Perpetual Paradise

Regardless of how the rest of your day goes, here’s something to be happy about — today one of your donated MXs helped to identify a previously unknown email harvester

Our elderly neighbor on the corner of 6th & 6th has a few toys he likes to display from time to time. He’s not really rich nor makes any airs. He simply has a few more toys than anyone else around.

For many years on the North West corner of his lot he had a palm tree. Yes, a palm tree in Princeton, MN.

Image via Wikipedia

Actually it was from late Spring until early Fall that he had his palm tree in the front yard. For the rest of the year it was stored in a heated warehouse. This ritual played out for the first 7 or 8 years my family lived here until the tree died. He didn’t replace it. I never learned the story behind the palm tree in Princeton.

With the palm tree out of the summer picture, Lyle Anderson has more room to display toys.

From time to time, especially before parades, he’ll have his like new Model-T out on the lawn.

Now this thing gets the limelight…

Just Because The Palm Tree Is Gone

I don’t know anything about this craft. There does not seem to be any numbers on the tail. (The wings are detached while traveling on the road.) The airport is only about a mile away. I really need a better camera!

addendum 04/16/2010: I took some more snaps of it and did a little research. Well, I guess it is a real jet aeroplane. It is not a cheap toy.

The Foxjet, designed by a team of engineers that was led by Fox, carries six people, with a range of 1,400 miles and a maximum speed of 410 mph, in standard configuration. The target sales price is $1.5-million.

Wikipedia says:

The ST600 was of familiar business jet configuration, with a low wing, cruciform tail, swept flying surfaces, and engines mounted on pods on the sides of the rear fuselage. The intentions of the project were to create a practical business jet small enough and light enough to take advantage of smaller airfields at a cost of around half of what full-size business jets of the day were selling for.

Three mockups were constructed and were widely displayed at aviation shows around the United States, and the project got as far as Foxjet contracting Aeronca to construct the prototype. The engines, however, proved a major stumbling block. The tiny Williams Research WR44 turbofan that had made the project possible received certification for use in a passenger-carrying engine, but due to the its selection as the powerplant for cruise missiles, the United States government blocked non-military use of the engine. Without a suitable alternative available, the project was doomed.

In 2006, a Foxjet mockup was exhibited at the AOPA expo at Palm Springs, Florida by Millennium Aerospace, which had purchased rights to the design in May. The company announced plans to resurrect the design and market it with Pratt & Whitney Canada PW615 engines.

And the site MachDiamonds has this along with other photos:

The Foxjet 600 was unveiled in 1977, and did not proceed beyond the manufacturing of several marketing mockups and a few parts. The concept itself was very good, but the program failed for lack of “reality check” tools available to Tony Fox. The aircraft startup environment is unforgiving when the unique challenges are not properly identified. Lack of financing or – as a Foxjet assets sales document implies – lack of powerplant availability, were more a result of these shortcomings rather than a cause.

Another site, AirTaxiFlights had some speculation regarding engine development:

Tony Fox’s circa 1978 twin-engined, six-passenger Very Light Jet was, for a fact, 20 years ahead of its time and was, for another fact, blasted out of the sky by government edict. Now, several decades and many White House Administrations later, it’s finally going into production with a solid backlog of about 400 orders, including the largest single order yet booked by any VLJ maker.

What’s even more amazing is that today’s Foxjet II is essentially the same aircraft as it was when designed in the late-70s. The only substantial changes are engine manufacturer, the use of Space Age carbon-fiber materials instead of metal and updated avionics and communications systems.

Designed to compete with the large, expensive, inefficient corporate jets of the day, the $500,000 Foxjet died when the U.S. government, in the words of the very authoritative bible of the aircraft world, Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft “refused civilian employment” of the aircraft’s Williams WR44 engines and “forced abandonment of the project” after 50 percent of the engineering had been completed and four prototypes assembled.

Could Foxjet, if it had been free of government interference, singlehandedly have changed the VLJ from a 21st Century product to a 20th Century product? The answer to that, as the saying goes, is known but to God.

What is known to us, however, is Minnesota inventor par excellence Anthony “Tony” Fox’s track record at developing products that launched industries. Like the jet ski, the trash compactor, the fiberglass gun that revolutionized boat building, and the tank-tracked ATV.

The more research I did, the more I began wondering about my neighbor and how he got one of these planes. I didn’t see anything about how many of these planes where actually made.

Mr. Fox’s “1976 FOX JET ST600S – Mock-up / Non-Operable” just sold 02-10-2010 on e-bay, I wonder…

Lyle's Foxjet Front

Lyle's Foxjet Front Side

Notice the house and trees? Like I said, it is sitting in his front yard. He keeps his old Jaguar convertible in the garage. Where else but in Princeton, MN is it that you gotta file your taxes by 3PM on tax day but see jet planes in your neighbor’s front yard.

Addendum: May 08, 2010 11:25 PM
This weeks Princeton Union Eagle clarifies the situation. Lyle’s jet is the first of four prototype Foxjet ST600s.  He purchased it three years ago from Sport Wheels in Jordan.  Joel Stottrup reported in: Small plane causes big interest.

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This story about Wall Street attempting to create yet another bogus financial instrument demonstrates the necessity for their regulation.  Republicans will attempt to do just about anything in their quest for riches.

Has anyone actually forgotten about the financial meltdowns we have experienced from bogus accounting methods, bogus credit instruments created from high risk mortgages, and hedging that everything will topple?

Does anyone remember what the perfect Republican Bernard L. Madoff founded before his fraud fund?

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Does anyone remember the Republicans Jeffery Skillings or Kenneth Lay?

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Anything Wall Street suggests must be looked upon with distrust.

Excite News – Hollywood snubs proposed betting on ticket sales.

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The Corrupt feeding the Corrupt.

Foolish spending by NASA is not the only issue here.  The role of culprit is filled by both sets of shoes.  Who the hell charges $66.00 a day for ‘”light refreshments” of soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies’.  It is Evil People who overcharge our government for supplies.

I downloaded the report and breezed through the pages, I did not study it.  The only possible reprieve for the evil caterer is if NASA told them that there would be more attendees than what actually attended.

At least NASA did one good thing, their overspending exposed a caterer who should be avoided.

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I am really surprised that the couple is still alive after 50 fast entries.  Now we need a reporter or two to stake out the house to see how soon the police come knocking again.

With that many entries, did the home show up as a trouble spot? And that should have been investigated earlier by the news.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100320/D9EI6S900.html

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