Near Hiland

The Yeti.

Road closed ahead

Pentax: Built like a tank

So states a professional photography blog naming the Pentax K1 full frame one of the three bests cameras of 2019.

And they are.

The review also goes on to note that you could "dive off a board into a pool" with the K1, which isn't something I'd do for sure (it's not water proof) and that it shares its all weather characteristics with every other digital Pentax.

And so it does.

I've long been a Pentax fan and have lamented the absolute rise of Canon in the digital age.  Indeed, I've been glad to see the recent rise of Nikon come along and take some of the wind out of Canon's sails.

It's not that Canon 's are a bad camera. They aren't.  It's just that they aren't the only great camera and frankly they compare poorly to Pentax camera's in several respects, the rugged outdoor nature of Pentax being one of them.

That's always matter a lot to me, as I regard photography as an outdoor thing.  And so do a lot of other people. For that reason alone Pentax's outshine Canon's.  Pentaxians, as they call themselves, laugh with glee when Canon users run for cover in poor weather.  If your camera can't be out in nature, what good is it?

Pentax cameras also will take old bayonet lenses made for Pentax 35mm SLR film cameras.  That's something most DSLR users will tell you is impossible, and that's a major plus for people who were using those cameras prior to the digital revolution.

So why so little love?

Well, it actually is there, and not just from die hard Pentax fans.  The cameras tend to rise to the top when rugged use is a major issue and when objective reviewers discuss it.  A few years back, for instance, a compact DSLR of Pentax's was awarded the position of best camera of the year by a photography magazine because of its all weather durability. And a noted press combat photographer about that time was also noted as a Pentax user.

But that's all a type of press and word of mouth popularity.  Pentax's marketing department, frankly, sucks.

The Ricoh company has owned the Pentax line for some time and while it markets its copiers, it flat out does the worst job in the world in marketing its cameras.  There's simply no excuse for it.  It makes you wonder if they given any thought to marketing them at all.

Well, they do give a lot of thought to their cameras.  And as a company that's come out with a rugged full frame they deserve applause.

Southern Big Horns

November Shipping

Railhead: Waiting for the A Train

Railhead: Waiting for the A Train

Waiting for the A Train

Up periscope

Harvest Moon

The Aerodrome: Is it time to stop flying the old ones? The B-17 N-0-Nine Crashes

The Aerodrome: Is it time to stop flying the old ones? The B-17 N...:

Is it time to stop flying the old ones? The B-17 Nine-0-Nine Crashes

I've been in quite a few B-17s and ridden on one.  If you go back and look through the posts here you'll find photographs of them.



Two of those B-17s were the Nine 0 Nine and the Liberty Belle.

The Nine 0 Nine.

Both are now gone.*  The Nine O Nine crashed this week at a demonstration, killing ten people including some who had paid to ride in the old classic bomber.



I'm generally not inclined to tell people what to do with their own property. That's not something that squares with my own world view,  nor with what we might generally call "American Values", although increasingly there are plenty of Americans who are ready to tell other Americans exactly what they can and cannot do with all sorts of things.  And I'm not of the view that merely because something is old, it shouldn't be used.  I use plenty of old things myself, including driving on occasion an old truck that probably some feel shouldn't be driven due to its age.

Nine O Nine.

But few of us have something that's an historical treasure.  Once all of the flyable models of any one aircraft are done for, and the law of averages alone will bring that day upon us, more likely than not, there are none left and the history associated with them is gone as well.



B-17s weren't made to fly for 70 years.



Indeed, nothing made in the 30s or 40s that flew or rolled was.  Simply nothing was expected to last that long.

While most B-17s were made in the 1940s, during World War Two, the plane's first flight was in 1935.  In 1935 when the plane first flew flight itself was only 32 years in existence.  That's over 80 years ago now, and if we look back the other way, eighty years prior, people were not only not flying, they weren't driving either.



Trains didn't last for eighty years.  Wagons certainly didn't.  Automobiles, when they first came out, tended to be used up very quickly, in spite of their vast expense.  And airplanes cycled through generations incredibly quickly.

View from the now gone Liberty Belle.

The first "heavy" bombers came into existence during World War One, but just as with fighter aircraft, the bombers of mid war were already obsolete by the end of the war.  The first U.S. bombers to have the "B" designation (fighters had a "P" designation, for "pursuit") came into service in the 1920s and exited service nearly as quickly as they entered.  The fact that the U.S. Army Air Corps was up to the number "17" with the B-17 shows us how very quickly they cycled through the service.



The heavy aircraft that came into military service with the US largely made it through World War Two.  None the less, there's no doubt that aircraft like the B-17 and the B-18 were obsolescent by the time World War Two started, already primitive in comparison to aircraft like the B-24. They were kept in production not because they were first rate modern aircraft at that time, but because it was necessary.  Save for odd uses, as soon as the war was over, they were phased out of service. For that matter, the aircraft that made them obsolescent were already obsolescent themselves. In terms of heavy bombers, which were really something that only the United States and the United Kingdom fielded, the world had gone from the aircraft of the mid 1930s, to the those of the late 30s and early 40s, to the B-29, which made them all obsolete.  And the B-29 would only remain a first rate bomber until the late 1940s when jet powered bombers made their appearance. The B-36 had its first flight in 1946. The B-47 in 1947.  The B-52 in 1952.

The B-52 is still in Air Force use, and will be for the foreseeable future.  It will be, most likely, the first military aircraft to see 100 years of continual use.  But it was built in a completely different era.  Vastly more expensive than the B-17, which entered service less than 20 years prior to the B-52, it was designed to be flown by men who would have college educations and who were already use to a technical world. The B-17 was designed to be flown by farm boys who were used to tractors and made the Model A.



There's no earthly way that the designers and builders of the B-17 imagined them flying for 70 to 80 years.  Chances are, they didn't see them flying for more than ten.  During World War Two, those savvy to aircraft development didn't see a future for aircraft like the B-17 beyond the end of the war and, had they been quietly asked, would have already regarded it as obsolete.  It only had to offer its crew a chance of living through their tour.



And the fact that it did offer such a chance is why there remain any around today. They were rugged.



But they weren't built to fly forever.  And the flying ones will not.  The time has come to let them rest, while there are still any left that are capable of flight.



That is sad.  The fact that they still fly from town to town allows people to see them who would otherwise never get the chance.  But the end conclusion to continuing to allow them to fly seems evident.

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To add to this sad tale, I've also been in an HE-111 that crashed later.  And I've viewed a P-51 which did.

Fall

Levi jacket and boots. A sort of still life.

Wading

Summer wheels.

Today In Wyoming's History: The Spring Creek Raid.

Today In Wyoming's History: The Spring Creek Raid.:

The Spring Creek Raid.

Students of Wyoming's history are well familiar with the story of the Spring Creek Raid, which occurred on April 2, 1909, on the Nowood River outside of Ten Sleep, Wyoming.  The tragedy has been the subject of at least three well known books, including the excellent A Vast Amount of Trouble, Goodbye Judge Lynch, and Ten Sleep and No Rest, the first two by lawyer and historian John W. Davis and the third, and earlier work, by Jack Gage, a former Governor of Wyoming.

The raid is justifiably famous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it may be the sheepman murder that most closely fits the way that we imagine the cattlemen v. sheepmen war of the late 19th and early 20th Century being.  Of course, the fact that it was an outright cold blooded killing no doubt causes it to be well remembered as well.  And then that the killings actually resulted in a trial which convicted the assassins is also worth remembering, as it demonstrated the turn of the tide of the public view on such matters.

The Wyoming historical marker sign that describes the killings does a good job of it, with perhaps the only thing omitted is that one of the ambushing party was armed with a semi automatic Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington, a very distinct arm for the time.  In basic terms, the raid occurred as several men connected with cattle raising in the area decided to enforce the "Deadline", a topographic feature of the Big Horn Mountains which meant it was a literal dead line.

The .35 Remington turned out to be critical in the story of the raid as it was an unusual cartridge for what was, at the time, an unusual arm.  The Remington 08 had only been introduced in 1905 and was a semi automatic rifle in an era in which the lever action predominated.  A lot of .35 Remington cartridges were left at the scene of the murders and investigation very rapidly revealed that a Farney Cole had left his Remington 08 at the home of Bill Keyes, which was quite near the location of the assault.  One of the assailants, George Saban, was known to not carry a gun and was also known to have been at the Saban residence the day of the assault.  Subsequent investigation matched other cartridges found on the location to rifles and pistols known to have been carried by the attackers.

Arrests soon followed and five of the assailants were ultimately charged with murder.  Two turned states' evidence.  The trials were not consolidated and only Herbert Brink's case went to trial.  To the surprise of some, he was convicted by the jury.  Due to prior trials for the killing of sheepmen being both unsuccessful and unpopular, Wyoming took the step of deploying National Guardsmen to Basin to provide security for the trial, which proved unnecessary.  The conviction was the first one in the area for a cattleman v. sheepman murder( Tom Horn had earlier been convicted for the 1903 killing of Willie Nickell, but that killing took place in southern Wyoming.

The killings were, quite rankly, uniquely cold blooded and gruesome, involving shooting into the wagons and setting them on fire.  Because of that, and the Brink conviction, the remaining four charged men plead guilty, rather than face trial.  Two plead guilty to arson, and two to second degree murder.

All were sentenced together, and Brink was sentenced to death.  His sentence was commuted, however, and he was released from prison, together with another one of the party, in 1914.  Another, George Saban, who was deeply affected by his conviction, escaped while out of the penitentiary and under guard, after being allowed to stay over in Basin in order to allegedly conduct some of his affairs.  His escape was successful and he disappeared from the face of the earth.