Another Large Posting Delay

Hello everyone!




First off, I apologize for the delay of my blog posts. I went away for the march break to Virginia, U.S.A. to take a tour of the many large military bases located in Norfolk. Driving there in a coach bus was sixteen hours both ways, so if I had written a blog post over the march break, it wouldn't have been the highest quality content. I decided to write mostly about my trip today because I haven't made much progress on the building aspect.

I woke up at 4:00 in the morning on Saturday 12th. Then, made it to the Georgetown armory building for 6:00. I was going with part of my Cadet squadron and two other squadrons of Cadets. Cadets is a dynamic, structured youth program that offered Canadian youth a variety of interesting and challenging activities. That's the definition of the Cadet program that I found on the Cadets website.

Next was a bag search to make sure we didn't have any contraband. Thankfully, no one brought any contraband, so we had no issues and waited until 8:00 for the bus to arrive so we could start loading bags and leave the armory. We were on the bus for about five hours at a time and sixteen hours total. We stopped only for lunch and dinner. Then, we arrived at our barracks. 

Our Barracks for the Week

In a way, our barracks were somewhat a piece of history. They were World War Two barracks with the same layout and furniture as World War Two aside from there being more power outlets and more modern lighting. Single beds and barrack boxes. Barrack boxes are quite simple. They're a locking box with two small boxes inside that can be removed to access a lower compartment.

A Barrack Box or Footlocker

The day after we arrived, we loaded onto the bus at 10:00 and headed to the Nauticus naval museum, where they have many interesting exhibits. My personal favorite was the U.S.S. Wisconsin or BB-64. It's not a model, but the real thing. The U.S.S. Wisconsin was one of four Iowa-class battleships, or fast battleships, made by the United States. It was capable of attacking both air and ground targets. However, it could also launch small planes off of it's deck.

The U.S.S. Wisconsin

We left the museum at 4:00 and it started raining while we were going to the buses. We were soaked by the time we went back to the museum. The buses came to pick us up instead of us going to them, and we left for the last time at 4:30. We went to Naval Base Oceana, or NAS Oceana to eat dinner at the Mess Hall there. A mess hall is a cross between a high school cafeteria and a fancy restaurant. Sadly I don't have any photos of the mess because I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. I also couldn't find anyone else who took a photo of it either. After we ate at the mess, which is where we ate for the rest of the week, we went back to the barracks and had some free time. Lights out was at 9:00 and we slept for about eight hours.

Day Two arrived early with a wake up time of 6:00 in the morning. We were on the bus heading for the mess at 7:00 for breakfast. We were out of the mess and back on the bus for 8:30. Next was an uneventful bus tour of Naval Station Norfolk. I saw two interesting things on the tour. One was an aircraft carrier that I couldn't take pictures of and another was surprisingly a series of pipes carrying steam all over the base. Instead of using gas or oil for heat and water, they use steam. It's significantly more efficient and saves millions of dollars in power each year. We headed back to the mess for dinner and went to bed.

One of the steam pipes

The wake up time on day three was at 6:00 and we were on the bus for 7:00. Then we were leaving the mess at 8:30. That part will remain the same through the rest of the trip. After we left the mess, we headed off to a survival training center for navy personnel and pilots. They had many cool devices and classrooms there including a virtual reality parachute simulator, a pressure chamber and a dunking chamber. The dunking chamber is the most complicated of all of these devices to understand. The chamber is suspended from a large crane over a pool with about five people in it. The crane dunks the chamber into the pool. The idea is that it simulates a plane crash into the ocean to train the pilots to escape from their restraints. 

The Dunking Chamber

The chamber is capable of simulating a helicopter crashing as well. The only difference is that the dunk chamber flips upside down instead of remaining upright because helicopters are more top heavy so they flip over underwater.

The next day, we went to a naval museum with many original planes from various wars including the B25 Mitchell Bomber, the Avro 504k trainer plane, and one of two Mosquitoes remaining in flying condition in the world. Surprisingly, the Mosquito was a Canadian built plane made entirely out of wood. It's difficult to tell, and the time period doesn't exactly match up with the material, however during World War Two the Allied Forces were running out of metal. Luckily, a Canadian named Ronald Eric Bishop came up with a solution. He made an extremely fast, extremely light and extremely versatile plane, the Mosquito. This plane was adapted to be a bomber, a fighter, and a bomber-fighter plane.

The Mosquito

The day after that was split into two parts. The first part of the day, we went to Virginia beach and did some shopping which was extremely uneventful. Many people in our group were surprised by the fact that swearing in public is illegal in Virginia.

A No Swearing Sign

The second part of the day, something really interesting happened. We went to go see some LCACs, or Landing Craft, Air Cushions. The simplified term would be hovercraft. With a unit cost of 23 million dollars apiece, the LCACs are capable of carrying up until about 60 tons worth of cargo and travelling at about 60 knots at the same time. They are incredibly large pieces of machinery that are operated by a crew of six. We took a tour of one, however they are mostly just a large shipping container sitting on inflatable airbags. Somehow, they still manage to be amazing. They are also extremely durable. In testing, it took around twenty RPGs to take it down. Even after that, however, it took two hours to sink below sea level.

A deflated LCAC

The day after, I got to see an extremely large amount of F-18s, most likely close to six billion dollars worth of aircraft in one place. The aircraft that I saw were equivalent to the ninth largest air force in the world. They were quite large and magnificent to look at.

An F-18

The next day, we were on the bus heading to Canada for 6:00. We stopped for only meals and an occasional bathroom break. We arrived early the next morning at 2:00.

Overall, I can't complain about the trip. It means I'm a week behind schedule, but I think that it was worth it. I'll try and accomplish some more work before the end of this week. Hopefully, I'll be all caught up by then.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and have a nice week! As always, if you have comments please post them and I'll respond as quickly as possible.