Air-Minded: Thundercraft (2 Updates)

Scroll to the bottom of this post to see two updates added on 10/29/13 and 10/30/13. I originally planned to put irony quotes around the word Thundercraft, since no USAF pilot I know would be caught dead using the term. But what the hell, it was Republic’s collective name for the fighter-bombers they designed and […]

Air-Minded: Museum Updates

Yesterday was my day to volunteer at the Pima Air & Space Museum, where I lead back-to-back walking tours at 10:30 and 11:30 AM every Wednesday. There were no takers for the 10:30 tour, so I used my unexpected free hour to walk around the grounds taking photos of new exhibits. The first thing to […]

Air-Minded: Gunship Photoblogging

The Pima Air & Space Museum restoration team rolled out our Mil Mi-24 Hind gunship earlier this week. I mentioned this helicopter in an earlier post, after seeing it partially disassembled in the restoration hangar. I was particularly struck by the robust transmission, which would not look out of place in a battleship’s engine room. […]

Air-Minded: Dragging It In

Obviously we don’t yet know what happened to cause Asiana Flight 214 to crash at San Francisco International last Saturday. Anything I say will be speculative, but based on what I’ve seen, heard, and read to date, it sure looks like the pilots, through their own actions or inactions, got low and slow on final […]