But then I read his letter. If it was a technical issue keeping them from removing her from the list, you'd think his message would acknowledge that. At least say "Sorry we're unable to remove you from the list."

The tone of his message is clear. There may be a technical issue, but he's more than happy to continue sending these messages to her. After all, he'll be praying for her.

Anyone have a quarter?

EDIT: oops. Should've scrolled down further.

And way more bus-like. Picture a school bus with a tailboom and a rotor, and you're pretty close to getting the sense of a CH-53.

While I was at GTMO, I'd found myself trying to wrap my mind around the size of the CH-53E. And then, as luck would have it, an amphibious asault ship came into dock. And from my car, I saw these absolutely huge helicopters on the deck. And I thought "Yeah-- that's pretty effing big."

Then my viewing angle changed, and I saw the CH-53E's, behind and dwarfing the 'pretty effing big' helicopters I'd already seen.

Models/diecast, sure. But good luck finding a picture of the actual cars together.

[www.shincollection.com]

The ugly one on the right is the CLR-- the car that flipped. It was later, and far less attractive.

[files.conceptcarz.com]

It's the wrong car.

The bigger difference is at the nose. The LM laid the grill down further, lowered the height between the fenders, and channeled air to inlets just ahead of the doors. The GTR had a smoother, less interupted snout.

The GTR: [files.conceptcarz.com]

So, thanks.

I was the only one that treated them that way. Pistols would end up back in the display case while still cocked, etc. I'd be the guy decocking them all whenever that happened.

Which is doubly dumb.

The advantage of gullwing doors-- even 'conventional' gullwing doors-- is that they don't need much lateral clearance to open, compared to most regular doors.

The hinge is so close to the center of the vehicle, that the radius of the arc the edge of the door traces is longer than on a conventional door. This makes the edge follow a path which is closer to straight than on a regular door. So, where a regular door's edge swings out from the body, a gullwing's edge follows a more nearly straight path upward, so not too far to the side. Also, \iIt's furthest extent from the car comes when the bottom edge of the door is level with the hinge-- when the line connecting that edge to the hinge is horizontal. But that's a relatively small change, in terms of degrees of rotation, so it swings out relatively little.

Further, on a gullwing door the radius of that arc is the linear distance from the bottom edge of the door to the hinge. It is unaffected by the length of the door. So, the door can be as long as you'd like without affecting the amount of lateral clearance needed. With a conventional door, increasing the radius (by lengthening the door), obviously increases the clearance needed, because the center of the arc-- the hinge-- is at the center of the car.

One of the prices for those advantages are that increasing the height of a gullwing door-- as on an SUV/crossover-- can have an affect on the door's clearance. It means that the angular difference between the door being closed and the door's bottom edge being level with the hinge is greater-- the door swings out further as you open it. (The longer radius means a closer-to-striaght arc, but oriented less vertically, more outwardly). Still, though, I think a tall gullwing door is sitll likely to offer advantages in lateral clearance-- just not as dramatic an advantage as on a car with less-tall doors. So, not much of a drawback.

The other big prices are the need for vertical clearance-- made worse on a tall vehicle, like an SUV/Crossover-- and the need to lift the weight of the door-- made worse on a vehicle with larger doors, like an SUV/Crossover.

So, they fitted gullwing doors to the body style least suited to it. Then, to mitigate a relatively minor shortcoming of doing so, they added weight and complexity to it-- worsening one of the more major shortcomings-- and completely neglected to address the other major shortcoming of doing so.

I've got to imagine these are powered doors. If not, they're spring/strut assisted, and that's going to require a heckuva strong spring or strut, which would require reaching up to a fairly high door (another reason not to put gullwing doors on a tall vehicle) and hanging off of it to close it. Probably powered-- not a great idea on a battery electric vehicle.

It's just plain dumb.