More Friday Slackness

Whoa, two posts in one day. Guess I wasn’t done earlier. I’m back from my dry run at the museum. I borrowed the volunteer golf cart and drove the tram tour route, talking about all the aircraft I plan to cover on live tours with visitors once I certify. If anyone saw me putting around, gesticulating […]

Thursday Bag o’ DGAS

My give-a-shit meter is close to zero. I’m in a rage slump, kind of like a manic-depressive on the down cycle. Something will set me off again, probably sooner than later, and I’ll be back to normal, ranting and raving about injustice, racism, and stupidity. Ooh, did I just feel a rage twinge there? So how ’bout them Duggars? […]

Spam and Ramps and Trams, Oh My!

Yesterday and today the comment spam folders at my three blogs were less than a quarter full — not that they’re of a fixed size, but in comparison to the daily volume of spam the blogs have been getting. Is it too soon to hope the bots have decided to write pwoodford.net off? It’s a sad fact that […]

Air-Minded: Special Weapons & Fighters

The Navy reportedly wants to add nuclear bomb-carrying capability to its version of the F-35 fighter, the F-35C. The weapon mentioned in the linked article is the B61 gravity nuclear bomb, designed in the 1960s and long out of production. For some reason this disturbs me. In the 1950s and 60s, you’d occasionally hear about Air Force […]

Air-Minded: Dragons & Bolos

A friend visited the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) in Tucson a few weeks ago. I told her if any particular airplane spoke to her, I’d write an air-minded post on it. Well, you never know what’s going to catch someone’s eye. In her case, it was one of our orphans, a Douglas B-23 Dragon. PASM’s Dragon has been […]

Air-Minded: Planes of Fame Photoblog I

During last week’s motorcycle trip, I visited the Planes of Fame Museum in Valle, Arizona. The main Planes of Fame Museum is located in Chino, California; the Arizona adjunct is what I would call an overflow facility. It’s off the beaten track, located halfway up the lonely road between Williams, Arizona and the South Rim […]

Air-Minded: Letting the Team Down

I don’t have any brilliant thoughts or insights about Germanwings Flight 9525, where the co-pilot is suspected of committing mass murder by flying a plane full of passengers into a mountain in the Swiss Alps. I’m sad and shocked, of course, that any pilot would do such a thing. I’ve always considered military and commercial flying a profession; […]

Air-Minded: “I’ve Never Seen the Knife More Dull”

Institutionally, the military services have never forgotten the crippling constraints imposed upon the conduct of the air war in Vietnam: Target lists were reviewed at the White House in the informal atmosphere of the Tuesday lunch, attended principally by President Johnson, his press secretary, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the President’s special assistant for national […]