We watched Lonely Hearts on Netflix a few nights ago, and it was surprisingly good. It would be hard to go wrong, I think, with any film that had John Travolta and the late James Gandolfini in it, but this one was even better than expected.
Lonely Hearts (made in 2006) is based on the true story of serial spree killers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. Fernandez was a weasely con man who preyed on lonely women (he found them through their lonely hearts ads). Beck was one of his intended victims, but she saw through his game immediately and, weirdly, they became partners in perpetuating similar crimes, ultimately progressing to several murders to silence their victims, witnesses, and others who crossed their paths (including a police officer). Both Fernandez and Beck died in the electric chair in 1951.
The story was dark and moody, but the movie was well done. It’s worth a watch.
There’s cool, and then there’s really cool. When I was kid back in New Jersey, Richie Haluska was really cool. He lived in New Brunswick and he was my next door neighbor Pauly’s cousin. Richie was a few years older than us and he was always way ahead of the curve when it came to cool. Pauly and I weren’t old enough to drive, but Richie was, and in line with his coolness he showed up at Pauly’s one day driving a 1965 GTO. Alpine blue with a black vinyl top and a black interior, three deuces and a four-speed, and a 389 (remember that last phrase; you’ll hear it again shortly). Did I mention this guy was cool?
I’d never seen anything as beautiful as that GTO. The looks, the wheels, the wide oval redline tires, and, you know, the exhaust notes. I could (and did) look at that car for hours, from every angle, dreaming of one day owning my own GTO. John De Lorean was the guy who pioneered the muscle car concept and Pontiac was the first to drop a big block motor into a mid-size car. Pretty soon all the manufacturers were doing it, but Pontiac was the first and it was the GTO. De Lorean later went on to fame making snowmobiles (the Back to the Future car), but we didn’t know any of that in the mid-1960s. We just knew that the GTO was so cool a rock group sang a song about it. And Richie had a GTO. Like I said, this guy was cool.
One day I was playing hookey (I can’t remember why, but in those days I didn’t need much of a reason) and later in the day I decided I needed to get to school. Richie offered to take me. A ride in GTO! I had never been in one. I think I was maybe 14 years old.
The car was magnificent, but the best was just seconds away. We reached the road to my school and after making that sharp right, Richie put his foot in it. Up to that point I had not felt a muscle car as the Lord intended muscle cars to be felt, but that character flaw disappeared in an instant. Pushed into the seat and hearing the deep ExhaustNotes growl, seeing that big hood scoop loom large, I remember what I thought: I have got to get me one of these!
The other day Susie and I were in Costco. They had a bunch of die cast metal car models, and they were blowing them out for just $14.95. They were all awesome, but the one that instantly arrested my attention was the 1965 GTO. It’s as if the Maisto maestros had Richie in mind when they created it. It was exactly like Richie’s. Alpine blue. Black interior. Black vinyl roof. White pinstripes. It was perfect. And it’s mine now.
Richie has gone on to his reward (he passed a year or two ago). I hadn’t seen Richie since I was a teenager. But I remember Richie and I remember that ride to school like it was yesterday. That’s Richie and his wife Dina in the photo above, and the photo captures his personality perfectly. He was a cool guy.
Rest in peace, Richie.
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When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey (a very rural New Jersey in those days), it was a local challenge to take off your shoes and socks and walk across the dam at the Old Mill. The Old Mill is one of those cool places that attracts kids (even old ones, like me). Remote, interesting, a hint of times past, and plenty of ways to get in trouble. There had been a water-powered mill there decades ago (a common approach to factory power in our early history); now, only the dam and the lake it formed remains. We called the area the Old Mill.
The upper arrow points to the Old Mill dam. The lower arrow points to an island (the scene of the goose attack, as will be explained below). The lake formed by the dam stretches upstream for a good distance.The Old Mill dam. We used to wade across the top when we were kids. I wouldn’t attempt it today.
Those were fun times. The Old Mill was a little over a mile from my house and the big adventure when we were kids was to ride our Schwinns there (I wish I still had that bike). Walking across the top in your bare feet was the double dare. The water was about 4 inches deep as it rushed over the top, the dam was coated with algae, and it was slick. And 4 inches of rushing water carried a lot of power. Taking that challenge marked you as a kid of substance (it was sort of a kid’s Combat Infantryman’s Badge). Pauly, Zeb, Verny, my cousin Bobby, me…those were grand times, riding our bikes and pretending they were motorcycles, coasting down Riva Avenue to the Old Mill, and looking for new ways to get into trouble. My Schwinn had chrome fenders and I used to imagine it was a BSA 650 Lightning. Fun times. It’s hard to believe it was 60 years ago.
So, I need to go tangential for a second to give some context to this Old Mill story. When we were kids, my Dad had one cardinal rule I probably heard the day I was born and at least weekly thereafter. It was simple: Never mess with firecrackers. Dad lost two fingers when he was a kid fooling around with firecrackers cutting them up to pour the contents into a pipe to make a bigger firecracker. You know the nutty things kids do. If kids did that today they would be called terrorists. In those days it was just kids doing what kids do. But the results were not good…there was a spontaneous ignition and when it was over, my Dad had two fewer fingers. Hence, the constant Dad drumbeat: Don’t mess with firecrackers.
Well, you might guess where this story is going. I couldn’t wait to mess with firecrackers. My cousin Bobby was 6 years younger than me back then (he still is) and we were thick as thieves when we were kids. One day Bobby, my friend Verny, and I rode our bikes to the Old Mill. Verny had a bunch of firecrackers in his saddlebag. Wow. The forbidden fruit. He even bought matches. Boy oh boy, we were having fun…lighting the things and throwing them out over the water. Bam! Bang! Pow! It was like being in a Batman TV show. Awesome fun. I was playing with firecrackers. It was better than running with scissors.
Boys will be boys, and Bobby was the youngest. It wasn’t too long before Verny and I were lighting the things and throwing them at Bobby. We were all laughing and having a good time. Even Bobby. He thought it was fun, too. Right up until the time one of the firecrackers landed in his collar behind his neck. To this day, I can still see it in slow motion…the little inch-and-a-half Black Cat tumbling through the air, its fuse sparkling, and then lodging in Bobby’s collar. And then…BOOM!
All laughter stopped at that point. Bobby froze, not making a sound after the detonation. The firecracker literally blew all the hair off the back of his head, which suddenly looked like an orangutan’s butt…bright red and bald. Bobby came through it okay. Me, not so much. I knew what would happen when my Dad saw this. It was a death sentence. Verny knew, too. Everybody knew about my Dad and firecrackers. Wow, were we ever in trouble.
Being Jersey boys, we came up with a plan. Maybe if we gave Bobby a haircut, it wouldn’t look so bad. Yeah, that’s the ticket. A quick trim and no one would notice. Ah, if only stupidity were money…I’d be the richest man in the world. We rode our bikes over to Verny’s house, found a couple of scissors, and went to work. After a few minutes, we realized what a sorry state we were in. Instead of just looking like a kid who had all the hair blown off the back of his head, Bobby now looked like…well, a kid who had all the hair blown off the back of his head and a really bad haircut. We were cooked.
All three of us rode to Bobby’s house, where my Uncle Herman (my Dad’s brother) took everything in with a single look. Herman had been there when Dad lost his fingers (which, when I think about it, would have been about 90 years ago now). Uncle Herman knew what the outcome would be if my father ever found out what we had done…I wouldn’t have made it to adulthood, and you wouldn’t be reading this blog. So he did me a whale of a favor…he and Bobby stayed away from our house until Bobby’s hair grew back. Uncle Herman, you’ve been gone for more than half a century now, but trust me on this…I’m still grateful!
Susie and I were in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago and we did what we always do when we’re back there: We visited the Old Mill. The leaves were turning colors and it was spectacular. Visiting the place always brings back memories…especially the ones above.
The Old Mill lake, as recently captured by my Nikon.
The Old Mill was built by the Davidson family (a nearby road is called Davidson’s Mill Road). I have no idea what they milled and I couldn’t find anything about it on the Internet. There was a another mill a few miles downstream that processed snuff (a major industry in this area a hundred years ago), so maybe it was a snuff. Whatever. The mill is long gone, but the dam remains and the area is a county park today.
As I was snapping photos, I noticed a blue-gray speck in front of the little island near the dam (there’s an Uncle Herman story about that island, too, and I’ll get to it in a second). I zoomed in, and it was a blue heron. I’d seen them here before. I wished I could have gotten closer, but my 120mm lens and Nikon’s vibration reduction technology did the trick for me.
A blue heron looking for lunch at the Old Mill.
Once when I was a kid, I rowed my little aluminum boat here all the way from my house. The creek behind my place (Lawrence Brook) flowed to the Old Mill and beyond. Uncle Herman, Bobby, my cousin Marsha, and I were having a good time as I rowed toward that island when we suddenly heard a god-awful hissing. A goose was flying straight at us, low over the water, with what appeared to be a 10-foot wingspan (it probably wasn’t that big, but the overall effect was one of sheer terror and if that goose was trying to intimidate us, it succeeded). The goose had a nest on that island, and we were where the goose didn’t want us.
When I visited the Old Mill earlier this year, the water snakes were out in full force and I photographed a large one below the dam. You can read more about that in the blog I did a few months ago. There are a lot of cool critters in these waters, including frogs, several species of turtles, pickerel, sunfish, and snakes. Good times for kids. It was a good place to grow up.
A very large water snake sunning itself in New Jersey.
On this most recent visit, we were in New Jersey just as the leaves were turning colors. This last photo is one I stitched together in PhotoShop. A click will enlarge it, and then click on it again to see it full size.
If you had asked me a week ago what the Rubber Chicken Ride is about I would have replied, “I have no clue, Bubba.” Held annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico the 2021 Rubber Chicken Ride resisted any defining characteristics and after three days participating I still have no clue what it was about.
There’s an entry fee, $50, that goes to the New Mexico Off Highway Vehicle Association, (NMOHVA). I guess it’s a like a fundraiser except a motorcycle ride breaks out while passing the collection plate.
I met up with the near legendary dirt-riding group, The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers at the Truth or Consequences Travel Lodge motel. The Travel Lodge is one of the few remaining old school types where the room doors open out directly onto the parking lot. I like this layout as you can hang out as a group tinkering with the bikes. It fosters community spirit and you can lock your bike to the uprights supporting the overhang. At the motel we met six other Rubber Chicken Riders none of who had any idea what was going on and all pushing 70 years old. That’s like 3 years older than the Chuckers.
This year’s Chicken was stripped to the bare bones due to Covid. No group dinners, no Show Us Your Scars competition, no organizing at all: just show up and ride. Part of the confusion was due to my not bothering to download the GPX files from the Rubber Chicken thread on ADVrider, which I knew nothing about until I was at the event. I probably couldn’t have figured out how to migrate the files to my GPS anyway. It annoys me that those old codgers can download files into their displays and I’m still using paper maps. I think of my GPS is kind of a last resort deal; I use it when I’m not sure how to get home.
That first day we tried to find the Rubber Chicken sign up area at Healing Waters Plaza, a place no one in Truth or Consequences seems to have heard of. Everyone we asked sent us to a different Healing Waters but they were hot springs, not the sign up staging area. The town was named Hot Springs in the past and has quite a few still around. Luckily, my Garmin knew about the palm-lined plaza and after riding past it several times we were able to find the pocket park along with a couple other Rubber Chicken Riders. Oddly, there was no water in sight.
The other riders we met at Healing Waters were as clueless as we were so we sat around and talked bikes for a while then the Chuckers and I decided to ride out to nearby Elephant Butte Dam to check out the scenery. After the dam tour we hit up the local Denny’s. You know how they say landing and take off are the most dangerous parts of flying, that’s how it is for me getting on or off the tall Husky 510. The Husky’s kickstand is so designed that once you’re on the bike you can’t tip it over far enough to retract the stand. This means I have to get on or off the bike with the kickstand up. Not a problem on a normal motorcycle, with the Husky it takes Baryshnikov-level flexibility to toss a leg over the high seat and rear luggage stores. I’m no Baryshnikov.
I got half way off the bike but my boot hung for a life-altering moment, still on one leg the bike started to topple over the far side. I pulled the bike back towards me but pulled a little too much. With my stubby, grounded-leg near the centerline of the wheel track the bike toppled over onto the near side taking me out in the process. In the Denny’s parking lot. In front of everyone.
Back at the Travel Lodge we grilled the other riders. They resisted at first but stopped struggling as soon as they were evenly browned on both sides. The way it was supposed to work is you download route files and load them in your GPS before arriving, then at the plaza meet up with like-minded riders and off you go, a merry band of riders. It’s a great way to meet new riding buddies. There’s no NMOHVA sanctioned rides. This is the loosest possible group ride you can imagine. One of the riders had an old, Rubber Chicken event T-shirt. In a testimony to how damaged things have become since Covid all we got this year was a tiny NMOHVA sticker with a rubber chicken on it.
The second day there was a sign up table at the Healing Waters Plaza. Maybe 15 riders had gathered and we had a good gabfest with the boys and one girl. By now we pretty much had the event figured out so the Chuckers and I headed out to Chloride, an occupied-ghost town for one of the routes: the Chloride canyon loop. We didn’t have GPX files but the Chuckers had paper maps.
At the end of the road in Chloride the road turns hard left and becomes unpaved. It’s sort of rough and rocky being a dry streambed at the bottom of a steep canyon. After about a mile of this abuse we stopped to reassess our riding skills and time left in the day. For a route that 6 guys on dirt bikes had done just a day before there were no tire tracks except the ones we were making. I dreaded turning on the Garmin because I’ve never read the owner’s manual, it always leads to a bunch of button pushing and frustration instead of riding. The Garmin said the road went for 5.6 more miles then dead-ended.
We started doubting our direction. Maybe we are on the wrong route, those 70 year-old guys couldn’t have gone this way. None of us liked the idea of riding this rocky trail 5 miles and then turning around and riding it back. We chose an alternate route. Seeing as there were no official routes anyway we felt we could take liberties with the Rubber Chicken.
Our alternate route was a long, 60-mile stretch of fairly easy dirt bookended between 80 miles of pavement on either side. The route seemed to go on forever. We went over the continental divide twice, once on paved Highway 59, once on Dirt Road 150. The later it got the faster we went. Highway 152 was a marvelous twisty road that we could use as much of the side-tread of our knobbies as we dared. We arrived back at the Travel Lodge at 7 pm; 9 hours of riding over widely varying terrain made for excellent sleeping.
On the third day of the Rubber Chicken Ride, a Sunday, the other riders at the Travel Lodge had loaded up their bikes and gone home. The Mud Chuckers and I decided to leave the Rio Grande Valley and work our way one valley east to Tularosa Valley, our home turf. In retrospect, we didn’t get much for our $50 but it got us away from our usual dirt-riding spots and it supported the NMOHVA so it was money well spent. While I was telling this story to my wife, CT, it must have sounded like I was complaining. Maybe I did bitch a little. She said that volunteer organizations always need help and that maybe next year we should print a few maps, plan a Rubber Chicken route and set up a ride instead of waiting for others to do the hard work for us. That sounded an awful lot like a gauntlet being thrown down to me.
This blog started out as a snarky collaboration between dos Joes (Gresh and me) as a followup to the recent blog on 9 reasons why you should ride a Chinese motorcycle. One of the reasons we always hear about why you shouldn’t ride a Chinese motorcycle is that you can buy a used Sportster for what a new China bike costs, as if somewhere there is actually someone trying to make that decision. You know, a troubled soul asking himself: Should I buy a used Sportster, or a new Chinese motorcycle? We’ve got a bunch of witty one liners (at least we think they are witty) and I’ll get to them in a second. But before I do (and before all you macho Milwaukee muchachos get your chonies in a knot), you should know that I actually would like to have a used Sportster. Three, in fact.
The first is a 1977 or 1978 Harley Cafe Racer, one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made. When these were first offered by Harley they retailed for about $3K. I was a young engineer at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, and I wanted one. But I couldn’t justify spending $3k on a motorcycle. I was single; I don’t know who I think I needed to justify it to. I should have bought one.
The next is the 1983 Harley XR1000, which we did a Dream Bikes piece on a couple of years ago. Man, I’d like to have one of those. The XR1000 was a stunning motorcycle. I’d call it visually arresting.
And the last one is a mid-60’s XLCH, preferably in blue or maybe red, like you see in the big photo up top of a restored bike. These sold for something like $1700 when they were new; I could have bought the one you see above for around $4,600 maybe three years ago. On the other hand, I saw a fully restored blue ’65 Sportster at the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show just before the pandemic hit and that one had a $20K price tag.
The used Sportsters listed above are the rock stars. There are also the not-so-exotic/not-so-collectable Sportsters. These are the ones that cost less than most new bikes but more than most used bikes. It’s a sweet spot, and to hear the folks who hate China bikes tell it, any used Sportster is a hell of deal. All righty, then…in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek nature of everything we write, here are our reasons why you should buy a used Sportster.
When you buy a used Sportster, you’ll spend less than you would on some new Chinese bikes (which, after all, is what started this blog).
When you buy a used Sportster, you’ll be helping the guy selling it get a Big Twin or a new Sportster.
When you buy a used Sportster, a lot of people on Facebook will think you’re smarter than the guys on ExNotes who keep bragging about Chinese motorcycles.
When you buy a used Sportster, you can hang out at Harley dealerships (the ones that are still open, that is).
When you buy a used Sportster, you won’t have to buy a vibrating chair (you’ll already have one).
When you buy a used Sportster, folks who don’t know anything about motorcycles will think you’re cool because you ride a Harley.
When you buy a used Sportster, you can gain weight big time and your Harley friends won’t call you fat because you’ll still be thinner than they are.
When you buy a used Sportster, you won’t have to ever shift into 6th gear.
When you buy a used Sportster, you won’t ever have to worry about not being able to find your 10mm socket.
When you buy a used Sportster, you won’t have to oil your chain (if you have a newer used one).
When you buy a used Sportster, it’s not likely you’ll ever get a speeding ticket.
When you buy a used Sportster, if you ride in flip flops and shorts no one will ever lecture you about ATGATT. In fact, they probably don’t even know what ATGATT means.
When you buy a used Sportster, you can wear Harley T-shirts. For a T-shirt company, Harley makes a nice motorcycle.
When you buy a used Sportster, you can watch Then Came Bronson reruns and not feel silly.
When you buy a used Sportster, if you just don’t feel like riding everyone will understand.
When you buy a used Sportster, you will help cut down the used Sportster inventory. The scarcity helps Janus sell more of their motorcycles because the 1200cc Sportster and the 250cc Janus are almost the same motorcycle performance wise.
When you buy a used Sportster, it allows you to say “I paid less than that for my used Sportster” when the cashier at McDonalds rings up your Happy Meal.
When you buy a used Sportster, if it’s old enough it will have a kick start. Kick starters are cool. Or, you could get a kick starter on a brand new TT 250, but hey, this is all about why you should buy a used Sportster.
So there you have it: 18 reasons why you should buy a used Sportster. If you have more reasons, we’d love to hear from you. Leave your comments here on the blog. We know a guy named Richard who always leaves his comments on Facebook, but don’t you do that (in other words, don’t be a Dick). Leave your comments here on ExNotes, like the cool kids do.
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One day many years ago, when I was around 12 or 13 years old, I took my metallic blue Honda Mini Trail on the road. My older buddy, Russ Adamson, who was legal on a Honda CL100, was with me on the street adventure. My Mini Trail didn’t have a tag, I didn’t have a license or any business on the pavement, but that didn’t stop us. I just wanted to ride, to be free without being hassled by The Man, like Peter Fonda said in those biker movies from the late 60s/early 70s era. Unfortunately, The Man had other ideas. I made it all the way to Milam Dairy road in the town of Medley, about 10 miles from home, when I was pulled over for obvious reasons.
The cop was a real stickler for details. He arrested me and called a tow truck to haul away the mini bike. I sat in the back of the patrol car looking out the window as he took me to the cop shop. Russ checked out ok so he was allowed to ride back home. At the cop shop the other cops looked at my cop like he was crazy. “You’re arresting him?” My guy held firm to his principals. I was booked, finger printed and was going to be put in a jail cell when one of the cops said, “You can’t put him in a cell, just let him sit here behind my desk.” I didn’t know exactly where I was, South Miami I think. We had driven a long way to the station. I called my house but nobody was home so I sat there wondering what prison food would taste like.
The situation was so unusual I didn’t know I should be scared. Other cops were stopping by and talking with me, trying to keep me in good spirits. I had quite a few spectators. I was a real celebrity collar. Some cops would just look at me and shake their heads in disbelief. One of the cops told me, “We’ll see you back here in a few years on a big Harley,” and then laughed at his joke.
Russ had gone to my house and told my mother what happened but he wasn’t sure who arrested me. Miami in the area I was pinched had several overlapping police departments. There is Metro Dade, Medley Police, Sheriffs and a few others. My mom started calling the various forces patrolling the city.
“Your mother is coming down to get you,” the desk cop told me. Mom came in the police station as angry as I ever saw her. I figured I was done for: no more mini bike. Astonishingly she was not angry with me. She read the riot act to any and all cops within earshot. Turns out I was like 30 miles from home. In lieu of bail, Mom had to show her voter’s ID card to spring me and all the way home she was mad as hell. But not with me.
Events were getting out of hand. My mother called Charles Whitehead, a writer for the local Miami paper and he wrote a humorous column titled, Dangerous Joe Rides Again. In it he joked about the police arresting and fingerprinting a little kid. Whitehead claimed that a desperate crime spree was stopped by the brave actions of the police. Remember, this was before kids routinely shot up schoolyards. I think Whitehead was pining for a gauzy, Norman Rockwell, soda fountain type of police encounter. The upshot was Whitehead felt the cop should have tossed the mini bike in the trunk of his patrol car and taken me home. Which would have been worse for me by far. By arresting me the cop took all the attention away from my stupid actions and took it on himself.
With my mom and dad by my side I had my day in traffic court. After a long day of waiting we were the very last case on the docket. I was charged with driving without a license and having an unregistered vehicle on the highway. Neither of which you normally get arrested for. Since I had no license I couldn’t lose it or get points against it. I plead no contest. I don’t remember the fine but it was like $100 I think. That was a lot of money. I never did manage to pay them back.
This old story came to mind when I rode the untagged RD350 down to the La Luz post office to sign for a package of new rubber carb tops from India. India makes a lot of parts for RD350’s. I haven’t switched over the title so the RD is still in the previous owner’s name. I haven’t registered it for a tag because I’m still working on it and to get a tag you have to buy insurance. The title was safely at home so I had no proof the bike was even mine. It was as if I hadn’t learned a thing from that arrest so long ago.
Like that Honda Mini Trail, the urge to ride the RD350 defies common sense. I think that’s the appeal of vintage motorcycles: they make you feel like a kid again. I just want to be free, to go where I want without being hassled by The Man, you know? The bike still needs a lot of work but I think I’ll focus on getting it legal next. It’s obvious I lack the willpower to stay off the thing. Dangerous Joe indeed.
I had a tough time choosing a title for this blog. I went with what you see above because it reminds me of one of my favorite Dad jokes…you know, the one about how you tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator. If you don’t see it for a while, it’s a crocodile. If you see it later, well, then it’s a gator. The other choice might have been the old United Negro College Fund pitch: A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste. But if I went with that one I might be called a racist, which seems to be the default response these days anytime anyone disagrees with me about anything.
Gresh likes hearing my war stories. Not combat stories, but stories about the defense industry. I never thought they were all that interesting, but Gresh is easily entertained and he’s a good traveling buddy, so I indulge him on occasion. Real war stories…you know how you can tell them from fairy tales? A fairy tale starts out with “once upon a time.” A war story starts out with “this is no shit, you guys…”
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So, this is a “no shit” story. It sounds incredible, but it’s all true. I was an engineer at Aerojet Ordnance, and I made my bones analyzing cluster bomb failures. They tell me I’m pretty good at it (I wrote a book about failure analysis, I still teach industry and gubmint guys how to analyze complex systems failures, and I sometimes work as an expert witness in this area). It pays the rent and then some.
So this deal was on the Gator mine system, which was a real camel (you know, a horse designed by a committee). The Gator mine system was a Tri-Service program (three services…the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force). It was officially known as the CBU-89/B cluster munition (CBU stands for Cluster Bomb Unit). The way it worked is instead of having to go out and place the mines manually, an airplane could fly in and drop a couple of these things, the bombs would open on the way down and dispense their mines (each cluster bomb contained 94 mines), the mines would arm, and voila, you had a minefield. Just like that.
It sounds cool, but the Gator was a 20-year-old turkey that couldn’t pass the first article test (you had to build two complete systems and the Air Force would drop them…if the mines worked at a satisfactory level, you could start production). The UNCF slogan notwithstanding, the folks who had tried to take this Tri-Service camel and build it to the government’s design wasted a lot of mines. In 20 years, several defense contractors had taken Gator production contracts, and every one of them failed the first article flight test. When my boss’s boss decided we would bid it at Aerojet, I knew two things: We, too, would fail the first article flight test, and it would end up in my lap. I was right on both counts. We built the flight test units per the government design and just like every one else, we failed with a disappointing 50% mine function rate. And I got the call to investigate why.
So, let’s back up a couple of centuries. You know, we in the US get a lot of credit for pioneering mass production. Rightly so, I think, but most folks are ignorant about what made it possible. Nope, it wasn’t Henry Ford and his Model T assembly line. It was something far more subtle, and that’s the concept of parts interchangeability. Until parts interchangeability came along (which happened about a hundred years before old Henry did his thing), you couldn’t mass produce anything. And to make parts interchangeable, you had to have two numbers for every part dimension: The nominal dimension, and a tolerance around that dimension. When we say we have a 19-inch wheel, for example, that’s the nominal dimension. There’s also a ± tolerance (that’s read plus or minus) associated with that 19-inch dimension. If the wheel diameter tolerance was ±0.005 inches, the wheel might be anywhere from 18.995 to 19.005 inches. Some tolerances are a simple ± number, others are a + something and a – something if the tolerance band is not uniform (like you see in the drawing below). But everything has a tolerance because you can’t always make parts exactly to the nominal dimension.
Where companies get sloppy is they do a lousy job assigning tolerances to nominal dimensions, and they do an even worse job analyzing the effects of the tolerances when parts are built at the tolerance extremes. Analyzing these effects is called tolerance analysis. Surprisingly, most engineering schools don’t teach it, and perhaps not so surprisingly, most companies don’t do it. All this has been a very good thing for me, because I get to make a lot of money analyzing the failures this kind of engineering negligence causes. In fact, the cover photo on my failure analysis book is an x-ray of an aircraft emergency egress system that failed because of negligent tolerancing (which killed two Navy pilots when their aircraft caught fire).
I don’t think people consciously think about this and decide they don’t need to do tolerance analysis. I think they don’t do it because it is expensive and in many cases their engineers do not have the necessary skills. At least, they don’t do it initially. In production, when they have failures some companies are smart enough to return to the tolerancing issue. That’s when they do the tolerance analysis they should have done during the design phase, and they find they have tolerance accumulations that can cause a problem.
Anyway, back to the Gator mine system. The Gator system had a dispenser (a canister) designed by the Air Force, the mines were designed by the Army, and the system had an interface kit designed by the Navy. Why they did it this way, I have no idea. It was about as dumb an approach for a development program as I have ever seen. Your tax dollars at work, I guess.
The Navy’s Gator interface kit positioned the mines within the dispenser and sent an electronic pulse from the dispenser to the mines when it was time to start the mine arming sequence. This signal went from coils in the interface kit to matching coils in each mine (there was no direct connection; the electric pulse passed from the interface kit coils to the mine coils). You can see these coils in the photo below (they are the copper things).
In our first article flight test at Eglin Air Force Base, only about 50% of the mines worked. That was weird, because when we tested the mines one at a time, they always worked. I had a pretty good feeling that the mines weren’t getting the arming signal. The Army liked that concept a lot (they had design responsibility for the mines), but the Air Force and the Navy were eyeing me the way a chicken might view Colonel Sanders.
I started asking questions about the tolerancing in the Navy’s part of the design, because I thought if the coils were not centered directly adjacent to the matching coils in each mine, the arming signal wouldn’t make it to the mine. The Navy, you see, had the responsibility for the stuffing that held the mines in place and for the coils that brought the arming signal to the mines.
At a big meeting with the engineering high rollers from all three services, I floated this idea of coil misalignment due to tolerance accumulation. The Navy guy basically went berserk and told me it could never happen. His reaction was so extreme I knew I had to be on to something (in a Shakespearian methinks the lady doth protest too much sort of way). At this point, both the Army and Air Force guys were smiling. The Navy guy was staring daggers at me. You could almost see smoke coming out his ears. He was a worm, I was the hook, and we were going fishing. And we both knew it.
I asked the Navy engineer directly how much misalignment would prevent signal transmission, he kept telling me it couldn’t happen, and I kept pressing for a number: How much coil misalignment would it take? Finally, the Navy dude told me there would have to be at least a quarter of an inch misalignment between the Navy coils and those in the mine. I don’t think he really knew, but he was throwing out a number to make it look like he did. At that point, I was pretty sure I had him. I looked at my engineering design manager and he left the room. Why? To do a tolerance analysis, of course. Ten minutes later he was back with the numbers that showed the Navy’s interface kit tolerances could allow way more than a quarter inch of misalignment.
When I shared that with the guys in our Tri-Service camel committee, the Navy guy visibly deflated. His 20-year secret was out. The Army and the Air Force loved it (they both hated the Navy, and they really hated the Navy engineer).
We tightened the tolerances in our production and built two more cluster bombs. I was at the load plant to oversee the load, assemble, and pack operation, and when we flight tested my two cluster bombs with live drops from an F-16 we had a 100% mine function rate (which had never been achieved before). That allowed us to go into production and we made a ton of money on the Gator program. I’m guessing that Navy weasel still hates me.
It’s hard to believe this kind of stuff goes on, but it does. I’ve got lots of stories with similar tolerance-induced recurring failures, and maybe I’ll share another one or two here at some point. Ask me about the Apache main rotor blade failures sometime…that’s another good one.
When I worked at Aerojet Ordnance, we made 30mm GAU-8/A ammo for the A-10 Warthog. The government originally planned to manufacture this ammunition in a government arsenal and the Army’s projected cost per round was $85 in mature production. The A-10 ammo had a warhead with a depleted uranium warhead and an aluminum sabot in one round (that was the armor piercing incendiary round), a high explosive incendiary in another (that was the “soft target” round), and a target practice tracer round. It was all potent stuff. Each had more muzzle energy than a World II 75mm Howitzer round.
Ed Elko
Our president (Ed Elko, a wonderful man and brilliant business leader) tried to convince the Army to buy its 30mm ammo from a commercial outfit (that would be us, Aerojet Ordnance), but Ed couldn’t get past the stale minds in the Army (the Army buys munitions for all of the services). So he bypassed the Army’s civil service dinosaurs and went to the US Congress. Congress knew a good deal when they saw it and they directed the Army to buy the ammo from Aerojet. The Army didn’t like that, but they did what they were told. And that was a good thing. The last year I was at Aerojet we were selling 30mm ammo to the Army for $6.30 per round and making a 30% profit. This, on ammo the Army thought would cost $85 per round in mature production if it was made in a government load plant (your tax dollars at work). I can’t make this stuff up, folks. They really were (and their successors probably still are) that stupid.
Charlie Wilson with a Lee Enfield rifle.
That 30mm cartridge, incidentally, was one that we sanitized for an Afghan project back in the 1980s. “Sanitized” means it had no markings identifying it as being made in the US. We were doing this for a charismatic Congressman named Charlie Wilson. Old Charlie was sponsoring a deal that involved a shoulder-fired rifle chambered for the GAU-8/A cartridge. You backed the rifle up to a tree or a rock and got underneath the thing to fire it. Charlie and his Mujahideen amigos wanted to use it to take out the Soviet Hind helicopters, and here’s where the plot thickens. Our government didn’t want to sell the Afghan rebels Stinger anti-aircraft missiles because they had guys like Osama bin Laden in their ranks. But we wanted the Afghans to be able to take out the Hind helicopters. They needed something, and the thought was that maybe a 30mm elephant gun was the answer. And wow, did that effort ever go south.
The guy who led the 30mm rifle development effort here in the US somehow managed to fire a cartridge in a Washington, DC, gas station. Yes, folks, he had an accidental discharge of a 30mm rifle in a DC gas station. That event lit up the gas station and injured four people. It’s one of the first things I think of whenever I read comments about the inherent wisdom in carrying a concealed weapon with a round chambered. But I digress. To get back to the 30mm story, the GSI (that’s gubmint-speak for gas station incident) was hushed up by the folks in trench coats (you know, Boris and Natasha types), everyone recognized the innate and incredible dumbness of a shoulder-fired 30mm rifle, and a short while later President Reagan approved selling Stingers to the Afghans. And within weeks of that decision and the Stinger’s Afghan debut, the Soviets decided maybe Afghanistan wasn’t such a good idea after all. The movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” is based on those events, but it left out the 30mm rifle and the DC gas station debacle.
I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times (that’s Congressman Wilson in the photo above). He was a hell of a man and I’ve written about him before here on the ExNotes blog. But back to the 30mm accidental discharge event…that story is here:
As usual, the Washington Post got the story wrong. The guy who had the rifle in his pickup truck wasn’t “trying” to sell the rifle to the government; he was being paid to develop the weapon so it could be used by the Mujahideen, and he was doing quite well until the gas station incident. The thing about all of this that is interesting to me is that the real story never reached the public. You won’t find any photos of that rifle floating around on the Internet, or of the gas station fire (believe me, I tried). Imagine that. A guess station catches fire in Washington, DC, and there are no photos. My, my.
More about the A-10 and its 30mm Gatling gun? Hey, it’s all right here:
Have we finally lost our marbles? A Mitsubishi Mirage? I’m comparing it to a Harley Big Twin? No way!
One of the nice things about business travel is the opportunity to sample different cars. That’s something I like…extended test drives to find out if a car fits. I’ve rented cars I thought I would really like only to find out I hated them (saved a lot of money on a Jaguar doing that), and I fell in love with a few by accident…mostly because because they were the only thing available and they surprised me in a good way.
My first time for a rental car romance was in August 1972 when I rented a VW Beetle one weekend at the Benning School for Boys (jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia). (When I say a rental car romance, I’m referring to falling in love with the car, not any sort of an illicit parking lot relationship.) The Beetle was a blast and I bought one. I had a cool picture of it somewhere but it was taking too long to find, so you’ll have to trust me on this one.
The same thing happened again when I rented a Subaru (back when Subaru penetrated the US market with dirt cheap rental agency sales). I was blown away by the Subie’s overall quality and I’ve owned four since (including my dynamite WRX you see below).
A 2006 Subie WRX near the marigold fields above Santa Barbara. That was a fun car.
And then it happened again recently when the only thing left in the Atlanta Enterprise lot was a Mitsubishi Mirage.
Mitzi. More fun than any $14K car has a right to be.
The Mirage is a car that would have never been on my radar, but I liked it. Oh, it’s tiny and it didn’t have a lot of power, and it only has three cylinders, but somehow that made it even more appealing. The three-cylinder thing made me think of my old Triumph Speed Triple, but as soon as I stepped on the gas, it was all Harley. You know…open the throttle and there’s lots of noise and not much else. But I was in no hurry, and I kind of enjoyed hearing Mitzi’s howling protestations when I poured the coal to her. Harleys ain’t the only motor vehicles focused on converting gasoline to noise!
Three’s a crowd? Not with my old Speed Triple. Good lord, that was a good-looking motorcycle!
Mitzi. Yeah, I gave my rental car a name…and that’s a first.
A sparse interior, but the car had cruise control, air conditioning, a heater, a radio, Apple car play, and an automatic transmission. She drove like a comfortable go kart.
Mitzi’s road noise was a subdued sort of thing…not the screaming tire whine like the Chevy Traverse I rented earlier in Houston (I think a more apt name for the Chevy might have been the Travesty).
Mitzi’s ride was firm and the seats were a bit on the hard side, but I liked it. And Mitzi is most definitely not a lard butt. She weighs a scant 2,095 pounds, or just a little more than twice what a Harley Electra-Glide weighs. And you get air conditioning, power windows, Apple Car-Play, and a heater with the Mirage. The best part? I rolled all over Atlanta and the surrounding areas for the better part of a week, used nearly a full tank of gas, and when I filled up before turning her back in at the rental agency, she took just 7 gallons for a whopping total of $21. I like that.
7 gallons. $21. I could learn to live with this.
Mitzi kind of reminded me of a motorcycle, but better. I mean, think about it. The new Harley Icon, a beautiful motorcycle to be sure, but damn, it’s $30K and 863 pounds! Yeah, you get the Milwaukee Eight motor, but there’s no air conditioning, no heater (other than what rolls off the rear cylinder, as Harley riders know all too well), no spare tire, no windshield wipers, no rain protection, no automatic transmission, it only seats two, and the Harley gets lousy gas mileage compared to the Mitsubishi. And the Mitsubishi will clock an honest 100 mph (don’t ask how I know). Maybe the Milwaukee Eight will, too, with that 34-cubic-inch advantage it has over my old Harley’s 80-incher. My ’92 Softail wouldn’t hit 100 mph. Maybe this 114-cube Milwaukee monster will.
The Harley Icon. All $30K and 863 lbs of her. 863 lbs!
So I started researching Mitzi’s stats online, and our relationship deepened. Mine was a no frills model (she actually had hubcaps on her tiny wheels, not the cast wheels you see in the photos above). The base model I drove clocks in at a starting price of $14,625. That’s not even half what the new Harley costs. The Mitsubishi has a three-cylinder, 74-cubic inch engine (compared to Harley’s 114 cubic inch twin). The Harley is mostly made in ‘Murica; the Mitsubishi comes from Thailand.
More Mitzi magic? How’s a 10-year powertrain warranty sound? 10 years! That’s longer than most folks get for murder! As an aside, when I owned my Harley Softail, Harley wouldn’t even work on the bike when it hit the 10-year mark. The Mitsubishi would just be coming off its warranty!
I know I like a motor vehicle when I start thinking about what it would be like to take it through Baja, and that’s what I found myself doing as I was tooling around Georgia in my Mitsubishi. It’s most likely not going to happen, but it sure would be fun to get lost for a few weeks in Baja in an inexpensive, light, air conditioned car that gets 40 miles per gallon on regular fuel. With a price that starts under $15K, that leaves a lot of money for Tony’s fish tacos.
Tacos by Tony in Guerrero Negro…bring it on!
Don’t run out and buy a Mirage based on this ExNotes blog. To balance my rose-colored outlook on life in general and the Mirage in particular, consider this opening paragraph from Consumer Report’s review…
The Mitsubishi Mirage lives up to its name. While its low $16,000 sticker price and good fuel economy of 37 mpg overall may conjure up an inviting image of a good, economical runabout, that illusion quickly dissipates into the haze when you drive this tiny, regrettable car. The Mirage comes as a tiny hatchback or sedan, built in Thailand and powered by a small three-cylinder engine.
Eh, Consumer Reports. What do they know? I wonder how the CR folks would rate the Harley Icon. Funny how all this has come around…I used to refer to my ’79 Electra-Glide as my optical illusion. You know…it looked like a motorcycle. When it was running. Which wasn’t very often.
My take? The Mitsubishi Mirage is one of the least expensive cars out there, it has one of the best automobile warranties ever offered, and it was fun to drive. No frills here, folks. It’s just an honest car that’s not trying to pretend it’s something it is not. I like it. If I buy it instead of the Harley Icon I could pay cash and still have enough left over for a little more than 20,000 fish tacos!
Today is a special day. Memorial Day is an official American holiday, always falling on the last Monday in May. The holiday was originally called Decoration Day, it started in the years after the Civil War, and it became an official Federal holiday in 1971. The concept was at first intended to honor those lost during the Civil War, but as our nation soldiered on, Memorial Day came to recognize and pay tribute to those lost in all our wars.
The Vietnam War dominated the news and our lives in my earlier years. I missed that one by a fluke of timing, but I knew three fine young men who made the ultimate sacrifice: Stephen Ponty (he was only 19 when he died in Vietnam), Timothy Ochs (who was 21 when he died over there), and Gary Buttenbaum (who was 23 when he was killed in action in Vietnam). All three were from my neighborhood in central Jersey, and they were just a bit older than me. I never met Colin MacManus (Captain MacManus was 25 when he was killed), but I feel like I know him and I think about him a lot, too. I think about all of them, and I wonder what they might have become had they returned from Vietnam. I’ve seen their names (along with more than 58,000 others) on the Wall in Washington, DC. Not that I need to. I know who they are.
You don’t thank veterans for their service on Memorial Day (that’s what Veteran’s Day is for); you remember and think about those who did not come home. I usually head to the range on Memorial Day with two of my favorite military weapons (the Garand and the 1911), and I think about Tim, Steve, Gary, and Colin. Rest in peace, my brothers. Your memories live on.
