Air-Minded: Big Jets, Little Trams, Tall Tales

Pima Air & Space Museum’s fleet of Boeing jetliners continues to grow. Thanks to Cathay Pacific and Boeing, PASM now has a 777. The aircraft, line number WA001 (the first 777 built), flew non-stop from Cathay Pacific’s home airport in Hong Kong to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, landing around 11 AM Tuesday morning. After defueling, […]

Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XIV

I haven’t posted a Pima Air & Space Museum photoblog lately, so I have some catching up to do. There’s no theme to this one, just a lot of this and that. I’ll start with the obligatory selfie and some head-on shots of interesting aircraft: PASM recently added two new outdoor exhibits, a Beechcraft T-34 Mentor […]

Another Nickel on the Grass

I disagreed with most things John McCain stood for as a politician, but although I consider myself socially progressive I was also a career military officer and that informs a lot of my thinking. If I held public office half my socially progressive brothers and sisters, probably more, would hate my guts. So I try […]

Air-Minded: Grand Theft Airplane

Last night an airport employee commandeered a Horizon Air Q400 twin-turboprop airliner at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He got it started, taxied to a runway, took off, and flew around Puget Sound before crashing on an island (he died in the crash, of course). He was followed by a pair of F-15s that had been scrambled […]

Sunday Bag o’ Updates

Halfway through my post-surgery physical therapy sessions at Tucson Orthopedic, and already starting an off-the-books PT regimen at Anytime Fitness. I dropped by this morning to spend half an hour on the stationary bicycle and some of the leg machines, the ones that help with bending and straightening my new knee. Getting over the top of […]

Air-Minded: IL-2 Restoration Photoblog

Work continues on Pima Air & Space Museum’s IL-2 Shturmovik. The fuselage is largely finished, the engine is in, the wings have been fabricated from original blueprints and are awaiting installation, and the propeller, damaged when the Shturmovik’s pilot crash-landed on a frozen lake near the Russian village of Zamejie on January 28, 1944, is being hammered […]

Air-Minded: Son of Non-Starter (Updated 7/25/18)

See my earlier speculations on the possibility of new F-15s for the USAF: The Non-Starter Option? Non-Starter Option Revisited The first post addressed three “legacy” fighter aircraft still in production for overseas customers (F/A-18, F-16, and F-15), and wondered if the US military might be talked into extending the lives of its own fleets by buying new ones. […]