These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedLPA01Coinforce.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!
As I’ve produced this show over the past five years, I’ve found that, although many in the audience love military aviation, most don’t have a deeper knowledge or appreciation of the customs, traditions, and insider information that go along with it. So I’ve come up with an occasional series that’ll help to fill in those gaps.
“Lieutenant Protection Association” or “LPA” is a largely Air Force term for an organization in most squadrons that helps to advise the newer members (first and second lieutenants) about how to integrate into the fighting unit and, on occasion, provide protection from the captains, majors, etc. in the organization. There are analogues in lots of other military organizations and there’s no particular reason to call this series the LPA other than the fact that this information bears a fleeting resemblance to what you’d learn in an LPA (and the fact that “gouge,” the term for a concentrated package of information, has zero chance of being understood by the target audience for the series).
For the first episode in the series, I invited Jordan Haines to come on and talk about the dos, don’ts, traditions, and heritage of those round metal objects called challenge coins. Jordan runs CoinForce.com, the company in Washington State that has been supplying Airspeed’s challenge coins since 2009. I ran into Jordan personally at ICAS in December and it seemed natural to pull him through the USB cable and let him be the one to introduce the Airspeed LPA to this fascinating subject.
And, even if you don’t think it’s fascinating, this is an episode that could save you buying more drinks than you had planned on buying. Surely, a worthwhile investment of your time.
Airspeed received no promotional or other consideration for bringing Jordan on the show. Airspeed pays retail for its products from CoinForce and brought Jordan on for the pure and simple reason that he’s an excellent resource on this subject matter. That’s how we roll here at Airspeed.
More information about CoinForce and challenge coins:
CornForce: http://www.coinforce.com/
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin
These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedRulesOfEngagement01.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!
As Airspeed completes its fifth year and with its 200th episode within reach, I thought it’d be a good time to go a little meta. This episode is a reading of the Airspeed FAQ and Rules of Engagement. It answers a lot of questions that audience members have about me and the show and lets you in on some of the behind-the-scenes machinations.
Thanks for five great years as the best audience anyone could want! I’m working harder than ever to bring you even bigger and better content.
There’s a PDF version of the latest FAQ and Rules of Engagement in the link on the right-hand side of this page.
These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedZero02.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!
I got together with myTransponder.com founder and fellow CAP officer Rod Rakic to talk about accelerated flight training. Rod has done accelerated programs as a part of both his commercial and instrument training. I did my AMEL, ASES, and DC-3 (SIC) training in accelerated programs. And Rod and I are both graduates of the CAP National Emergency Services Academy’s Mission Aircrew School.
We talked about the benefits and drawbacks of accelerated and/or concentrated training and how best to take advantage of it.
This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio or video? Keep on browsing. They’re all here!
On Friday, Barry (“Bernie”) Sutton and Don (“Seawall”) Weaver and I went into The Soundscape Recording Studio in Royal Oak, Michigan to do some work on the soundtrack for the upcoming independent film, Acro Camp. (Check out http://www.acrocamp.com/.)
This is a continuation in part of the crowdsourcing of Acro Grass, the bluegrass-flavored basic theme that we’re using for the film. We walked in with two versions of the tune. The first is the same version that I put out there earlier this year for people to use as a backing track for contributions. It’s an acounstic riff in D at 116 bpm. The second is an electrified version, also in D at 106 bpm with the electric guitar mostly clean and with a 563 ms delay to sound a lot like The Edge (guitarist for U2). Lastly, I did a very basic riff in 3/4 that, if you don’t play a G# or other notes that would capture it into a specific key, lacks a tonal center and is both cool and annoying for the same reason.
I brought in my drum kit and Tim (the engineer) supplemented it with a nice Sabian cymbal (I want to say that it was a 16” or 18” V Crash from the Vault series – Very nice as a ride, crash, bell, or otherwise with a lot of different sounds depending on how you whack it) and his vintage floor tom.
Don brought in his keyboard kit, which consists of both a really nice fully-weighted keyboard with lots of internal voices and an external box with yet more voices. The piano sound modeling is excellent.
Once Barry and Don did the initial jam, we went to actually recording. We did them one at a time with each of them playing ideas over the courts of one or two ten-minute takes. It took about four hours, including tech setup, to get everything down for three different basic themes.
Now the drill is for Tim to bounce everything down to individual WAV tracks and shoot them to me on a data DVD. Then I’ll take them all and listen to them to pull out the parts that I like to create a sort of library of Barry and Don’s best themes, bits, and pieces. I’ll them put those in where they seem best and come up maybe a half-dozen variants of each theme to drop into the film at appropriate times. I’ll probably also add in some guitar, mando, banjo, shuttle-pipe, and other stuff as the mood moves me.
And that’s to say nothing of the music that podcast fans have been contributing over the last few months for the original Acro Grass theme.
The studio session was a complete gas. It was Barry’s first time in a studio environment. Don is an old hand at recording and has played on several album projects. Both of them really seemed to enjoy it. It was my first time in a studio session in which I didn’t actually play and just functioned as producer. Much as I like to play, it was a good experience for me just managing artists and getting good performances out of them. And Tim is quintessentially pro as always, bringing his musical sensibilities and technical expertise together to support a truly organic process.
Luck is the meeting of preparation with opportunity. Both converged in good measure at The Soundscape last night. I’m very lucky.
Airspeed, LLC
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Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48302
Phone: (248) 470-7944
e-mail:steve@airspeedonline.com
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