Miscellaneous, Science, Space, Technology

Norris Gray: A Spaceport Legend

June 21, 2007 kleucht 2 Comments

While at work today, I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Norris Gray, who helped bring Werner Von Braun and other German rocket scientists to the United States after WWII. He also helped launch the first Bumper rockets, which were derived from the German V-2 rockets, from Cape Canaveral.

Chief Gray, as everyone calls him, was the Fire Chief and Emergency Services Officer for the Bumper program here in Florida. He’s close to 90 years old now, but he’s as spry & spunky today as he was back in 1950 when he launched the first Bumper rockets from launch complex 3. He talks about his experiences and the history of the Spaceport with a gleam in his eye.

Today, Chief Gray often volunteers to support NASA’s KSC Press Site for launches and landings. He absolutely loves the space program. It was a real pleasure to meet and work with Chief Gray today and I hope to work more with him and hear more of his early spaceflight stories again soon.

Here are some good Internet links about Chief Gray:

Kurt

Activities, Travel, Vacations, Nature, Photography, Videos

Photos from New York City trip

June 19, 2007 kleucht Leave a comment

My work recently sent me to NYC for a few days. In between work I was able to see some sights. My main sightseeing goals were to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I also wanted to see a Broadway Musical while I was there. I bought my ticket to see “Curtains” starring David Hyde Pierce & Debra Monk about a week before the trip. I sat in the 3rd row center! Wow, that was awesome!

Everything else that I got to see while I was there was just icing on the cake … especially getting a standby seat for The Late Show with David Letterman. I never dreamed I’d actually get a seat in the audience with little or no notice! I got to experience some great local food and got to walk quite a bit around Manhattan. My feet and legs tell me that I walked around a little too much!

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Health, Home, Property, Safety

Toybox and shelf/desk for kids

March 4, 2007 kleucht 11 Comments

After not finding any kid furniture that we were completely happy with, I decided to design and create my own large rolling toybox and plastic-bin holding shelf that can turn into a desk as the kids grow up. If I can find some time, I might add some detailed plans for this project. But for now I’ll just post a couple of photos of the finished products.

Leave a comment below or send me an email from the link at the very bottom of the website if you are interested in seeing some plans.

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Science, Space, Technology

Space Shuttle Challenger mural at my high school

February 17, 2007 kleucht 4 Comments

When I was a student at Deer Creek Mackinaw (Dee-Mack) High School in Mackinaw, Illinois (1984 thru 1988) I was really into anything that was even remotely related to art. I loved drafting classes and all of the different art classes too. Our art teacher, Mrs. Schultz, organized some of the best art students there and had them paint a few organized and approved murals around the school. I was allowed to paint a Space Shuttle mural upstairs on the big 2-story wall just outside the library. I was also into space, and I had some NASA photos and mission patches and I basically just painted a collage of some of the items in that material. I dedicated the mural to the crew of the Challenger mission that was lost during their launch on January 28th, 1986. This large mural was a big project for a high school student … and I never actually technically finished the mural. I had intended to paint land masses on the earth, but never got around to it. I took these photos in the summer of 2002, so the mural was at least there for 14 years. I think they had to paint over it a few years ago, though.

Kurt

Health, Home, Property, Safety

Replacement of window sill on block exterior wall

February 17, 2007 kleucht 3 Comments

A few years ago on my 15 year old concrete block house, one of my exterior window sills started cracking severely and eventually started falling off in large chunks. We had new windows installed, and that work basically did the old broken window sill in for good. I decided to try to form a new concrete window sill on my own. You can see in the photo below that the missing window sill and the broken pieces on the ground after I had ripped off all the loose pieces.

In the photo below, you can clearly see the rebar showing throughout the length of the fractured concrete surface. I guess that rebar didn’t help the sill stay in one piece. It actually helped break it apart once the crack had formed in the area of the rebar.

I got the surface really clean and free of dust and concrete pieces. Then I painted on concrete adhesive that I bought at my local home improvement store. I’ve never used this stuff before, so I don’t know how well it works. As you can see from the photo below, I then mounted some wood strips that were about a half an inch thick to the wall with tapcon screws. These wood strips would become the bottom and side surfaces for my concrete sill mold.

Then I screwed a 1×6 plank that I had laying around to the wood strips. I mounted the top of the plank at the same height that I wanted the top of the new window sill to end up being. I then mixed up some concrete and poured it into the mold. I made sure that the top surface of the new sill slanted down and away from the house. Otherwise, water would pool instead of running off. The photo below shows the mold filled with concrete and curing with plastic around it.

The new sill is perfect. Eventually I got the house painted and the photo below shows the final painted product.

Kurt