Hey all. Mrs. Bug and I have been traveling a bit over the last couple-three years, and I finally got the wherewithal to actually make and use a Flickr account.
Here's the link to my Flickr account.
I'm much happier with the images from S. Illinois than I am the ones from New Orleans, mostly because I got better with the camera and used a monopod for the SI shots. Still, I'm quite happy with the coral reef tank shots from NO.
For you gearheads, the camera is a Nikon Coolpix 3000-something-or-other. The panorama shots were stiched together with Autostitch
Vacation Photos
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XMEN Gambit
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Thanks for sharing, Bug! I didn't see a stitched pano shot, just the components. What's the ship?
And yes, that definitely looks like beaver damage to me, but then I've never been around 'em much. Rogue had some living in a pond in her backyard way back when, tho, so maybe she can speak with a little more experience.
And yes, that definitely looks like beaver damage to me, but then I've never been around 'em much. Rogue had some living in a pond in her backyard way back when, tho, so maybe she can speak with a little more experience.
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Ambush Bug
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The ship was the USS New Orleans, one of the Navy's new 'multi-role' ships, although it is mainly meant to carry several hundred Marines along with their beach landing gear, tanks, hovercraft, a couple of Ospreys, and two or three other choppers.
We got to go inside and take a tour. It was the oddest thing, really; the ship seemed much larger on the inside than it did the outside. I'd have taken pictures of the inside, but alas, such was not allowed.
Whoever installed their fiber-optics, though, needs to be scolded. I saw more than a few runs with bends tighter than the factory specs allowed.
We got to go inside and take a tour. It was the oddest thing, really; the ship seemed much larger on the inside than it did the outside. I'd have taken pictures of the inside, but alas, such was not allowed.
Whoever installed their fiber-optics, though, needs to be scolded. I saw more than a few runs with bends tighter than the factory specs allowed.
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XMEN Gambit
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Ambush Bug
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Well, it wasn't so much that the cable was bent into a curve beyond which it could transmit light--it could. It was that the cable was bent right up to that limit and given no slack to account for moving, expansion//contraction of the hull and bulkheads, and so on.
However, our tourguide (a petty officer, I do believe) informed us that this was only the second ship of its class and the builders were still working the bugs out. You could see subtle cues to this all over the ship. The bridge, for example, had been set upon by the crew after completion--they had added lots of padding to all the head-level corners of the various displays and TVs mounted from the ceiling. You could also find extra network style cabling ziptied alongside the actual runs. Most interesting of all to me was that the original builders had placed an arm-mounted deck light such that the ship's retrieval crane would bend it down when the crane was put into storage.
Little things like that. This is not to say the ship was shoddy, rather that it did have some things that were being fixed by the sailors on board.
Of course, one of the cool things was that there was your average cross-hatch patterned steel deckplate everywhere... and all of it was coated with grip. All of it. That, and I simply could not believe how many different functions the designers crammed into the hull.
However, our tourguide (a petty officer, I do believe) informed us that this was only the second ship of its class and the builders were still working the bugs out. You could see subtle cues to this all over the ship. The bridge, for example, had been set upon by the crew after completion--they had added lots of padding to all the head-level corners of the various displays and TVs mounted from the ceiling. You could also find extra network style cabling ziptied alongside the actual runs. Most interesting of all to me was that the original builders had placed an arm-mounted deck light such that the ship's retrieval crane would bend it down when the crane was put into storage.
Little things like that. This is not to say the ship was shoddy, rather that it did have some things that were being fixed by the sailors on board.
Of course, one of the cool things was that there was your average cross-hatch patterned steel deckplate everywhere... and all of it was coated with grip. All of it. That, and I simply could not believe how many different functions the designers crammed into the hull.
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Spinning Hat
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Thanks for the link to autostitch.. I put one together the other day, but need to adjust color and the shape, etc... I'll post it soon as I get it all complete. 
"Never, Never, Never quit." - Winston Churchill
"Men don't like to cuddle. They only cuddle if it leads to.. You know.. Lower cuddling." - Ray Romano
"Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a dump truck." - Ricky, age 10
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XMEN Ashaman DTM
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Those are incredibly vibrant shots in the aquarium! My camera can do those, but it has to be set for them.
I like the ones of the ship too. That size of ship is a bit bigger than the next generation destroyers, from what I can recall. The same next-gen destroyers that will carry railguns as one of their armaments. (And if I had my way, they'd also carry the Active Denial System as well as a solid-state laser system for point defense.)
As for the fiber... sometimes they install things because that's the only way it will go in. It happens sometimes. Especially on new things. I've seen some aircraft, where the first one was heavily instrumented for test, but the aircraft didn't have the same wiring until several revisions. I can't name them.
I like the ones of the ship too. That size of ship is a bit bigger than the next generation destroyers, from what I can recall. The same next-gen destroyers that will carry railguns as one of their armaments. (And if I had my way, they'd also carry the Active Denial System as well as a solid-state laser system for point defense.)
As for the fiber... sometimes they install things because that's the only way it will go in. It happens sometimes. Especially on new things. I've seen some aircraft, where the first one was heavily instrumented for test, but the aircraft didn't have the same wiring until several revisions. I can't name them.
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Ambush Bug
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The USS New Orleans is actually a San Antonio-class ship. A troop transport with all kinds of extra goodies.
It really does seem bigger on the inside than the outside. What I found amazing was that there are apparently individual bunks for every crewman, landing force and actual sailors included. Granted, everything is jammed into the hull as tightly as possible, but it certainly works!
Come to think of it, lemme paste what I wrote to my dad (who served in the US Navy in the 50s) about the USS New Orleans:
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Pop: I'm not sure the photos convey the sheer SIZE of the ship. That being said, you might be able to get a good sense of scale from the small inflatable patrol boats visible in the Scale Shot photo. They were about 15' long, maybe 20', and generally had three soldiers in them. I dearly wish I could have gotten some shots of the inside, but that was unfortunately not allowed. Granted, the areas they showed us didn't have anything TOO sensitive, though I imagine the sickbay and bridge would have been quite informative. The thing that blew my mind was how the ship seemed bigger from the inside. You've seen those 'rough terrain' forklifts, I suppose? The ones with four tractor tires, a cab, and a forklift arm on a long boom that construction companies use when the terrain is far too rough for your average warehouse lift? They had two of those in-storage when we toured, and they were tucked neatly away in a corner of the middle storage deck. They took up mabye five to eight percent of that deck's total storage, and these are not small machines by any means. The well deck was positively cavernous--our guide (I still can't remember his rank, sad to say) told us that it would easily hold two 75-ton hovercraft, said hovercraft being able to lift out two M1A1 Abrams tanks apiece at ~63 tons per tank. That's not counting all the landing craft and amphibious vehicles it could hold as well. (something like 30 of those) Of interesting note was that the well-deck had two lighting systems. One was for use when the well-deck ramp was closed, and another was a low-light system for when it was open.
You'd also have been interested in the ship wiring. There were huge bundles of cables, easily as big around as your or my torso, neatly tucked away in wiring racks on the corridor ceilings. There were labeling strips every thirty feet or so for each cable. I did notice that (and here I'm drawing on my recent networking classes) that the fiber-optic stuff was bent a little too close to its maximum rated inner turn radius for my own personal liking, but I'm also suspecting that the Navy actually bought the really good stuff that will take that kind of abuse. Of special note was that the crew had made additions to the cabling already, even with the ship not yet commissioned. There were wrist-thick bundles of an unknown cable type running through various ports and bulkheads, out of the standard harnesses, presumably for intra-ship communications. The bridge had also received improvements since the shipyard had finished--padding for protruding monitors not put in at build-time, and I'm pretty sure someone bolted on some overhead handholds for stormy seas.
The large 'smokestacks' on the exterior of the ship are not smokestacks at all, but hollow columns that hold the ship's big radar arrays. I thought of your tales of maintaining the Oriskany's radar systems when they were explaining how the USS New Orlean's octagonal shells are there to protect the systems from weather and salt. Would that you'd had such systems in your time of service! Doubtless you'd have had less fear of getting cooked.
The ship's armaments are very light. There's 2x 30mm cannons, 2x 26-count missle racks (the kind that are reloaded by exchanging the entire box, I think), about eight 50mm mounted machineguns for small-craft 'deterrence', and a couple of the Navy's 'Whizzer' anti-missle, anti-air, radar-controlled Gatling-type cannons. I could not find the Whizzers at all, and I'm familiar with the visual profile they generate. I suspect they're up top, out of view, and probably slaved into the main radar systems. Nasty piece of machinery, those--I've seen video of them in action.
I was told that this particular class of ship does not ever operate alone. From what I can gather, it's usually sent out alongside a carrier and a trio or quartet of Burke-class destroyers, along with another of its own class, the San Antonio LPD. Having read up on Burkes, I can see why the armament is so light. Burkes are loaded to the gills with all kinds of missles. From what I could see and infer from my own studies, the Navy isn't into shore bombardment as it used to be. But, given what this ship (and another like it) can put onto a beach, combined with cruise missles, perhaps they don't need to. I've read up a bit on those hovercraft, and they are not unarmed.
If you look at the middle of the ship in the shots provided, you'll see a trapezoid that looks like it's out of true with the rest of the ship. It's actually a crane! I couldn't get shots of it from the inside, unfortunately, but the way it works is that the main crane is housed in the body, and flips out for use. It's used to lift and retrieve small boats and supplies from the water, and the arrangement of the operator's cab is very, very slick. There's still some design bugs to be worked out, as I saw that the main crane arm while in its rest position was crushing the armature used to mount a deck-light.
Of interest is that the mess is the only place I saw in the ship with actual wood decking. Everything else... EVERYTHING else...was of the no-slip rubber variety. The only diamond-pattern plate I saw was on the stairs and ladders we used from deck to deck. The hallways were positively cavernous--we could fit three abreast in almost all of them, no problem. Very little protruding pipes and machinery, though there were tons (literally) of electrical panels with dire warning labels pasted on them.
We were told that the USS New Orleans had enough bunk space for not only the 300 crew (of which 3 were Marines), but the 800+ Marines it could carry to man all that landing equipment. I'm not sure where they jammed all those bunks, but I have no trouble believing it would fit. We only toured maybe five percent of the ship all told. The bunks were quite luxurious compared to what you have shown me in our vacation travels of the past. They were arranged in a 3x pattern like that submarine we saw in Chicago, but the two bottom bunks were L-shaped, so that one could sit up in them and read. The top bunk was flat, and I was informed that the low man on the totem pole was assigned those.
The landing deck (above the well deck in the back) was quite huge, and had a small hangar that would reportedly hold two Blackhawk helicopters. The deck itself could take 4x Blackhawks at once, or 2x of the new Osprey birds. If you look at the picture titled 'Scale Shot' closely, you can see the small air-traffic-control booth set in the upper-left of that deck.
All in all, the New Orleans was an exercise in cramming a lot of stuff into a fixed amount of space, and doing it well. Were any of us serving on it, I don't think we'd feel cramped in any way. The ship was also remarkably stable. I felt the wake from a passing barge-ship exactly once, and even then I had to stand still for over a minute to detect the waves. It was like touring an exceptionally large steel house.
Oh, and they had a retractable crane over the main gangplank entrance. Our guide informed us it was used to pull up cargo and supplies. It was a very neat piece of equipment, and from what I could see, it would extend out something like 30 feet from the side of the ship.
One last thing: the upper decks around the bridge had deck-mounted 'Big Eyes' binoculars. We weren't allowed to look through them, but I'm quite sure they'd let you see the dot on the I of a Speed Limit sign at a mile or more. Very impressive optiks.
--
It really does seem bigger on the inside than the outside. What I found amazing was that there are apparently individual bunks for every crewman, landing force and actual sailors included. Granted, everything is jammed into the hull as tightly as possible, but it certainly works!
Come to think of it, lemme paste what I wrote to my dad (who served in the US Navy in the 50s) about the USS New Orleans:
--
Pop: I'm not sure the photos convey the sheer SIZE of the ship. That being said, you might be able to get a good sense of scale from the small inflatable patrol boats visible in the Scale Shot photo. They were about 15' long, maybe 20', and generally had three soldiers in them. I dearly wish I could have gotten some shots of the inside, but that was unfortunately not allowed. Granted, the areas they showed us didn't have anything TOO sensitive, though I imagine the sickbay and bridge would have been quite informative. The thing that blew my mind was how the ship seemed bigger from the inside. You've seen those 'rough terrain' forklifts, I suppose? The ones with four tractor tires, a cab, and a forklift arm on a long boom that construction companies use when the terrain is far too rough for your average warehouse lift? They had two of those in-storage when we toured, and they were tucked neatly away in a corner of the middle storage deck. They took up mabye five to eight percent of that deck's total storage, and these are not small machines by any means. The well deck was positively cavernous--our guide (I still can't remember his rank, sad to say) told us that it would easily hold two 75-ton hovercraft, said hovercraft being able to lift out two M1A1 Abrams tanks apiece at ~63 tons per tank. That's not counting all the landing craft and amphibious vehicles it could hold as well. (something like 30 of those) Of interesting note was that the well-deck had two lighting systems. One was for use when the well-deck ramp was closed, and another was a low-light system for when it was open.
You'd also have been interested in the ship wiring. There were huge bundles of cables, easily as big around as your or my torso, neatly tucked away in wiring racks on the corridor ceilings. There were labeling strips every thirty feet or so for each cable. I did notice that (and here I'm drawing on my recent networking classes) that the fiber-optic stuff was bent a little too close to its maximum rated inner turn radius for my own personal liking, but I'm also suspecting that the Navy actually bought the really good stuff that will take that kind of abuse. Of special note was that the crew had made additions to the cabling already, even with the ship not yet commissioned. There were wrist-thick bundles of an unknown cable type running through various ports and bulkheads, out of the standard harnesses, presumably for intra-ship communications. The bridge had also received improvements since the shipyard had finished--padding for protruding monitors not put in at build-time, and I'm pretty sure someone bolted on some overhead handholds for stormy seas.
The large 'smokestacks' on the exterior of the ship are not smokestacks at all, but hollow columns that hold the ship's big radar arrays. I thought of your tales of maintaining the Oriskany's radar systems when they were explaining how the USS New Orlean's octagonal shells are there to protect the systems from weather and salt. Would that you'd had such systems in your time of service! Doubtless you'd have had less fear of getting cooked.
The ship's armaments are very light. There's 2x 30mm cannons, 2x 26-count missle racks (the kind that are reloaded by exchanging the entire box, I think), about eight 50mm mounted machineguns for small-craft 'deterrence', and a couple of the Navy's 'Whizzer' anti-missle, anti-air, radar-controlled Gatling-type cannons. I could not find the Whizzers at all, and I'm familiar with the visual profile they generate. I suspect they're up top, out of view, and probably slaved into the main radar systems. Nasty piece of machinery, those--I've seen video of them in action.
I was told that this particular class of ship does not ever operate alone. From what I can gather, it's usually sent out alongside a carrier and a trio or quartet of Burke-class destroyers, along with another of its own class, the San Antonio LPD. Having read up on Burkes, I can see why the armament is so light. Burkes are loaded to the gills with all kinds of missles. From what I could see and infer from my own studies, the Navy isn't into shore bombardment as it used to be. But, given what this ship (and another like it) can put onto a beach, combined with cruise missles, perhaps they don't need to. I've read up a bit on those hovercraft, and they are not unarmed.
If you look at the middle of the ship in the shots provided, you'll see a trapezoid that looks like it's out of true with the rest of the ship. It's actually a crane! I couldn't get shots of it from the inside, unfortunately, but the way it works is that the main crane is housed in the body, and flips out for use. It's used to lift and retrieve small boats and supplies from the water, and the arrangement of the operator's cab is very, very slick. There's still some design bugs to be worked out, as I saw that the main crane arm while in its rest position was crushing the armature used to mount a deck-light.
Of interest is that the mess is the only place I saw in the ship with actual wood decking. Everything else... EVERYTHING else...was of the no-slip rubber variety. The only diamond-pattern plate I saw was on the stairs and ladders we used from deck to deck. The hallways were positively cavernous--we could fit three abreast in almost all of them, no problem. Very little protruding pipes and machinery, though there were tons (literally) of electrical panels with dire warning labels pasted on them.
We were told that the USS New Orleans had enough bunk space for not only the 300 crew (of which 3 were Marines), but the 800+ Marines it could carry to man all that landing equipment. I'm not sure where they jammed all those bunks, but I have no trouble believing it would fit. We only toured maybe five percent of the ship all told. The bunks were quite luxurious compared to what you have shown me in our vacation travels of the past. They were arranged in a 3x pattern like that submarine we saw in Chicago, but the two bottom bunks were L-shaped, so that one could sit up in them and read. The top bunk was flat, and I was informed that the low man on the totem pole was assigned those.
The landing deck (above the well deck in the back) was quite huge, and had a small hangar that would reportedly hold two Blackhawk helicopters. The deck itself could take 4x Blackhawks at once, or 2x of the new Osprey birds. If you look at the picture titled 'Scale Shot' closely, you can see the small air-traffic-control booth set in the upper-left of that deck.
All in all, the New Orleans was an exercise in cramming a lot of stuff into a fixed amount of space, and doing it well. Were any of us serving on it, I don't think we'd feel cramped in any way. The ship was also remarkably stable. I felt the wake from a passing barge-ship exactly once, and even then I had to stand still for over a minute to detect the waves. It was like touring an exceptionally large steel house.
Oh, and they had a retractable crane over the main gangplank entrance. Our guide informed us it was used to pull up cargo and supplies. It was a very neat piece of equipment, and from what I could see, it would extend out something like 30 feet from the side of the ship.
One last thing: the upper decks around the bridge had deck-mounted 'Big Eyes' binoculars. We weren't allowed to look through them, but I'm quite sure they'd let you see the dot on the I of a Speed Limit sign at a mile or more. Very impressive optiks.
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XMEN Gambit
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It does seem to be definitely a support ship, but a handy one to have around.