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Saitek PS40U Aviator Joystick for use with PC or PS3 Game Console

Get on your enemy's 'six', chalk up another kill and rule the skies with the Saitek Aviator -- the best way to play flight games on your Playstation 3 and PC. The Aviator gives you total accuracy and complete control, improving the way you play air combat games, heightening realism and enhancing gameplay. Features include: 3 buttons, heavy duty trigger and POV analog stick; 2 buttons, Start and Select and D-pad; Dual mode switch - changes control layout to support different games; Large, flat base gives total stability. System Requirement: Connectivity: USB 1.1/2.0; System Requirement: Playstation 3, Windows XP, XP64 and Windows Vista (all versions) and Windows 7. Works great with: IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey; Tom Clancy: HAWX; Blazing Angels; Blazing Angels 2

n 1950, the Fulton Airphibian became the first roadable aircraft, an aircraft designed to be used as a car or an airplane to be certificated by the Civil Aviation Administration (CAA). Other roadable aircraft had already been built, for example Waldo Waterman's Arrow/Aerobile and William Stout's Skycar, both of which are in the NASM collection--as well as other designs, but none won certification.

Robert Fulton Jr., developed his Airphibian as a flexible means of business and personal transportation. During World War II, he flew his own aircraft around the country for government contract work, and quite often he had been left at airports with unreliable or inadequate means of transportation into towns. The roadable aircraft would be flown to an airport and, with the disengagement of the wings and tail, it would become a car, capable of being driven to the final destination. Fulton designed the Airphibian as a high-wing monoplane, similar in appearance to a Stinson Voyager but with a distinctive four-wheel landing gear with fairings/fenders. It had a conventional fabric-covered steel-tube aft fuselage and empennage, straight tapered cantilever wings of metal rib and fabric construction, and a semi-monocoque forward fuselage that detached and converted into a car.
Following Fulton's desire for secrecy, Army Air Force Captain Frazer Dougherty piloted the first flight of the prototype off of a remote grass strip near Middleburg, VA in the spring of 1945. Dougherty and Fulton had met at a dinner party at avation entrepeneur and engineer Grover Loening's New York home and Dougherty soon became the company test pilot. Engineers Ted Polhemus and Franz Alverez and veteran mechanic Wayne Dasher were the technical team that worked on Fulton's aerial gunnery simulator and also built the Airphiban prototype. To acquire the funding for design, certification, and production, Fulton formed Continental, Inc. at the Danbury Airport, Danbury, Connecticut.

The first production prototype test flight was May 21, 1947. Ground handling was considered excellent in both the roadable and airplane configurations. Normal turning of the steering wheel provided steering on the road. The right rudder pedal provided normal brake operation, the left pedal operated the clutch, and an accelerator provided power. The engine drove the rear wheels through a torque converter, drive shaft, combined transmission and differential, and universal joints. All four wheels could be braked for ground operations; only the rear two wheels could be braked for taxiing. Normal speeds were 110 mph in the air and 55 mph on the ground.

The propeller, rear fuselage, and wings were removed for road operations. Attachment to the aircraft was accomplished by backing the car to the fuselage, leveling the tail and wings, moving three locking levers that inserted and locked large pins into fittings. The spar and tail parts slid into horizontally-inclined U-fittings. After locking into place, the two outrigger wheels that support the wings and the retractable tail wheel were cranked up into storage position. The propeller was removed from its bracket on the side of the fuselage, the prop spinner was removed, the propeller screwed on with a built-in wrench, and the spinner replaced again. The engine would not start if everything was not properly connected. The design is actually composed of seventeen different inventions.

In December 1950 the CAA approved the FA-2 with a strut-braced wing and 150 hp electric drive engine. The first production model, FA-2-101, N74153, flew in 1950. It had an Aircooled Motors 6A4150-B-3 modified engine. A cantilever wing model, the FA-3 was certificated by the CAA in June 1952 and the production model, FA-3-101, was flown shortly thereafter. This aircraft, N74154, is NASM's aircraft. Robert Fulton received an order for eight production models, to be used by CAA inspectors themselves, and they were built but not delivered. Instead, several company officers felt that that they were not getting enough of a return on their investment in the certification process, so, in 1953, they pulled out of the deal, taking the financial backing and several Airphibians with them.

In 1960, Joseph J. Ryan, a former Continental officer, donated N74154 to the Museum. Three other Airphibians remained near Charlottesville, Virginia, for many years but were returned to the Fulton workshop in Connecticut; one went to Europe, and one is in New Jersey.

The Airphibian represents a technical success as a flying car, but, despite being a media favorite during public demonstrations around the U.S. and in Great Britain, it did not become a marketable design. The prototypes were driven over 200,000 miles and made more than 6,000 car/plane conversions. The conversion process, however, was judged to be too complicated and lengthy. Performance in the air was considered sluggish due to the weight penalty of automotive parts, a perennial problem in aerocars. Therefore, t

High Commissioner Guterres at the opening of the annual Executive Committee meeting.
UNHCR / J-M Ferre / 3 October 2011

ExCom Meeting: UNHCR chief warns that displacement crises multiplying, becoming more unpredictable

GENEVA, October 3 (UNHCR) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned today that an increasingly complex international environment is making it harder to find solutions for the world's more than 43 million refugees, internally displaced, and stateless people.

Speaking at the opening of the annual meeting in Geneva of UNHCR's governing Executive Committee, Guterres said the international community needed to up its collective game to prevent conflict, to adapt to climate change and to better manage natural disasters.

"Unpredictability has become the name of the game. Crises are multiplying. Conflicts are becoming more complex. And solutions are proving to be more and more elusive," he said. "In such challenging circumstances, we must recognize our shared responsibility. And we must exercise our shared commitment."

Guterres pointed to the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, describing it as the worst situation he had seen in his time as high commissioner. He spoke of a visit he had made in July to Dollo Ado, in south-east Ethiopia, where he met a woman refugee named Musleema who had lost three of her six children in the flight from Somalia. Humanitarian organizations, prevented from working in many areas of Somalia, were in little position to help.

"All of us could see this escalation coming from a long way away. Nonetheless, we, the international community, were slow to react to signs that things were starting to deteriorate," he said. "What is worse, we also didn't have the capacity to prevent them from getting this bad in the first place."

This year has seen a succession of full-blown displacement and refugee crises, from Cote d'Ivoire, to uprisings in the Arab region, to the flight of hundreds of thousands of people from and within famine-stricken Somalia. Guterres paid tribute to all countries neighbouring this year's crisis zones – in Africa, Europe and the Middle East – including for keeping their borders open, even under the pressure of large-scale refugee or migrant-related influxes.

But he also warned of the dangers of rising xenophobia, which he said was threatening the protection space available to refugees.

"In my view, multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious societies are not only a good thing, they are inevitable," he said. "Building tolerant and open communities is a slow and delicate process. But non-discrimination is a core human rights principle, and it is the duty of all states to acknowledge and give effect to it. Refugees cannot become collateral damage of anti-immigrant attitudes and policies."

UNHCR relies on voluntary contributions for its work. In 2010, donors provided a record US$1.86 billion in contributions, and this amount is expected to be exceeded in 2011. Guterres acknowledged that the funding environment was nonetheless becoming more difficult and said UNHCR would be intensifying its efforts to broaden its income base, including by reaching out even more to the private sector for support.

He also appealed to the Executive Committee for better understanding of UNHCR's need for flexibly earmarked funding to help the organization manage the many refugee crises it deals with in locations that receive few international headlines. Last year, 82 per cent of donor funding was partly or tightly restricted to specific situations or issues.

Guterres devoted much of his speech to the drive at UNHCR to improve efficiencies, and of efforts to strengthen the organization's capacity to respond quickly and in a more structured way to fast-breaking crises and their aftermath. Since 2006, he said, UNHCR, had reduced its headquarters costs from 14 to 9 per cent of overall expenditure and staff costs from 41 per cent to 27 per cent.

UNHCR aims to be able to respond, within 72 hours, to simultaneous emergencies affecting up to 600,000 people. To support this, the organization increased its emergency stockpiles in 2011 by 20 per cent, reinforced its capacity to deliver aid, increased the number of senior staff on standby for rapid deployment, and created new posts to help refugee protection. Guterres promised a new drive, over the next two years, to complement these measures with strengthened accountability and oversight.

Meanwhile, Tunisia's Acting President Fouad Mebazaa told delegates about the challenges faced by his country earlier this year after hundreds of thousands of people, mainly migrant workers, fled to Tunisia to escape fighting in Libya. "We believe humanitarian issues are global in nature and essence, and, as such, the challenge can be met collectively thanks to a community approach and action and a global alliance dri