MONDAY MAIL RUN #10: North Platte to Cheyenne

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After last week's WACO débâcle, we must return to Monomails one more time. It's available here:
http://tinyurl.com/storm-monomail. (Next week we go to something slower that we've flown before, and the following week to something much faster that will be brand new to most people.)

Week 10: North Platte, NE to Cheyenne, WY via Sidney, NE. (Note the original flights did not stop at Sidney; that is just for our convenience.) Depart: KLBF (Lee Bird Field, North Platte). Original 1920s airmail departure airport. Intermediate stop: KSNY (Lloyd W. Carr Field, Sidney). Arrive: KCYS (Jerry Olson Field, Cheyenne). Original 1920s airmail destination, that had "Jerry Olson" appended to its name in 2004. Aircraft: Boeing 221A Monomails only. Flight plans and maps here.

From our destination Cheyenne Airport's website:

It was back in 1911 that Cheyenne had its first glimpse into the world of aviation. While the aerial demonstration that year during Cheyenne Frontier Days was considered less than impressive, it marked the beginning of what would become a rich aviation history.

The U.S. Post Office gave Cheyenne the first real aviation boost with the introduction of air mail service across the United States from Chicago to San Francisco following World War I. Buck Heffron piloted the first air-mail flight destined for Salt Lake City, UT. The pilot was one of the many brave aviators who took off on daring flights guided only by limited instruments, landmarks, and a few road maps. The Airport served as one of the few destinations along the airmail route, and eventually became the maintenance base for Boeing Air Transport which eventually became United Airlines.

The Airport was not without its share of celebrated visitors. Famed aviators such as Charles Lindbergh and his “Spirit of St. Louis,” Amelia Earhart, and Capt. Elroy B. “Jepp” Jeppesen were among the few to touch down on its runways over the years.



Our overall progress so far...

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Flight plan and maps.

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Reminder! Join us in your Boeing Monomail at KLBF at 9pm ET for the next leg of our transcontinental airmail route reenactment.
Quiz question. Which of the following is true?

1. The jackalope, a rare type of rabbit with horns like deer's or antelope's antlers, was first discovered in Wyoming in the 1930s.
2. The city of Cheyenne, originally named Crow Creek Crossing by General Grenville M. Dodge in 1867, got its later name from Chief Sitting Bull, who named it as a joke after his adopted daughter Shy Annie Oakley. It stuck.
3. In an effort to promote cultural awareness in Wyoming, a law has been passed that all new buildings that cost over $100,000 must include in their building budget 1% of the total cost that must be used for works of art for public display.

Find out as you fly with us!

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Volunteers wanted! After the flight tonight, I would like to test a new airmail aircraft. Next week we'll be flying the Junkers or the Trimotor, but the week after that I'm scheduling for us to fly a new aircraft, and I want to find out if it's frame rate friendly. (I don't want another débâcle like we had last week with the WACO.)

If you have some time after tonight's flight, and you're confident in downloading and installing new aircraft, you can assist by installing this new aircraft. You don't have to fly it; just sit around on the tarmac with a group of other similar planes and report your frame rates! If it does cause unacceptable drops, then at least I have two weeks to find a replacement. If you can install it before our flight, even better, but we'll check at the end.

Please go to my Vintage Hangar, and look for the Lockheed model 9 Orion. Download both the zip files. Install the Orion_install_first one first - it has a point and click installer. Then apply the patch in Orion_Storms_patch_v1_0. There are instructions in my README manual if you need help, but it's not hard, especially if you've done it before. (Sorry I have to provide my mods as a patch because of the original author's request.) The airplane is a LOT better with my patch installed (IMHO)!

If you use Chrome as a browser and you get malware warnings, please note the following (that I've now plastered all over my OneDrive):

"CHROME HAS BLOCKED IT" HELP
MALICIOUS DOWNLOAD WARNINGS FROM CHROME

PROBLEM
You may get Malicious Download Warnings if you use the Chrome brower to download zip files from this OneDrive. It will tell you that it has blocked the download.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Google, the authors of Chrome, maintains a list of websites that are known to host malicious downloads and a list of trusted software publishers.

WHY IS CHROME FLAGGING THESE FILES?
The onedrive.live.com website is HUGE - I just have a tiny bit of it, along with millions of other uses - and no doubt there is indeed malware on there somewhere. It seems (to use a British expression) we are now all "tarred with the same brush". All users are now guilty by association and suffer from a tainted reputation as a result. Most of my files have to be ZIP files, and some contain EXE files, and Chrome is especially wary of those (and rightly so).

ARE THE FILES ON STORM'S ONEDRIVE MALICIOUS?
Not to my knowledge. They were clean when I uploaded them. Unless my account has been hacked, they should still be OK. Of course the account MAY have been hacked, although you would probably not be reading this if it were!

WHAT SHOULD I DO?
It's your choice and your responsibility, not mine. Here's one choice you could make:

Example:
1. You download the Bede BD-5 from Storm's Modern Oddities, and get the message, "BD-5 freeware Storm's mod.zip is malicious, and Chrome has blocked it," together with a No Entry sign and a Dismiss button.
2. You press the "Show all downloads" link on the right of the download bar and you ignore the Dismiss button.
3. On your full list of downloads, you see see the top entry repeats the message. You click "Recover malicious file."
4. Chrome now gives you a popup saying "Recover malware? This file will harm your computer. Even if you have downloaded files from this website before, the website might have been hacked. Instead of recovering this file, you can retry the download later." It offers you two choices: "Hurt me plenty" and "Be safe".
5. You click "Hurt me plenty", the icon on your download page changes to a zipped folder, and the link "Show in folder" is offered.
6. You click "Show in folder", the folder opens up, and you right-click the highlighted zip file.
7. From the right-click menu you select your virus checker's "Scan BD-5 freeware Storm's mod.zip". (In my case, I use "Avast! Internet Security" and that is the option it gives me.)
8. You run the check and you observe your virus checker says "NO THREAT FOUND". And because you trust Avast! Internet Security more than Google, you ignore Chrome's previous statement of "This file will harm your computer" and you carry on with your installation.

SHOULD I DO THAT WILL ALL FILES THAT CHROME FLAGS?
No! But it's your choice and your responsibility, not mine. My choice is that if the file is zipped up, I don't unzip it unless I have had it checked and OKed by Avast! Internet Security first. However, if the file is not zipped up, I don't download it. Your choice is your choice and your responsibility.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!