These three impressive Russian helicopters have been on Belgian territory for quite some time. They are the result of a partnership between the Belgian company Skytech International and the Russian helicopter manufacturer MIL (now Russian Helicopters) with the aim of offering international heavy helicopter transport. The MI-26T aircrafts were built in the mid-1990s by Rostverol in Rostov-on-Don. With a length of 40 meters and a weight of more than 36 tons, they are not only the largest and heaviest, but also the most powerful helicopters ever built. The aircrafts, of which a total of 316 were built, were used for international humanitarian missions of the UN and NATO.
As the helicopters were no longer suitable for flying in European airspace, they were sold privately. The Dutch owner hoped to find an African buyer for them, but his efforts were unsuccessful. In the meantime, the machines had languished for years, suddenly disappeared from view and reappeared just as suddenly, albeit in a particularly pitiful condition. Many parts had been demolished or were lying disassembled in the hold of the helicopters. Previously made agreements to return them to the Rostov-on-Don factory fell through. After all, it would cost a lot of money to make the aircrafts ready to fly again. Since the costs of stocking them started to increase, an intensive search was made for an alternative which now seems to have been found: some aviation museums are interested in including the special helicopters in their collections. However, the final decision on this has yet to be made…
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Marn's taking the reigns this week as she's joined by Ell and Edda to walk down memory lane about SKYTECH, the ARG they ran from 2
HELLO on argonauts this week i interviewed @sonar-taxlaw and edda (edda do you have a tumblr? please advise) about the alternate reality game they ran from 2019-2023 featuring fighting lawyers, body-swapping, time loops, moon destruction, mech building, minecraft heists, cryptocurrency that's just the letter 'b', and more corporate surveys than you can shake a stick at.
i played this arg and it was really special to me. you should check out this episode
So here's the new toy that's been distracting me the last couple days. My decade+ old oversized ASUS gaming laptop finally pooped out several months ago, leaving me daily driving my Steam Deck of all things as my main home computer. And don't get me wrong, the Deck has performed remarkably well in that regard, but I've been meaning to get something a bit fancier for a while. Something that could handle 1440p gameplay at a decent framerate while streaming or recording, can manage image and video editing well, and in particular can run some VR games. I've been interested in VR gaming ever since Lobac posted about some of that a while back, especially with the Meta Quest 2 being a solid headset at a really aggressive cost. With the Zuck giving up on the metaverse, the Quest is likely never going to be cheaper than it is now.
I'd waffled for a while about building a PC, but in the end I psyched myself out and decided to go with a pre-built instead. Yes, that means willfully overpaying for the end product by a few hundred bucks to pay someone else to do the assembly and initial set up for me, but in exchange I only had to research one product instead of half a dozen separate components, plus there's a single warranty where if anything doesn't work it's somebody else's problem to fix it, and I'd only have to deal with a delay.
After watching and reading a bunch of reviews, Skytech seemed to be a decent choice for system integrator, with solid to positive reviews for various prebuilt models they offer, including Gamer's Nexus who tend to be pretty harsh on pre-builts. But it was this review from JustIN Tech that sold me on this Azure 2 model. "Performance equivalent to last gens best, but at half the price" is the exact tag line I was looking for, and after a recent price discount it was just within my $2k range.
In retrospect though, I should have done some more research on the specific components. I'm quite happy with the intel 13600 cpu, and while the included cooling setup is overkill for that chip, that just means I've got some free thermal space to overclock or upgrade in the future. Plus, it's pretty, and I'm shallow. On the other hand it turns out the nvidia 4070ti is not well thought of - generally considered badly overpriced, plus has the extra negetive association of being just a rebranding of the failed '4080 12gb' that was so roundly panned that its release had to be canned altogether. And the PNY model that came bundled in my unit isn't even as nice as the Gigabyte one in the JustIN Tech review. One of the reasons why Gamer's Nexus is the better channel for these sorts of reviews is that they do secret shopper and get the same stuff regular folks get, where as brands know what they're sending to channels like JustIN Tech and can take pains to make the best possible impression by including better components and taking extra care in assembly and packaging.
So what should I have purchased instead? I don't know. Maybe the 'blue' model of the same Azure 2 line, which is three hundred dollars cheaper to swap out the 4070ti for an intel Arc a770, which would probably have been more than enough for my intended use cases. Heck, with 4 extra gb of vram it might have even been better than the 4070ti for me in the long term, and if not then I could use the money saved towards swapping out to a better AMD card next gen. But the blue model comes in a blue version of the case, which wouldn't have made the swirly rainbow rbgs pop as much.
Anyway, while I might have made a different choice if I had done more research, that doesn't mean I'm at all unhappy with what I got! The Azure 2 arrived promptly. The build quality of the system is very nice. No damage, no loose or cross-threaded screws. Everything worked right out of the box when plugged in - including all the various external ports. Skytech certainly did a good job putting it all together. While the 4070ti might not be the most reasonably priced card for its performance level, now that it's here and paid for regardless, it seems like it should be able to do everything I want it to, at least for now. And if I end up replacing the gpu sooner then I would have liked, eh, we live and learn.
And while it doesn't matter at all compared to cost and performance, the swirly rainbow rgb lighting makes me feel like a Real Gamer (tm).
Desk is getting a bit cluttered tho.
As for performance, It's quiet and runs cool while playing my current games at top settings - though my particular game selection (mostly just Elden Ring on max settings with Ray Tracing), and my 1080p, 75hz monitor aren't exactly putting it through its paces yet. A new monitor is one of several upgrades & accessories I plan to get to go with this thing in coming months. New monitor, VR headset, an extra ssd on which to install linux - I figure I'll keep the windows install on the side, on the off chance there are games or utilities I can't get running in Linux down the line.
But anyway yeah, that's what I've been so busy with lately, delaying liveblog posts.
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Skytech x Bassjackers Join Forces For Classic Meets Modern Dance-Floor Gem "All My Love"
We aren't often surprised by collaborations, but @skytechmusic x @bassjackers ? We didn't know we needed this.
#modernneon #Skytech @CYB3RPVNK #EDM #dancefloor #dancepop #AllMyLove #Bassjackers #electronicmusic #dancepop #newmusicdaily #discoverweekly
When you have the chance to work with a veteran in your space, you need to take it and learn from the experience. On our latest visit over to CYB3RPVNK we are checking out “All My Love”, the latest single from Skytech and Bassjackers. We first heard of this talented producer when R3HAB found him after hearing “Tiger”, where he helped finish the track which led to over 100 million streams. R3HAB…
