Sheppard AFB readies for cattle egret dispersal efforts
SAFB officials said the base is partnering with the City of Wichita Falls and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the coming weeks to start using non-lethal methods to disperse a large flock of cattle egrets roosting just west of the base.
Sheppard AFB tackles aviation safety with bird control measures
Officials said egret flights threaten aviation safety, and collisions between aircraft and birds can result in significant monetary damage, the loss of an aircraft, and even the loss of human life.
Residents who live near the base should be advised that the dispersal methods will sound similar to gunfire, occur throughout daylight hours, and end around sunset.
Base officials say even though major strikes are pretty rare, in July 2013, a single cattle egret strike over the base airfield led to the non-fatal ejection of two pilots and the complete loss of a T-38 aircraft worth around $8 million at the time.
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Hamilton Spectator
a day ago
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‘Losing an old friend': Retired fighter pilot selling replica of P-40 Warhawk
INDUS - Wayne Foster spent much of his life chasing the horizon as a fighter pilot, but he could be facing his toughest battle yet: parting with the warbird he built by hand. At 88, Foster is selling one of his planes: a smaller-scale replica of a P-40 Warhawk with the Royal Air Force's 1940 Desert colours of the 112 Squadron. The asking price is $45,000. 'It's like losing an old friend,' he said, sitting in front of the plane stored inside a Quonset hut in Indus, Alta., a hamlet southeast of Calgary. Foster, who joined the Canadian Forces in 1956, served in the navy, spent three years in France and worked at an electronic warfare unit in Montreal for another four years. It was in the navy that he earned his nickname, Butch. 'I got the name Butch from Butcher, from dogfighting, I guess,' Foster said in an interview. 'We had a couple of guys in the squadron whose name was Wayne. I got Butch and my wingman got Chopper.' During his time, he said, they did a lot of dogfighting in Europe. Dogfighting is a series of tactical manoeuvres used in close-range aerial combat. 'I learned how to dogfight fairly well ... by trial and error,' he said. 'Thankfully, I could do a lot of errors when no one was shooting at me.' He also had a tour in Puerto Rico. He was transferred to the United States Air Force for three years, where he trained pilots on the art of dogfighting. 'That was a wonderful tour. I flew the T-38 Talon — it goes like hell,' he chuckled. He remembers briefly sharing the sky with Chuck Yeager, an American flying ace and record-setting test pilot who, in October 1947, became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound. Foster said he tried to 'bounce' Yeager, an unexpected attack to initiate a dogfight. 'He was coming up from Spain in a 104 and I couldn't catch him,' Foster laughed. 'He was much faster than I was, but I got the opportunity to talk to him later on in Germany.' In selling his replica, Foster admits he never got to fly a real P-40 Warhawk. 'But I've flown the P-51s and it's very similar in some ways. It doesn't have a big honking engine on it, but fortunately, this one here doesn't have a big honking engine on it either,' he said. Mechanic Pieter Terblanche has been working on the Warhawk. 'It's in very good shape for the time it's been sitting,' he said. 'Everyone that buys a plane has their own idea on what needs to be done to the plane. It can be done pretty fast.' Foster's daughter Tracy said the plan was to have it placed in a museum, but there have been several people who expressed interest in buying it. Offers have been outlandish, she added. 'We've had a couple of crazy offers, like $500 and a case of beer, and I went nope. And then it was $5,000 and a case of beer,' she said. One person offered $200, she said, but it turned out he thought it was a model he could fly using a remote control. Her father has never spoken much about his time as a fighter pilot, she said. 'Now that he's getting a little older, he's opening up a little bit more as to what he experienced.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2025. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
New York Post
6 days ago
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Florida county spearheading high-tech 911 system that sends texts and video to 911 dispatchers
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Buzz Feed
22-06-2025
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The Hidden Dark Side Of Gifted Programs Revealed
I don't remember precisely when I first heard the word 'gifted,' but it must have been in early elementary school. I do remember being pulled out of my first-grade class and led to the fifth-grade classroom, where a teacher told me to choose a chapter book that was 'more at my level.' I appreciated the chance to choose from all sorts of new books, but it marked an early example of what would eventually be both a privilege and a curse: my foray into being 'set apart' academically from my fellow classmates. By the time I reached middle school, the gifted and talented program in my district had taken wing. The timing makes sense: In 1998, many American schools were provided with official K-12 standards for so-called 'gifted education' by the National Association of Gifted Children. While the NAGC first promoted advanced academic programming in the 1950s, its work in the late '80s and '90s represented a more structured approach to educating students who were found to be gifted. K-12 gifted education standards were preceded by the passage of the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Act in 1988, which secured funding to 'orchestrate a coordinated program of scientifically based research, demonstration projects, innovative strategies, and similar activities that build and enhance the ability of elementary and secondary schools to meet the special educational needs of gifted and talented students.' In those early days, my experience with Gifted & Talented (or G/T, as we fondly called it) was almost entirely positive. Our G/T class was tucked away in a windowless classroom whose walls we decorated with silly drawings and posters. Several of my close friends were also in the program, and there was nothing better than getting to hang out with them for an hour or two per day while working on our largely self-assigned curriculum. Our teacher was warm and encouraging, always pushing each of us to incorporate our individual interests and skills into projects. In fact, nearly all the teachers I worked with in G/T were engaged educators who genuinely wanted their students to thrive. I'm forever grateful for their personal guidance, regardless of my later reflections on the program. In so many ways, G/T was a safe place at school — a place where I could be my true (weird) self and engage in more self-directed learning. But there was a troubling flip side to the G/T experience that took me years to unpack. From what I could gather, most students qualified for the program based on standardized test scores. While the NAGC defines gifted pupils as 'those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains,' it seems inevitable that many kids would be excluded from gifted education for factors beyond their control. In her 2016 book Engaging and Challenging Gifted Students: Tips for Supporting Extraordinary Minds in Your Classroom, Jenny Grant Rankin, Ph.D., outlines gaps in gifted education. Nonwhite students, socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, girls, and those classified as English language learners are disproportionately excluded from gifted and talented programming, Rankin reports. She also cites a 2016 study by Jason A. Grissom and Christopher Redding that found that Black students were 50% less likely to be considered for gifted and talented programs than their white counterparts, even when both groups recorded similar standardized test scores. What's more, students of color were less likely to be labeled gifted when their teachers were white. In G/T, I learned quickly that much of my self-esteem came from academic praise and approval from adults. The 'gifted' label seeped into everything I did and was a stumbling block at times — if I struggled to master a concept in math class or didn't understand a question on a social studies test, I'd avoid asking for help. After all, I was gifted. I shouldn't need help with anything, right? It felt like my so-called 'natural' giftedness should pre-qualify me to succeed in any endeavor, which led me to prematurely give up on new hobbies later in life when I didn't immediately feel like a master. And when a project in a non-G/T class earned anything less than an A, I often found myself in tears and seeking reassurance from my family and friends that I was 'still smart.' The question of 'potential' was another overwhelming aspect of G/T. Gifted kids at my school were encouraged to pursue all sorts of fields — with the unspoken message that no matter what we pursued, we were expected to be excellent. Most of us went on to take as many Advanced Placement classes in high school as our schedules would allow, driven by the sense that we simply had to be high achievers. Academic excellence would translate directly to excellence in career and life in general, many of us thought. It wasn't until college that I first experienced the lingering impacts of the gifted education experience. Suddenly, I was a very small fish in the massive pond that is the University of Michigan. I wasn't the 'smart kid' anymore— I was one of thousands of 'smart kids,' all of whom had ambitions on par with or beyond my own. College instructors rarely offered direct praise, and the occasional B in a class became commonplace. When I couldn't maintain perfection, I felt like I was failing the version of myself I was supposed to become. Unsurprisingly, college was also when my mental health took its first major nosedive. Alongside a handful of personal issues, my sudden sense of academic invisibility had triggered a crisis. My path felt unclear. Wasn't I supposed to get to college, breeze through with perfect grades, and immediately jump into an impressive career? When graduation rolled around, I got a dose of validation by heading off on a Fulbright teaching grant to Malaysia, but my life beyond that looked so blurry. It took a long time to admit that I didn't want to go to grad school, which felt shameful. Without academic validation or 'high achievement' on the table, would I be untethered forever? In the decade since, I've drawn connections between my most plaguing anxieties and my early education. It's taken practice to feel more comfortable with accepting professional criticism or admitting when I'm not sure how to do something at work. I see how my G/T years merged self-worth with accolades and grades, and I feel sad for the younger version of myself — along with other 'formerly gifted' peers — who internalized so many false measures of success. At times, adulthood feels like an ongoing battle to remind myself that I'm a valuable, worthy person, regardless of outward achievements. I'm not alone: In recent years, the 'formerly gifted kid' trope has become something of a meme, with TikTokers cracking dark jokes about their lingering sense of anxiety, perfectionism and perceived failure to live up to parents' and teachers' expectations. It's funny because it's true. Data shows that while gifted programs can result in better long-term academic outcomes and college success for some students, these benefits still reflect inequities. A 2021 study by Grissom and Redding found that small associations existed between participation in gifted programming and long-term achievement in math and reading, but there was no evidence to support a correlation between gifted kids and their general engagement with school. Most glaringly, even these small positive associations were skewed toward higher-income white pupils, with low-income or Black gifted students excluded from long-term academic gains. What's more, this research doesn't begin to explore gifted education's extended impact on social and emotional development for all participants. I don't regret my time as a gifted kid, but I do wish G/T had offered more care for students' mental health and more inclusivity for children who didn't fit the program's relatively narrow mold of exceptionalism. I wish I could unlearn the idea that outward praise equals true success, and measure excellence in the form of learning for learning's sake. Above all, I wish we'd had an environment where every single student was reminded how smart and talented they were, and given the tools to explore their gifts — no matter what form they took.
