Jack Bally was a veteran and aviation enthusiast with a knack for building and flying kit planes. His list of builds includes a bush plane and a parasol monoplane. But in 1999, he would take on his greatest challenge yet, spending 17 years and 40,000 man hours building a near-perfect replica of a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress in 1:3 scale.

You often hear about how you can achieve wonders with patience and skill, and determination to apply yourself to a task and stick with it. That’s what this is, besides being a very inspiring and awesome story.

Jack Bally, an aviation enthusiast and Vietnam vet, and carpenter by trade, is the designer and builder of what is probably the most impressive homebuilt B-17 replica you’re ever likely to see. They call it the Bally Bomber, and it’s a perfect fit for autoevolution’s American Month, the virtual party celebrating American ingenuity, dedication, and sheer level of awesome.

The Bally Bomber was completed in 2016 and officially introduced at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2018 AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (hat tip to Jalopnik). It’s a very convincing and well-executed 1:3 scale replica of a B-17G Flying Fortress warplane. B-17 is widely considered, throughout its many iterations, the most accomplished and impressive aerial weapon built in the United States. //

He said he would build a replica plane that would have more than two engines, and he and his friends laughed about it. But the decision stuck with Jack and it would prove the incentive behind an 18-year project that became both incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. //

Initially, Jack wanted to build a B-24 Liberator plane replica, but it proved impossible to scale down. He changed his focus to the B-17 and used a 1:9 scale B-17 R/C plane to draw his initial design, which was made a scale larger. Then, for the next 18 years, he kept working and touching up his creation, until it was completed and ready for its maiden flight in 2016. //

The fuselage is aluminum riveted, entirely built by hand. There’s a retractable landing gear and most of the distinctive elements on the real-life Flying Fortress are present.

Western Digital just launched their 20 TB mechanical hard drive, with 2.2 terabytes per platter and onboard flash memory utilizing OptiNAND technology.

The 20 TB mechanical drive's flash memory is integrated "iNAND UFS embedded flash drive (EFD) on the circuit board," and also performs with a 3D TLC UFS flash memory, the capacity of which has not been released to the public. Western Digital intends to improve reliability and performance with the new drive. //

Another source of information from Western Digital is the lack of whether the 20 TB hard disk utilizes shingled magnetic recording (SMR). From the company's description of the drive, it is safe to assume that the hard disk will use SMR technology due to requiring the unit to record vast quantities of track info.

This recently launched hard drive carries nine discs inside, with each disc using a single disc capacity of close to 2.2TB and using Energy Assisted Perpendicular Recording Technology (ePMR). The magnetic head offers a cutting-edge three-stage drive technology, which enables pinpoint accuracy of the read and write head positions. Western Digital has manufactured the SOC control chip themselves instead of looking at outside resources. //

We should start seeing Western Digital begin shipping in the following months, with a technological expectancy of optimizing spaces on mechanical drives with as high as 50TBs or more over the next several decades.