A Great Time For Luxury Watches

Felipe Massa with Ferrari cars mirrors your style? Want to compare notes with the Formula One drivers? You can if you sport a Hublot on your wrist. The Swiss luxury watch maker has arranged for its patrons to meet the Ferrari team at the Indian Grand Prix. “Hublots are often the fifth or even the sixth watch after people have bought more popular brands,” explains Ashok Goel, the brand’s sales consultant in India. “For such buyers, just owning the brand is not enough. The entire pre and post-owning experience counts.” Hublot’s efforts to ensure its Indian customers get what they want have borne rich dividends. In October 2011, as the official F1 watch maker, it launched a limited edition watch for the first Indian Grand Prix, which had the tricolour on the dial and strap and carried a price tag of $47,000 (Rs 23 lakh).Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, All 200 pieces, including the 35 allotted to India, were snapped up, says Goel proudly.

Hublot isn’t the only watch maker that goes out of its way to pamper its customers. Swiss watch maker Parmigiani, for instance, takes special guests, including watch owners from India, for rides in its bright orange hot air balloon in Gstaad, Switzerland. And Breitling is known for sending hand-made chocolates, monogrammed caps and similar little gifts even several weeks after the purchase. The Indian premium and luxury watch market is ticking furiously with activity. Some of the world’s best known brands are now available in the country — from Tissot, Dior and Omega to Patek Philippe, IWC, Raymond Weil and Rolex — and they’re all working overtime to attract customers and make their presence felt.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister.

Whether it’s a brand like Rolex that established its India subsidiary in July 2008 after many years of retailing through appointed dealers; Raymond Weil and Omega opening stand-alone stores; Seiko and Rado expanding their distribution reach to smaller cities and towns; Hublot and Tag Heuer offering exclusive Indian editions; or brands like Longines and Ulysse-Nardin signing up local celebrities (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Yuvraj Singh, respectively), watch brands are willing to do whatever it takes to find a place on the wrists of well-heeled Indians.

You don’t have to look far for the reasons. While China’s luxury watch market is the world’s largest, India isn’t doing badly either. “The watches and jewellery segments represent the largest and fastest growing segments within the luxury goods space,” says Technopak’s luxury report for 2011-12. Valued at approximately Rs 1,000 crore, the premium and luxury watch market makes up nearly a third of the Rs 2,750 crore luxury products market. And it’s growing at over 20% y-o-y, which is much faster than the 10-15% of the Rs 4,200-crore watch market and is also more than the 15% at which the overall luxury market is growing. Some estimates suggest the Indian market for premium and luxury watches could double in just two or three years whereas, says Bain Capital, global average growth in the same period will be only around 18%. “Buying a Rs 25,000 watch was ment even five or seven years ago. Today, this is a price point where impulse purchase is quite common, especially at our airport stores and busy malls,” says Yashovardhan Saboo, owner of Ethos, a 38-store strong luxury watch retail chain. Saboo also manages the Omega boutique in Mumbai and a Rolex boutique in Bengaluru.

What’s driving the urge to splurge? The usual reasons: increasing incomes and aspirations, and awareness of international trends.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. And affluent Indians are spending not just on themselves; high-end timepieces are also popular as gifts. Whether it’s a present for the groom or a corporate gift, forking out Rs 1 lakh on a watch isn’t uncommon anymore. Companies like Reliance Industries, Asian Paints and several financial institutions routinely buy premium watches,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. from Tissot to Omega, as gifts for associates as well as for senior executives. “We get about 30-35% of our sales volume and value via corporate gifts,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs.” says Rajiv Popley, director of Popley Group, a well-known Mumbai store. And the segment, at least in metros, is only growing bigger.

With so many eager customers it’s not surprising that watch brands are trying to get closer to their buyers. The first step is opening more stores and appointing retailers to increase points of sales. LVMH Watch and Jewellery India general manager Franck Dardenne, for instance, plans to open seven new Tag Heuer stores in the next two years to add to its current near-100; his company already has 16 outlets for group brand Dior and seven for Zenith. “India is a small market at present but it is showing growth,” he says. Dardenne’s competitor, Olivier Bernheim, president and CEO of the Raymond Weil watch brand, is also on a store opening spree. In July, he launched a stand-alone boutique in Kolkata and two in Mumbai (there’s one more coming up shortly) to add to the existing two in Chennai and Delhi. Then, in February, Japanese watch brand Seiko launched its Ananta Collection, which retails for prices from Rs 1-5 lakh a piece. Speaking at the launch, Seiko Watch India president Susumu Kawanishi said he was impressed with the growth potential of the luxury watch segment in India. “We have established a subsidiary in India to move ourselves closer to the Indian consumer.” Seiko’s plan is to expand its presence from the current 250 point-of-sales in 61 cities, to 300 over the next two years. It will also set up eight stand-alone stores (currently there’s one in Chennai).

Travelin' Man goes to Verona

For me this day began at 8 a.m. after another sleep-stealing bout with my overactive imagination. My efforts to rest were indeed efforts because my mind is often flooded with thoughts coming from all directions. Exhaustion is the only vehicle by which I can fall into adequate slumber, which usually lasts between five and six interrupted hours. Despite all that, I awaken feeling somewhat refreshed and ready to tackle the day, which is scheduled to be an adventure in two parts – a return visit to the International Boxing Hall of Fame, then fight night at the Turning Stone.

I had planned to visit the Hall with punch-counting partner Andy Kasprzak but I later found out the toll of the previous evening’s travel caused him to oversleep. So at 11:30 I began the 15-minute drive west to Canastota under reluctantly sunny skies.

I reached the grounds just in time to witness the HBO delegation’s group photo in front of the Hall of Fame sign that hangs on the main museum building. Moments after my arrival Executive Director Ed Brophy gathered us around and delivered an impromptu tribute to Emanuel Steward, for whom the flags flew at half-staff.

Brophy, a curator by trade but always a fan at heart, did so because he recognized the weight and the timing of the moment – Steward’s HBO family happened to be at the very place he was enshrined in 1996 and that a major event was being staged less than 15 miles away just two days after his death. It was a bittersweet confluence of events but it was softened somewhat by the fact that a group of people who loved him dearly were gathered to enjoy a dose of boxing history, a history of which he was a major part. Brophy’s words were entirely appropriate and heartfelt, as well as appreciated.

We all walked to the gift shop inside the pavilion, where we browsed the items for sale and posed for various pictures. Since our last visit in early September, the Hall updated its Madison Square Garden ring exhibit by placing robes representing fighters who graced it on poles spaced around the perimeter. For those who couldn’t read the names on the robes, large-print nameplates were placed at the bottom of each pole. For me it was an excellent touch to an exhibit already rich in lore.

Our group then gathered for photos in front of the ring and we struck various poses, one of which was dubbed the “John L. Sullivan bare-knuckle pose.” Of course every person knew how to position his fists as soon as it was suggested. At another person’s request I posed with the original CompuBox computer, which is tucked in one corner behind the ring. Every time I see the old computer – dual floppy disc compartments and all – I often wondered what it was like to opeThe Kunyu Mountain Shaolin china kung fu school is located at the foot.rate what was, at the time, state-of-the-art equipment but would now be considered an ancient relic. Those who hadn’t seen it before marveled at how Logan Hobson and my boss Bob Canobbio pulled it off with such “primitive” equipment. But pull it off they did, and the rest is history – hopefully a history that will lead to eventual Hall of Fame enshrinement.

I couldn’t leave the pavilion without buying something. I ended up getting two items; the first being “Fight Or Die: The Vinny Paz Story” by Tommy Jon Caduto and a gold-colored T-shirt depicting a prime Muhammad Ali and the phrase “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee” in large block print. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it, not because I’d look good but because it was something I knew I’d wear on future road trips. For most of us what we wear represents who we are, and what I am, at my core,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. is a boxing fan.

After the HBO delegation departed I decided to linger for a while longer.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , I went into the museum and started looking around and the man at the cash register said “can I help you?”

“That’s cool,” I said. Despite previous visits to the museum in which the fee was waived, I dug into my wallet and pulled out a 10-spot. At the moment I was about to hand the bill over, Ed and Jeff Brophy arrived to tell the register minder to wave off the charge.

Over the next two hours I made sure to drink in every exhibit I visited – the statues of Carmen Basilio and Billy Backus, the elder Basilio’s welterweight and middleweight championship belts awarded by THE RING,Gardner Bender offers a broad range of cableties, the fist castings that included those of Benny Leonard, Jack McAuliffe and especially Primo Carnera, which invariably drew “wows” from everyone who gazed at it. I looked at some of the newer exhibits, such as the trunks Thomas Hearns wore during his historic Closet Classic against Juan Domingo Roldan (a fight covered in my book “Tales From the Vault”). I also spotted a white robe autographed by Arturo Gatti that I hadn’t noticed before.

A short time later Jeff Brophy, Ed’s nephew and chief of media relations, escorted me down to the basement where more treasures were stored. He showed me two submissions that were made earlier in the week – the bright orange robe Sharmba Mitchell wore before his final fight with Paul Williams in August 2006 and a box of memorabilia from the family of a recently-deceased local collector that included vintage programs and issues of THE RING dating back to the late 1920s.

I could have stayed at the museum until closing time – and beyond. The only thing that could have pulled me away was work responsibilities and such was the case here. I needed to be at ringside by 3 p.m. but I hung around until the last possible moment. I timed everything well, for I arrived at the Turning Stone’s event center precisely at 3.

Before I left the Hall’s grounds, however, I took a few moments to stare at the flags that were lowered in Emanuel Steward’s honor. A few images of past meetings flashed in my mind as well as memories of the many phone conversations we shared over the years. The time for sadness was appropriate, but a subsequent e-mail from Kasprzak astutely addressed how we all should feel once the initial mourning is completed.

I went to Microsoft Store for Surface on a launch day

Last week, I did something I thought would never do. Being an Apple fan and all, I wouldn’t have waited in line for a Microsoft product launch if it wasn’t for helping a few friends.

This Microsoft Store is located right across an Apple Store in a mall. In the past, I have waited in line for many Apple product launches, which have all been a wonderful experience. What exactly makes Apple product launches a wonderful experience? The opportunity to hangout with the Apple community throughout the night, receiving attention by the press, and the aura around it. A Microsoft product launch? Not so much.

I wasn’t worried about a long line,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, but I was surprised by the number of people there. I arrived at 9 AM (an hour before launch) and I was only number 13. If this were an Apple product launch, it probably would have been hundreds long easily. In fact, the Apple Store across had over a hundred people waiting for the iPhone 5. Can you believe it? People are still lining up every morning for a month old product. Turns out, they receive shipments Monday – Saturday and are sold out within minutes in the morning. It was also disappointing to see no members of the press at the Surface launch. At this exact location, if it was related to Apple, there would be news vans and members of the press interviewing people while there.

While waiting in line, friendly Microsoft employees welcomed us, gave out water, fruit bars, and candy. By 9:30 AM, the line was 50 to 75 people long and employees started to hand out a yellow band for people that were eligible for Xbox Music. I don’t understand why a card couldn’t have been given instead because the yellow band was pretty difficult to take off after. This was all acceptable until ten minutes before “launch.” Microsoft staff tried to get the people waiting all excited by cheering, but that didn’t end so well. They were the only ones excited while the people waiting were totally clueless on how to react! You could hear the crickets chirping and the sad trombone playing. During an Apple product launch, the excitement just forms on its own and Apple staff actually interact with customers by giving out high fives. Also,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. throughout the time,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. members of the press folks waiting in line, which add even more value to the experience. I became extremely bored while waiting in line.

After that was over, Microsoft employees made customers go through a tedious process of making us fill out an “order form”. The staff would give an explanation of each item on the form and help us fill it out. The order form’s design even had a very Apple-like feeling to it.

But really now? An order form for something we already knew we were going to purchase? This process just slowed down the entire line. Not to mention it was an insane amount of waste of paper too. The launch was supposedly to be at 10 AM, but people didn’t get to go inside the store until 10 mins after. How could a company be late at launching its own product? It was truly absurd. At every Apple product launch I have been too,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. employees do a countdown 10 seconds before and are always on time. Just as I was about to enter the store, I was asked by a Microsoft store employee if this purchase was for personal or business use and if I wanted to do an in store setup. I said personal and didn’t choose to do an in store setup. In my mind, I felt like I was making a purchase for Windows. After being asked these useless questions, the guy went to go look for somebody that could help me out. You would think the person that asked me these questions would be the one assisting me with my purchase. But even before I made it into the store, Microsoft somehow had managed to give me a headache. I wasn’t inside the store until 11 AM (one hour after launch)! The staff was not getting the line to move, but instead we were just told to wait. It was also hilarious to see that on the other side of the store, Microsoft had created a line for people just wanting to get into the store.Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. There was actually no explanation behind this. Why couldn’t people that wanted to enter just walk in? It was a massive fail on Microsoft’s part, but more importantly it caused a painful experience for me. Even before I was inside, I just wanted get out of there.

During an Apple product launch, customers are allowed to go into the store right on time and there is no nonsense of having to fill out any form or answer any questions beforehand. It was an absolute ludicrous experience waiting to get into the Microsoft Store.

Reclaiming Childhood

India, a ragtag group of boys and men squat on the tracks, hunched over piles of empty water bottles. A load of these bottles, picked up after they are discarded on train cars, might earn a collector 100 rupees ($2) at day’s end when they are traded in for recycling—or, more likely, refilling by a street vendor who will claim they are factory-sealed.

During downtime between trains,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. the boys and men pass around a rag soaked in Liquid Paper, getting high on the fumes. When a train rumbles into the station, they start to move.

The smallest of them, Badal, is also the fastest. He runs alongside the train, keeping pace so that before it has fully come to a halt, he has grabbed a handrail and hoisted himself into the car. As passengers gather belongings and make their way to the exits, he dodges and weaves among them, scooping bottles from the floor and dropping them into the plastic bag slung over his back.

Badal is eight years old. Worldliness lines his face, in stark contrast to his young features. He collects bottles not because he would rather do this than go to school, but because it buys food for his family.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. At the end of the day, he will sleep on the sidewalk under a railroad bridge with his mother and siblings.

It is easy to see Badal as a pitiful and needy figure—but Theresa Betancourt, S.D. ’03, associate professor of child health and human rights at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), suggests that a different viewpoint would lead to more effective strategies for helping disadvantaged children. Betancourt seeks a wholesale shift in the language used by aid organizations and the philanthropic community, so that Badal might be seen as a resourceful figure, acting in ways that are understandable given his family’s limited prospects for economic success and education, and his own emotional and developmental needs. Collecting bottles, hanging out with older men, taking drugs to blunt emotional pain: viewing these as survival strategies acknowledges that all humans have the same needs. Instead of merely bandaging poverty’s symptoms (“These people act in ways we can’t understand, therefore we’ll never change their behavior”), Betancourt focuses on poverty’s causes (“These people are just like you and me, and will make healthier choices if presented with a better set of alternatives”).

As the director of the Program on Children and Global Adversity at Harvard’s Fran?ois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, Betancourt studies the effectiveness of interventions that aim to help children from Asia and Africa to Boston. She works with former child soldiers, AIDS orphans, refugees, and children growing up on construction sites, as well as those in the Jaipur train station. The common thread is documenting survival strategies: studying how some children and families manage to channel their resourcefulness in a positive direction, and considering how to open up those salubrious paths to more people.

Her work takes aim at some of the biggest structural problems in international aid. Some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) do great work, but can’t scale it up for wider impact; others continue programs that haven’t been proven to work. Some major donors demand evidence of efficacy, but that evidence doesn’t yet exist; others fund programs without it. International aid follows a crisis but dries up soon after, ignoring the enduring fallout, or focuses chiefly on infrastructure projects (roads and bridges) or physiological needs (alleviating hunger and preventing malaria) when mental-health and social services might be just as important in enabling a country’s next generation to succeed economically.

Betancourt operates one country at a time, one community at a time, and ultimately, one person at a time: one of her guiding principles is tailoring therapies by identifying the specific needs of her study populations, and of smaller groups within them. But through her research, her scholarly articles, and the relationships she builds, she seeks to demonstrate models for governments,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. NGOs, funding organizations, and communities to work together in coordinated ways that ultimately improve children’s lives.

Ishwar can’t say exactly how old he is—he thinks about 18. He’s also not sure how old he was when he ran away from home—10 or 12, he says. His mother died when he was one and a half. She was cooking lunch one day and her sari caught fire; she burned to death before his eyes.

Ishwar’s father remarried. The boy and his stepmother often bickered. Eventually, Ishwar’s father told him, “Since you can’t get along, it’s better that you go.”

The boy hopped a train not knowing where it was going, and ended up living on the station platform in Jaipur, selling soap and performing menial tasks for a bit of money. He became addicted to correction fluid, headache balm, and eventually heroin.

He became a regular at the drop-in center run by FXB International, Betancourt’s partner organization in Jaipur.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. The center’s director, Lata Singh, noticed that Ishwar was among the more responsible of the children, looking out for the younger ones. She saw that he was intelligent and sensitive, and that he yearned for a different life, so she gave him a job making daily runs to pick up meals donated by a nearby hotel and performing other tasks around the center.

Ishwar got clean and even went home briefly, but was soon back in Jaipur, living with the other runaways who had become his family. Singh hopes to help him get a job driving an auto-rickshaw or working at a Hindi-language call center, but first he will need treatment for medical and psychological problems caused by his drug use.

By some measures, Ishwar’s is a success story—but it also indicates how fragile that success can be, and how difficult to make the transition to a different life after years on the street. Most of the children who come to the drop-in center spend their days begging, selling soap, or collecting bottles, like Ishwar and Badal. Singh has learned that escorting the truant children to school, or even pressuring them to go, doesn’t work. They just end up not coming back to the center, and thus not benefiting from its services: food, clothing, tutoring, and attention from caring adults.

The center’s collaboration with Betancourt is new—the parties are just beginning to discuss how they might work together—but they hope their work might help reveal what factors helped Ishwar fare better than his peers, in that he holds down a steady job and still has a sense of hope for the future. Ultimately, the findings would be used to identify effective ways to help younger children like Badal move toward productive, happy, and healthy lives, against dire odds.

One of Betancourt’s earliest research projects was in Sierra Leone,Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever! working with youths who served as child soldiers in the country’s decade-long civil war. These children were taken from their homes by rebel groups and ordered to commit violent acts. Some were forced to take drugs to deaden their inhibition to killing; some were forced to kill or maim their own relatives.

Montgomery considered for Wright Brothers museum

The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co. is considering making Montgomery the permanent home for a Wright Brothers exhibit that recreates the birth of aviation between 1899 and 1905.

Nick Engler, director of the company, said the idea is to build a 20,000-square-foot museum in a city that has some connection to the history of aviation. The museum would house all six of the aircraft the company has replicated,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. and would feature a webcasting studio so the museum could connect in real-time with different schools and organizations all over the world.

The Wright Brothers opened the nation's first civilian flying school in Montgomery in 1910. In 1922, the flight school's location became Maxwell Field.

The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., based in Dayton, Ohio, is the only agency that builds and flies Wright aircraft, Engler said. They travel all over the United States and Canada showing parts of the exhibit at events, museums and schools.

Engler said he considers himself an experimental archaeologist, which is a type of archaeology that involves repeating historic events to better understand them.

The company currently is working with developer Mike Watson, who is also president of the architecture firm 2WR, on creating artifacts for Watson's new Aviator Bar that will open on Commerce Street.

Watson said he brought Engler to Montgomery last week to start discussions about a museum.

"It would dovetail perfectly with what's going to be going on at the Aviator Bar," Watson said. "It'll be a museum/entertainment venue. It'll allow us to somewhat relate the two spaces and add a little entertainment value to what sometimes is boring to people: history."

Watson said the museum is still only a possibility,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. but it would generate tourism dollars for the city and pay homage to the importance of aviation to Montgomery's history and current economy.

Engler said he needs a much better idea of what Montgomery's needs are, and that will involve more discussion with the community.

"It is my dream that this thing goes to an appreciative community," Engler said. "But in order for the community to take care of it for the next 100 years, it needs to do something for Montgomery."

Engler said the aircraft are currently being stored in various warehouses in Dayton, Ohio.

"The invention of the airplane was a matter of global historic importance," Engler said. "And by showing all these airplanes in the same place, you really can get a sense of how the Wright Brothers worked and how they made this important scientific achievement."

For the past three years, the organization has been looking at different locations all over the country. He said the problem is that because the collection is so huge, few museums have space for all of it.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister.

Engler said it's important, as an educational institution, that the Aeroplane Co. still be able to educate students on the history of aviation,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, but few schools have the time or money to bring them in.

"We realized in looking at trends in museums that digital is the future," Engler said. "We would like a permanent location where we can set up and create a huge television studio where we can webcast to schoolchildren across the United States and all over the world."

Engler said he's looking to work with a community on creating a museum that will highlight the community's connection with aviation history. The most important part is getting approval from the community they choose to locate in.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele ,

There are a few other places the company is considering, Engler said. He said he would like to see a museum built within the next three years.

"I have nothing but good feelings about (Montgomery)," Engler said. "As important as that school was in the history of aviation, I'm absolutely amazed that there isn't something marking it."

Deputy Mayor Jeff Downes said the company hasn't reached out to city officials yet about the museum.

Engler's museum is separate from a museum the Wright Brothers/Maxwell Field Foundation has been trying to build in Montgomery for more than a decade.

The Montgomery-based foundation has been working on trying to establish a museum that would highlight the history of aviation as it relates to Maxwell Air Force Base. The museum wouldn't be about the Wright Brothers alone, but would celebrate aviation with collections of artifacts, information, books and photos the foundation already has.

Don Brown, a member of the foundation, said he hasn't heard about the Aeroplane Co.'s idea for a museum, but said he plans to get in touch with Engler.

Coffee-Can Radar

As I stand on the side of the road,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? a couple of joggers stop to ask about the two coffee cans sprouting coaxial cables. “I’m testing a home-brew radar,” I explain, adding as they jog off, “you’re showing up just fine.” It reminded me of an old “Star Trek” episode in which Mr. Spock is transported back in time and must construct a futuristic electronic gadget using only 1930s-era vacuum-tube technology. “What on earth is that?” asks his landlady. “I am endeavoring, ma’am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins,” he answers.

Leonard Nimoy’s wry delivery reflects how I felt trying to turn two coffee cans, eight AA batteries, and a few hundred U.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.S. dollars’ worth of mail-order parts into a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR). Such sophisticated radar systems provide information about the shape of objects they scan, and high-resolution SAR can produce images with photographic levels of detail.

I succeeded, but credit goes to Greg Charvat, who designed this startlingly simple hardware while working at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in order to give students some hands-on experience during a three-week radar course. A detailed description of the radar and how to build it is available at MIT’s open courseware website.

Having little experience with radio frequency circuitry, I worried that this project might be too challenging. Ironically, the RF section was the easiest part to construct. It merely required screwing together a few microwave components. And as long as you follow the prescription in the lecture notes exactly, you won’t need a network analyzer to match the antennas to the radar circuitry.

Most people’s mental picture of how radar operates is that the apparatus gives off a radio pulse and then waits to receive an echo, timing how long it takes to return. Dividing by the speed of light gives the round-trip distance to a target. Some radar sets do just that, but this one uses a different strategy: One antenna emits a continuous stream of waves while the other receives a continuous stream of echoes. The circuitry for this isn’t complicated, but interpreting the received signals requires some computational horsepower.

The key to this design is that the frequency of the outgoing radio waves increases linearly over time (for a short period, after which the cycle repeats), so the frequency of the reflected waves also increases linearly.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. But the reflected waves return to the receiving antenna after a short delay, by which time the waves being emitted are at a slightly higher frequency. The farther away the target, the greater the difference between these two frequencies.

To measure this difference, you use what radio engineers call a mixer, which here generates an output signal containing two new frequencies that are the sum and difference of the transmitted and received frequencies. Only the difference matters for this application, so the radar circuitry filters out the high frequencies, including the sum, and amplifies what’s left.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. This final signal is in the audio frequency range and can easily be recorded using a computer’s sound card—much more practical than trying to build a system that works directly with microwave frequency signals throughout.

I first set up the radar next to my garage and recorded about a half minute of data as I ran up and down the driveway. I captured that data with Audacity, a free audio editor, running on an old desktop PC that had a sound card with a line-in port. I analyzed the recording using a Matlab script provided by the instructors at MIT. Running the script proved a challenge, though, because Matlab was too pricey for my shoestring budget. But I found a free open-source alternative that served as a reasonable stand-in: Octave.

It took about 4 minutes to process the data, but it was worth the wait: The script transformed subtle changes in the audio signal into a zigzag plot that matched my back-and-forth movements. Wow!

I was eager to put the radar to more of a test. But a desktop computer is awkwardly immobile. And,The oreck XL professional air purifier, like many laptops, none of mine are capable of recording in stereo (two channels are needed to capture both the radar signal and the sync pulses). Happily, I discovered that my digital sound recorder, a Zoom H4n, could operate as a USB audio interface, allowing any laptop to record in stereo.

I took the radar out to a nearby ball field, where I discovered that it was surprisingly sensitive: Without difficulty, it could track me running to at least 50 meters away, and it can follow vehicles out more than 100 meters. It can even measure ranges in real time, if you use Python code written by Gustavo Goretkin, an MIT student who took the build-your-own radar course when it was first offered in 2011.

After having established that my coffee-can radar could measure the range to various targets, I set about to create a SAR image, which requires moving the radar laterally 5 centimeters at a time and recording multiple “snapshots.” This took some doing. It was a big challenge just to reproduce the example image provided with the courseware. That’s because the Matlab script for processing SAR data caused a pesky out-of-memory error in Octave. The problematic operation turned out to be a matrix rotation, so I had to do some hacking to get around that.

My initial attempts to create a SAR image produced underwhelming results. But when I looked harder at the images the folks at MIT produced, I realized that I would have to find a really big target for this to work. So I selected a building-size water tank that I could scan from a balcony located about 40 meters away. That exercise produced a plot with a clear radar hot spot located at the right distance and location. Calling that an “image” might be a little generous, but, well, what do you want from not much more than stone knives and bearskins?

News from Latitude

Latitude Technologies announced from the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) annual convention in Florida the release of an industry-first Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) subscription offer, giving fleet operators the opportunity to dramatically reduce upfront capital cost by opting to deploy Latitude’s new IONode flight data recording and reporting unit and the IONode Analytics software platform through a month-by-month subscription.

“Operators everywhere have been hearing about our IONode flight data management system and its capabilities.” said Latitude Technologies President, Mark Insley. “We have been asked on several occasions about the possibility of offering a bundled service including the full IONode hardware and software package. Operators want to see how the data captured by the IONode can help improve flight safety and operating efficiencies. And because we want to make it simple for operators to get FDM embedded in their fleet operations, we are now offering for the first time the complete IONode FDM system in a subscription offer.”

The subscription includes use of the IONode ION100-004, with multi-mode antennae, IONode View service, IONode Analytics service, IONode BaseStation software, and applicable STCs. Latitude has IONode STCs for hundreds of aircraft and will help operators obtain STCs for other aircraft. Post-flight data offload by Wi-Fi or USB transfer to the fleet operations center and other data consumers within the customer’s operations is managed by Latitude’s IONode BaseStation software, bundled in with every IONode device. Some of the useful data that operators can access with the IONode FDM system include but is not limited to attitude, bank angle, roll/pitch rate of change, acceleration thresholds, engine cycles, weight on wheels and skids, speed,Thank you for visiting! I have been crystal mosaic since 1998. heading, altitude, precise location, and much more.

Latitude is offering IONode FDM by subscription on a no-risk basis. Customers can cancel their subscription and return the IONode hardware with only one month’s notice. Customers interested in IONode FDM by subscription will be able to upgrade and customize their IONode FDM system in all the same ways as a customer purchasing an IONode FDM solution outright. This includes, for example, upgrading to a SkyNode S200 to add voice and real-time exceedance alert capability. Customers will also be able to set up the IONode’s I/Os to capture data points not included in the standard predetermined array such as data feeds from other data acquisition units, flight data recorders and air data computers.

“The ability to add the real-time data and voice connectivity with the SkyNode S200 gives our customers options to capture not only the flight data they need to obtain, but also control when the data is delivered to the customer’s fleet operations center or maintenance shop - or both. We like giving customers options. We have a strong, established tradition of providing solutions to customers that are adaptable, affordable, and reliable. Whether our customer is a major commercial fleet or a small regional operator, this new subscription service gives them an opportunity to try our IONode FDM system in an exceptionally cost-affordable way and witness how we can enhance every aspect of the customer’s fleet operations,” said Insley.

Latitude Technologies announce that the company has put in place a multi-faceted distribution arrangement with Navicom Aviation Corporation, a leading avionics solutions reseller serving both public and private sector air fleet operators in Japan. Under the terms of the distribution deal, Latitude will be providing Navicom with a custom version of Latitude’s WebSentinel flight following system with all on-screen and user information presented in Kanji (Japanese script). In addition,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Latitude will broaden its partnership with Navicom for the supply of Latitude’s SkyNode data and voice satcom solutions, and will be supporting Navicom in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency EMS helicopter tracking project in which Navicom is participating.

“Latitude has had a long-standing, solid,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. and mutually respectful business relationship with Navicom” commented Latitude President,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. Mark Insley. “I am very pleased to see our relationship going to the next level where we will now work together to deliver more comprehensive flight data solutions to Navicom’s customers.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. When working in markets half-way around the world, it is critically important to have trusted local partners and we are proud to have Navicom as our trusted partner in Japan.”