Stratofox Aerospace Tracking & Recovery Team

Stratofox's 2004 April Fools Joke Explained

Yes, obviously the April 1 announcement that a C-130 had been donated to Stratofox was an April Fools joke. Even the name "Lirpa Sloof" (the name of the foundation which supposedly made the donation) is "April Fools" spelled backwards. As much as we'd like to have a C-130, it seems far out of our grasp right now. Any pilots with airplanes who want to volunteer to help with aerial searches are indeed still needed.

More about how we came up with the idea for this joke is explained below. But first, let's thank the cast who provided the smiling faces (and therefore made the backstory more believable, for a moment anyway) for the fictitious board of directors of the Lirpa Sloof Foundation. Listed in alphabetical order by last name, they are Jim Carlisi, Martin Donnelly, Anand Iyer, Clint Kelly and Doug Ramsey. Thanks also to Stratofox Coordinator Sean Lynch KG6CVV for allowing the fake quote for the story. The image compositing and web site setup for the joke were done by Ian Kluft KO6YQ.

For the starring role of Dr Lirpa Sloof herself, we had another actor cast in the role but she left the production due to "creative differences". (Yes, seriously!) So at the last minute we had to swipe a picture of a random female politician from a newspaper web site in India for that role. (Politicians know they're fair game for April Fools jokes, right?)

Update on May 13: apparently we didn't pick someone obscure enough and now the joke's on us. That "random female politician" was leader of the political party that won the national elections in India, though she chose not to become Prime Minister herself, just 6 weeks after we used her image in our April Fools joke. Oops! :-)

modified image of a Lockheed L100-30
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Some people asked how we made the modified C-130 picture. Stratofox does not have a C-130 and we've never seen a C-130 land at Black Rock. So how did we do this?

The picture was a composite of two other pictures, with extensive modifications to the paint job on the plane. The modifications were done with GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) on a Linux laptop. Even though some people asked if we "photoshopped it", no Microsoft or Adobe products were used in the production of this joke.

AeroPAC's XPRS II rocket launch meet at Black Rock, Nevada
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This image provided the sky, mountains and camp sites in the background of the modified image. It was taken standing on top of a pickup truck about 1/4 miles from the flight line of AeroPAC XPRS II high-power rocketry launch meet at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada in late September 2003.

an image found on the Net of an L100 in Africa
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This is an image we found on the Net which was used in the composite for the joke. The original image is at

http://www.spectrumwd.com/c130/images/c130_271.jpg

but we've mirrored a copy here to explain our story in case anything goes wrong with their web site.

Ben Woodard KG6FNK unties his Mooney 201 before departure
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We got the idea for this joke at ParagonSpace's Dragoon 2 launch in mid-September 2003. Stratofox member Ben Woodard KG6FNK brought his plane to help with the search for the rocket. In one of the discussions at camp, we joked about what it would take to fly all our gear to a launch site instead of driving for 6+ hours. It would probably take a C-130. And so the idea was born.