN 7.92 mm machine guns strapped on it’s wings.

On 18^th of December 1939 the Romanian government asked from the manufacturer 100 planes, and on 22^nd of August 1940 for another 100 pieces.

The standard monoplane was equipped with a 960 HP IAR k-14 III C 36 double star engine (a Romanian version of the Gnome – Rhone 14K Mistral Major). The cockpit was moved to the front and the wingspan and the total length were increased. The first 20 planes were equipped with 4 Browning FN 7.92 mm machine guns that had around 2400 rounds of ammunition.

The 50^th plane was send back to the IAR – Brasov for and was retrofitted with a better 1025 HP IAR K-14 1000A engine, 2 more Browning FN 7.29 mm machine guns , increased armor for the pilot and a Goerz reflector targeting system. After a short while these modifications were introduced on the manufacturing lane and so appeared the  IAR-80A.

The dive bomber

            In 1939 Germany rejected Romania’s request for the acquisition of 50 Junkers – Ju 87B planes. In response to this action and because the conditions from the front line required it, IAR – Brasov mounted on the 75^th IAR – 80 plane, a 225 kg bomb launcher, and an automated system that helped the plane straighten itself after a dive. The new model was christened IAR – 81 and remained in history as BoPi (Bombardier in Picaj = Dive Bomber). 15 planes were made and delivered in October 1941 to the 8^th Fighter’s Group

A Consolidated fighter plane

            Initially the planes with the serial numbers from 212 to 230, got out from the manufacturing line under the name of IAR – 81, but were later renamed as IAR – 81B as they had structural reinforcements and 13.2 mm machine guns. 10 planes were made under the name of  IAR – 81 and got shipped out in September. These planes got equipped either with 50 kg bomb fixtures or with 100 liters auxiliary fuel tanks, and to help the plane straighten itself even more after a dive, the flaps opening was enlarged to 75 degrees. The following models had their 13.2 mm machine guns replaced with the better 20 mm Icaria/Oerlikon twin cannons that included a pneumatic arming system, and had installed on them a dust filter to the air intake. All these modifications were made for the number 241 ship which became the first of the IAR – 80C model and was intended at first as a diver bomber under the name IAR – 81B, but was later converted to a defensive fighter plane.

            The 1^st of August 1943 is marked on the history pages as one of the greatest days for the Romanian fighters. Operation “Tidal wave” brought the allies some of the most costing air fights from the whole war. The allies sent 178 B-24s with a total of 1,751 aircrew-men out of witch 53 planes and about 660 people will never return home. Due to a lack in logistics, the “masterminds” of this attack ordered the pilots to engage the refineries of Ploiesti from a low altitude making this an almost suicidal run. IAR-80, Me 109 and heavy anti-air defenses met the oncoming bombers making them pay dearly for only a few hits on their intended targets. After the raid, the refineries began working at a better rate than they worked even before the raid, as to show the allies the fact that Operation Tidal Wave was not as successful as they intended it to be. (World of aviation no 2; Nat Geo, No. 92, December 2010; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave)

The IAR-80 plane was my very first model. I used a 1/72 scale model from “PARC MODELS” and in the following pictures I’ll show the end result. Even though it’s my first attempt at anything like this and even though I used a normal hand brush, I’m proud of the way it came out in the end.

A life of 25

On 6th of November a quarter of a century has passed since i first saw the light of day. A small and fragile yarn of meat refused to meet the cold and bright new environment. This "self-preservation instinct" was in fact the decisive factor of it's future life. Being deprived of the much needed "fresh" air, brain cells started to die before their time. On the long run this would lead to a semi-paralysis that would affect both the arms and the legs of the "man" to come.

Signs of this problem appeared shortly, while his parents noticed that the child would not be able to sit on his bottom. The walking part came at around the age of 2 after a few sessions of acupuncture (i don't really believe in coincidences). He wasn't able to walk like normal children of his age, but he needed to "hug" walls, chairs, tables or other fixed solid surfaces from his reach. Doctors thought that the child was suffering of Rickets (Rachitis) and gave the wrong treatment for his illness. The boy was treated with spinal infiltrations, but his condition wouldn't change. A few years later he was diagnosed with Pyramidal Spastic Tetraparesis (sorry but i don't know the English medical terminology), and then he received all kind of treatments varying from shock therapy to drug therapy.

Between the ages of 8 and 14 he passed through various surgeries and recovery stages in which his condition improved slightly, but after every surgical intervention he had to relearn how to sit and walk, just like newborns do. The inability to control your own body is a fearful thing to pass trough, but he endured it with brio because he had his family around him.

During this time his life would be divided only between school, physical exercises and recovery exercises, learning new things from universal dictionaries and watching tv. Being unable to really make friends, meant that most of his time was spent alone in his room or outside around the apartment house in which he lived. This quasi solitude taught him to love life, as he always had time to observe the trees, the flowers, the animals and the humans that surrounded him. They grew more beautiful the more he watched them. But his thirst didn't stopped at things that were around. The boy turned his face up towards the sky and fell in love with the vastness of the space dreaming of cruising among the stars and planets (he dreamt just like any other kid).

High school brought nothing new, but the admission at the University saw changes in that life. Sometime during this time frame he knew Gaby which changed his life for good. She showed him how beautiful his country could be and how traveling could fill some holes inside ones soul. Cities like Brasov, Sighisoara, Sibiu, Rasnov or Medias were embedded in his mind and enlarged the horizon that before consisted of mostly his home city. Gaby gave some meaning to his life and showed him some of the good sides a human can have. Above this, she taught him insights into other humans hearts and how people think and act in various circumstances.
The boy graduated the Bachelor Program with high marks and then he applied for a Masters Degree with he finished and graduated 2 years later.

Now he has all of his future in front of him and he waits for all the wonderful things that this life has prepared for him. (or so he hopes).

Nijikon 2010

Between the 23rd and 24th of October this year took place the 4th edition of our own Anime Festival. Even if Nijikon it's still in it's infancy i see a great future ahead of our little "otaku" convention. During those 2 days we could see a cosplay competition, a Guild concert (a known J-rock band), gaming contests which had both board games and video games like Magic the Gathering or Street Fighter. One could buy anime related merchandise (manga, action figures, head bands, posters, plush toys and more), learn how to write a few words in Japanese or how to make interesting paper figurines by the means of Origami. There was even a contest of AMV's where people tried to show that they have the best skills in creating the most interesting Anime Music Video.
And much much more.

The event took place at the Child's Palace which is already the bearer of 3 of the 4 editions, a remnant of the Communist Era which interestingly enough holds almost the same purpose (the entertainment and cultural development of those with a young heart)

(http://www.medfam.ro/conf2007/rd.php?filnavn=locatia.html
http://www.calificativ.ro/PALATUL_NATIONAL_AL_COPIILOR___ADMINISTRAT_DE_PRIMARIE-a16180.html)

This year's Convention gathered a lot of people of all ages. Even if the last edition saw a large attendance, it's always nice to see that the Anime community it's a live and kicking and that the interest about such events is still blooming.

Those in charge with making this special event run did everything they could do, and even more, so that anything one could imagine would go well. The staff was always moving and doing something, just to keep things run as smooth as they could. It wasn't perfect, but everyone is still at a learning stage, and they are doing a great job at it. I am sure that the future events will gather a much stronger team which has learned a lot of things during these last events and will make the next Nijikon even better.

Some anime poster stands

They are the couple that hosted the Cosplay Competition

These are just a few of the cosplays that we had that the convention. All did the best that they could do, and hopefully will do even better costumes in the years that come.

I enjoyed this year's event and i can't wait for the next years Nijikon.

The big trip

I call it like that because it went for about 8 days. In fact the longest trip of my life. During these 8 days we (me and my girlfriend) visited 2 of the most interesting cities in our country, Medias and Sibiu. Medias is a medieval city dated for the first time around 1267 and now it looks like it was build around a fortified church "The Evangelical Church St. Margareta". Sibiu is another medieval city that was first dated in 1191 in an ecclesiastical document from Vatican, under the name of Cibinium.

We spent only 1 day in Medias because most of the tourist attractions were closed to the public and because it's a rather small city. We wanted to stay more in Sibiu, so on the 2nd day we went to Sibiu. Our main interest in Sibiu was the medieval festival that was scheduled for the end of that week (26th - 29th of August).

The oldest Library in Medias.

I liked this Eagle

One of the towers from Medias.

The interior of a Catholic Church

Here we were at a Cafe and saw a Sparrow stealing from a plate

^_^

I really have no idea on how to describe this journey so i'll write everything as it comes to mind.

(Sibiu) We visited almost all of the towers from the old defensive line that was enclosing the medieval city, we saw one of the main gates (the only one standing too), we saw 2 bastions (one was transformed during the 18th - 19th Century in the local Philarmonica house so you could only see only a portion of the outer wall, and the other one is closed to the public). I would have liked to see them in detail, but chance wasn't on our side ^_^. 

The Thick Tower, now transformed in the local philharmonic house

The Evangelical Church seen in the sunset

The Potter's Tower

View from The Small Square with clock tower

We visited the History Museum, the Museum of Pharmacy (one of the first ever built in Europe), The Franz Binder Museum of Universal Ethnography and the Brukenthal Museum. The rest of the museums we visited on another occasion. We were very impressed with the Museum of History and the Brukenthal Museum. We spent about 7-8 hours visiting only these 2 museums. I thought that i saw a lot of very interesting things ranging from visual representations of how the early man lived to pictures from very known painters.

We visited all of the old churches that we could find (all except one, we left that for the next time :P ), and we saw some very nice examples of Gothic architecture and interior design.

Interior and main Altar from The Roman-Catholic Church

One of the Altars from the Roman-Catholic Church

Stained Glass from the Roman-Catholic Church

My girlfriend handmade a very nice medieval dress and wore during the festival and was admired by a lot of people.

My Lady on the Bridge of Lies

After we finished visiting everything on our agenda, we participated at the medieval festival for which we went in the first place. We saw sword fights, plays, we listened to concerts with medieval music, we saw groups that played with fire and did all sorts of tricks with it, and we saw an interesting 5 minutes long fireworks show which marked the end of the Festival.

Creation

And I am back. I know that it has been some time since my last monthly or so post, but that was because of my dissertation. And now it is gone, i have passed the final exam with "brio" and i have now some time to write some more new stupid things. I hope that my only 2 readers will be glad to read this (one of them being myself :P).

Today i will talk a little about religion and about how i see some things regarding the Bible.
First of all, i wouldn't take the Bible "ad literam", but more as a set of guiding rules. As in "it's better to do that" and "it's better not to do that". But to say that the bible is anything else than a collection of stories is wrong in my opinion.
Let's start with how Adam and Eva (Eve) began to populate this Earth. First they had Cain and Abel. After that they lost both (one died, one was exiled). Then they had Set (Seth. Set had Enos, Enos had Cainan, Cainan had Mahalaleel, Mahalaleel had Iared (or Jared in English), Iared had Enoh (Enoch), Enoh had Metusala (Methuselah), Metusala had Lameh (Lamech), Lameh had Noe (Noah) and Noe had Sem, Ham and Iafet (Shem, Ham, and Japheth).
This is where the first problem appears. How did Set had his son when the only people on the Earth at that time should have been only Adam, Eva, Set and Cain? The only conclusion a lot of people had is that there was an act of incest between Eve and Set.
The second problem is regarding Cain. After he was banished from the land, God placed a mark on him so that no one will ever kill him. But how could that be possible when the only people on the Earth should have been Adam, Eva, Set and Cain?

Well i think that the reason is very simple. Adam and Eve, weren't the first people on the Earth, but they were the first Christians on the Earth. I believe that at that time, the land was filled with tribes of humans, but from all of them only one was Christian, and because of that, from the point of view of the religion they were the first people on the Earth.
If we think about this as true, then we can imagine how Set had a lot of sons and daughters without breaking some modern moral rules. He could have chosen a wife from a foreign tribe (hence why her name is not written - for not being a Christian), and reproduced.
This would let us know from who was Cain afraid after his banishment.

To be continued...

Visions of life?

Life … what is life ? I can ask myself 1000 times and come to a different answer almost every time. I see life as an odd manifestation of this universe. Where stillness is the “natural” state of everything, life comes as a abnormality, an out of the picture thing that starts to move, to pulsate, to vibrate, to reverberate into it’s proximal space and across eons. When coldness is how the universe is, life brings warmth and heat and joyfulness to everything that it surrounds and is engulfed by. How can life exist when chaos is what it drives it? Life needs chaos to appear and then it needs precision to exist. Life takes chaos and gives it a purpose, it moulds it into something that will leave marks into this lifeless huge waste of matter.

I see life like a strain, a stress, like a force that actively fights against everything that should make it not exist. It’s easier to give or to take energy instead of creating it, of transforming it into building blocks. It’s improbably difficult that organization should exist in an existence that is there only to destroy. Think about all those cells in your body, working like a clockwork, counting down the seconds they all have till they are no more. Think about how each cell works individually and together with other cells to make this complex abnormality of the universe. Each day your body is bombarded with information from both outside it and from inside it. Each second your body adapts to every little changes that happen everywhere within it’s boundaries or in the environment that it can’t control. Life is permanently in motion and ever-changing in such a way that not even it can keep up with itself.

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But even though life is a wonder in this universe, we (humans) still pass through it without even looking at it. We take it for granted and then we ask ourselves what happened with it, when our clocks are about to get still. As humans we had to create society in order to survive and well nowadays a lot of people want to get away from it because it doesn't run the way it should be. When i first heard about the endosymbiosis theory i thought "we pay for protection with our freedom". Life in all it's complexity is in fact really fragile in individuals.
Take for example Mile Carpenisan. Most of your probably don't know about him as i don't know about the rest of 7 Milliard people that this planet holds. He was a war-time journalist who worked everywhere there was a crisis, everywhere someone was in trouble and the world needed to know about them. He went in all major war theaters of the last decades and came back without a scratch. Then a disease sent him on his final road. Before he had to go to the hospital, he held a charity event for a cancer patient. He sold the helmet he used in all those wars he had been and that saved his life countless times. Over the time, while he was on the hospital bed the person who bought that helmet came to him and returned Mile the helmet to protect him once again. Unfortunately this didn't happen and Mile closed his eyes one last time.
A few days ago the plane that carried on board the president of Poland crushed and 96 people died. A fatal trip sent a whole country into grief and sorrow.
And on 13th of April an earthquake in China killed more than 600 people.

Life is so fragile in individuals but very very strong as a whole. It almost went extinct at least 5 times during our Earth's life and life always managed to survive, to prosper and flourish again like nothing happened.

till next time: Live well and prosper and enjoy everything you have, even if it's close to nothing.

Spring

1st of March is the day that marks the revival of everything that went asleep once that winter came: animals, plants, feelings and of life in general. Starting today all of the universe is beginning to bloom and energy is filling up everything it's surrounding.

In Romania and some of the neighbouring countries celebrate today "the Trinket day" (we call it Martisor (Marț + suf. -ișor.) and i couldn't find an exact translation). During this day boys give to girls a little piece of jewelry or hand made symbolic thing tied up to a white-and-red string and a bouquet of spring flowers.
The origins of this traditions are lost in time. Archeologists found relics similar to present day "trinkets" in sites dating 8000 years ago, representing a white-and-red pebble that was worn around the neck. But the present day tradition is related to the Roman Empire, when on the 1st day of March (the moon of Mars) they were celebrating the New Year. Mars was not only the God of War but also the God of Fertility and Vegetation and from this duality we have the white-and-red string (white = peace, red = war).
Later on the "trinket" was made up from a silver or gold coin tied to a white-and-red string and was given to adolescent girls which would wore it around their neck during the first 12 days or March. After this perioud they would tie the "trinket" in their hair till the arrival of the first Cranes and the blossoming of the trees. At that time they would remove the "trinket" from their hair and would tie the string from a branch and the coin would use to buy "caş" (a local type of cheese). All this ritual would bring a plentiful year.

But there are some Myths regarding the "martişor" also. One of them speaks about a day when the Sun came down to Earth looking like the most beautiful girl in the world. But a zmeu (the closest translation i could find was "dragon"; the Zmeu was our legendary "bad guy" who was stealing fair ladies and was attacking kingdoms and such but was more like a man than like a serpent) stole the sun and at that time the birds stopped from singing, children forgot how to play and have fun, and all the world fell in grief. Seeing what is happening without the Sun, a brave man went to rescue it from the "dragon's" dungeon. He searched for the Sun for one whole year and when he almost lost his hope he found the "dragon's" castle. Our hero challenged the "zmeu" and after a fierce battle he finally won and released the Sun which went to it's rightful place in the sky and "lit" the world again. Spring came again and people got their happiness back, but our hero died from the great wounds the "dragon" inflicted upon him during the fight. His warm blood covered the white pure snow and where that happened snowdrops arose (the symbol of spring). It is said that following this, people would honor his memory by tying white-and-red strings to a branch.

Now this is the story behind it. But what do i think about this tradition? Well i like it. Why ? Because it's one out of the very few traditions in which we praise the woman. And she should be more than she is right now, more than she ever was. During our history we treated our women with the full brutality and power that we were capable of. Why ? because she was/is weaker (physically) and because she was/is gentler in general. So we took advantage of that because we usually don't think about anything else besides of our own need. Throughout history all women were beaten, made into slaves, subdued and forced to do anything that men wanted. And even now in this era of so called equality of sexes, women as still seen as nothing more than a tool for mans personal pleasure.
So during this day we can show our women just how much they mean to us and treat them like they deserve too. At some points women are the closest things to God, as being able to give birth and "create" a new life. But we men should think of women as the better half of our own self. To think that we are one body divided into time and space and do anything and everything in our power to become whole and show them that our life is just empty till the reunion.
But why do men need special days like this ? Because most of them need a lot more reasons to do that. They are still infants and greedy, and need a push to make the right thing. Too bad that these kind of days are not that often.

Unfortunately 1st of March is not a day for happiness all over the world. This year in Chile there is a lot of grief. On 27th of February there was an earthquake with the magnitude 8.8 on the Richter scale. A devastating tremor that ripped their world followed by at least 90 aftershocks. And after that tsunami's flooded the land. So the first day of March found them still searching for survivors and trying to clear the rubble. Many started to search for God again, after He was lost when everything fell to the ground or went under the water.
At least 58 people died after "Xynthia" mopped the countries of Western Europe with more than 47 deaths only in France. The combination of hurricane-force winds (at times spiking to 200 km/h)and high tide battered the countries of the "old" continent with brute force leaving only destruction behind.

We all need to get better people and help our world evolve towards something good, not towards extinction.