"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Aviation-related posts
Stag bars and strippers went away over 40 years ago. Women have been flying USAF aircraft since the 1970s, and flying fighters since the 1990s. Does this guy seriously think Trump or Mattis is going to reverse time? Or that treating women as property and sex objects makes leaders?
This photoblog is primarily about the newly restored F-15A at Pima Air & Space Museum. I wrote about this Eagle in September 2011, when it was moved from the back acreage of the museum to the head of fighter row. What piqued my original interest was its tail number, 74-0118, because I flew 1974 Eagles […]
I was looking through iPhone photos in a break room at Pima Air & Space Museum, inside a metal-walled building that blocks cell phone reception, and realized I’d have to wait to post them until I got home. Since I couldn’t go online and catch up with my little Facebook friends either, I started looking through […]
Here’s a project I’ve been working on the past few days, an interview with aviation blogger Joe Coles, publisher of Hush Kit, “the alternative aviation magazine.” Joe ran across one of my Air-Minded blog posts and contacted me. I agreed to answer interview questions via email. Happily, his questions were well-informed and provocative, not the […]
This one’s from the Air-Minded archive, originally published in December 2004. When I flew fighters, my tactical callsign was Skid. How did I get a name like that? Simple: I blew a tire. But enough about my sex life! Callsigns, as often as not, are based on screw-ups, minor mishaps, and embarrassing personal traits. I […]
My friend Peter van ____, who was the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Dutch military liaison officer when I flew F-15s at Soesterberg Air Base from 1978-1982, just sent me a batch of NATO archival photos taken there on 5 & 6 April 1961. The occasion was either a NATO exercise or possibly the production of […]
I try to stay out of the restoration volunteers’ way at Pima Air & Space Museum, but curiosity overcame me yesterday, so I borrowed a golf cart and drove through the fence like I owned the place, armed with a selfie stick and my trusty iPhone. A few months ago a fleet of flat-bed semis […]
Or Shack o’ Sit, if you prefer. Cleverly vulgar signs and business names are funny the first time you see them, but the humor wears out fast. Used to be, I’d see photos like this on Facebook and instantly share them with all my friends. These days I try to exercise restraint … and yet here I am leading […]