8N/2N colors

You see, the government was using 2N's out there at Roswell, but there was a serious problem with them.

It seems that the 9N and 2N grey was the exact shade of grey space aliens used on their targets for practice. Now they didn't know any better, so they thought we were running targets around for them to practice on. In fact, that's why people would report those UFO's jerking around in the sky. The poor fella who happened to be on the N when it was attacked would be doing his best evasive manuevers to get away. So the flying saucer would have to manuever to follow it's very interesting target. And believe me, if you're ever attacked by a space alien while riding around on a 2N, you can really dodge and weave! Those individual wheel brakes help a lot in this.

Now this all got to be quite embarassing to the Air Farce, er, Force. It was also costing them quite a bit in replacement tractors. So they put their top scientists onto the project, and they worked out a really neat solution.

It turns out that their flying saucers all used a quark photon death ray. They were quite the rage among space aliens at the time on the intergalactic market. The human scientists worked out a shielding repulsion coating that could be applied to surfaces that would bounce the death ray beam back at the space ship. They'd hoped it would cause the alien space ship to crash, but of course the space aliens had already purchased their own anti -reflection reflection death ray bounce coatings for their space ships. They weren't about to get caught with their pants down, such pants as they would wear, having swim fins and not legs.

So the bounced death ray from the tractors would merely cause the space ship to get flung right back out into space. You can see when this started happening just by reading the accounts of Roswell. First it was space ships hovering around and jerking, as they'd chase and shoot the tractors. Then it was space ships that would just zoom right out into the stars, that's when the tractors were getting coated with the death ray repulsion paint.

[sidebar: This is what all that bouncing planet stuff is on the TV show "Third Rock from the Sun" is about. It's actually documentary combat footage.]

The coating worked best on large reflective surfaces. So they coated the fenders and hoods with it. The hood for high shots from above, and the fenders for defence when the aliens would sneak in low with their flying saucers and attack from behind mountains.

The choice of red was simple enough. People leak a lot when they've been zapped with a quark photon death ray. It's messily true. And once leakage dries, well, we all know how hard it is to get dried blood off our shirts. So the obvious military choice was to simply paint over the blood with a matching shade of red so it wasn't so visible.

You can check the authenticity of your 2N by drawing fire from a nearby flying saucer. It has to be a vintage one of course. Because they've advanced past the quark photon death ray, and are currently using Windows 98. Simply dress up as a cow. They seem to be drawn towards cows now. Moo convincingly as you drive around in your 2N, carving intricate circles in a neighbors corn field. This seems to drive space aliens mad, and draws them like flies to honey. If you feel a funny tingle, and a nearby flying saucer suddenly zipps off into space, congratulations, you've got a genuine Roswell prepped 2N!

As a side note, this is where the idea for painting 8N's red and grey came from. Ford got wind of all this space alien battling 2N hubbub, and being a rather powerfull person, demanded to see it first hand himself. Being a rather callow fellow, he wasn't upset at the battle, but was rather struck by how charming the tractors looked painted up this way, bouncing alien driven flying saucers back into space. When the new 8N was finally brought out, he decided to impliment this color scheme on them.

Believe it or not, that's how the later red and light grey color scheme came to be. It's all the fault of attacking space aliens in flying saucers.

8N's, unfortunately, do not have the quark photon death ray repulsion ingredients incorporated into their paint. For them, it's just paint. So don't go drawing fire from space aliens with an 8N! Unless it's from a modern space ship. With Windows drivers, they often crash unexpectedly on their own.

Dirigibles.

Back in WWI when we, the germans, and just about everyone else was using dirigibles, the novel idea of hanging airplanes off them to use in combat was tried with good success. Airborne aircraft carriers in fact. They could drop these planes without the need for a launching system, and they could recover them by flying along and having the airplane fly below the dirigible, and be pulled up by hooks. They did it by mounting a hoop on top of the airplane to hang it from.

Now as wonderfull as dirigibles are, they've always been a nasty handfull to deal with on the ground. Needing a special field and lots of humans to handle the ropes to haul the airship around with. Not a good thing for a combat vessel.

So a particularly bright lad came up with the novel idea of having the dirigible carry around its own ground equipment, in the form of a tractor. The technique was simple enough, especially since speed wasn't an issue. Using the same principles as they had been using for carrying, launching and recovering the airplanes. Just hang the tractor from a hook. Keep a rope tied to it and you could just lower the tractor to the ground, and haul the dirigible around as needed, where need. A perfect combat solution!

Those special dirigible equipped tractors, with their hoops and ropes came to be known as Ropes or ROPES in the Air Corps. Over time, this got shortened to ROPS.

Farmers, such as Ralph Nader, quickly noticed the handy potentials of these dirigible ROPS with regards to farming. Particularly farming on hills. For with a tall enough hoop, the tractor could tumble down the hill, but always land on its wheels, and keep on plowing.

It wasn't until many years later that safety concious activists like Mr Knievil recognized the relationship with dirigible ROPS and a reduction in farming deaths.

The rest, as they say, is history.