Do you want to win great prizes? Sure you do.
Its time to submit your home-made picture to the photography contest. Its not like any other baby photo contest, its a contest with over 1,000,000$ of prizes.
All you have to do is go to picture.com and enter your contact details, select a title for your picture, select the category you would like the picture to be on and just upload the picture. That is it!
While you wait for the winners to be selected you can brows through the many great pictures that were submitted and even rate the ones you like.
Do you want to know the ending of the seventh and last Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)? If so just go to the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows web site.
Just kidding 
the site does not reveal the ending of the book but it holds an ending contest. There will be two winners. One winner will be selected for coming up with the best ending and the other winner will be selected for coming up with an ending that is most similar to the ending that JK Rowling puts into her book. The first winner of the contest will be selected on the day before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released (July 20th 2007). The second winner will be selected two weeks later after we’ve had the chance to read the book and draw a consensus on the details of the ending. The person who gets the most facts right will be the winner of the second prize. The prizes are 500$ each! You can already see a number of entries right now.
If you want to keep up with the rumors about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Harry Potter rumors site is a place to keep a look at.
Elbit Systems has unveiled a large mock-up of the Hermes 900, a development of the original Hermes 450 design. Elbit says that the new, larger, UAV is a tactical MALE UAV system, that will be available for a relatively lower cost than comparable systems.
The Hermes 900 has a maximum take-off weight of 970kg and can carry a 300kg internal payload. The aircraft has a 15m wingspan, and a flight ceiling of 33,000ft. Officials say that the maximum endurance with a minimal payload is 40 hours. According to defence analysts, the system could easily be weaponised. According to Eli Yitzhaki, VP, business development and marketing, the new UAV fills a market requirement for a relatively low-cost MALE system.
The UAV is currently configured to carry synthetic aperture radar and a turret-mounted electro-optic/infra-red sensor. The flight test programme for the system is scheduled to end in April 2008, with first flight tests occurring in November of this year.
Source and more info: domain-b
Unmanned aerial vehicle teams from 1st Air Cavalry Brigade have amassed 20,000 flight hours in the skies over Baghdad.
The crews, assigned or attached to the 615th Aviation Support Battalion “Cold Steel,” 1st ACB, 1st Cavalry Division, surpassed the deployment total of the unit that previously had the mission in Multinational Division-Baghdad, according to Capt. Joshua Chase, executive officer for Company E, 615th ASB – the unit that conducts the UAV mission for MND-B.
Soldiers from Co. E’s headquarters section track the flight hours and perform administrative duties for attached aerial vehicle operators. The unit has had only five accidents in 20,000 flight hours that resulted in total loss of a UAV, compared to 14 for the previous unit in about 16,000 flight hours, Chase said.
In all five cases, the accidents were caused by mechanical failure in which the vehicles had reached the expected end of their use cycle, said Staff Sgt. Jaime Gomez, Production Control noncommissioned officer in charge for Co. E and a native of El Paso, Texas.
“We pride ourselves on our safety record,” Gomez said. “On the maintenance side, if we fail, that reflects on our section.”
“The success rate as far as safety is the biggest compliment to how we do business,” Chase said. “We are rewriting the book as far as how this system should operate.”
Source and more info: blackanthem
With the successful first flight of the new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Sharc, EADS Defence & Security (DS) has launched the flight test campaign for this innovative unmanned helicopter. During the first flight, the unmanned coaxial dual-rotor 200 kg class helicopter – which is being tested by the Military Air Systems unit of DS – demonstrated stability and impressive flight characteristics.
Through this UAV demonstrator – roughly 250 cm long, 70 cm wide and 120 cm high – EADS has extended its range of high-performance UAVs. With a maximum take-off weight of 190 kg, the system can accommodate 60 kg of mission equipment in its payload compartments. Sharc is equipped with a redundant flight control unit, a laser altimeter and also control and data links. Sharc has been designed as an unmanned aerial vehicle without hydraulic components, the rotors being controlled by means of electrical actuators.
“The innovativeness of this demonstrator in all its details provides emphatic evidence of the leading position that EADS Defence & Security occupies in the field of high-performance unmanned aerial vehicles within Europe,” stated Stefan Zoller, member of the EADS Executive Committee for Defence & Security, in reaction to the successful first flight.
The modular design of the avionics facilitates the integration of a whole range of different mission equipment. Tests on electro-optical and infrared sensors are part of the overall flight campaign. In addition, Sharc can also accommodate a compact synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system.
“The Sharc demonstrator is a step on the way to a product that is precisely tailored to our customers’ needs. With its ability to land autonomously on deck, large payload capacity and excellent, stable flight characteristics, Sharc not only meets the navies’ military requirements for unmanned reconnaissance and surveillance as well as aerial target designation and damage control missions, but is also suitable for industrial monitoring,” explained Johann Heitzmann, CEO of Military Air Systems.
Thanks to its flight characteristics and the planned sensor equipment, Sharc already meets all the basic requirements in its pre-development stage before series production. The unmanned helicopter will be capable of autonomous take-off and landing – despite heavy seas – from a ship’s landing.
Source and more info: shephard
