Paul’s Bag o’ Wednesday

What does that title even mean?  Is the cat named Wednesday?  Sure, why not?  Let’s go with that. My son can’t believe I haven’t said anything about the F-22’s oxygen problems, or about the two whistleblower Raptor pilots who appeared on 60 Minutes last weekend. My first excuse comes easy: I know very little about […]

Air-Minded: Air-to-Air in the F-15 Eagle

In my day, the only video cameras we could use to film our own air-to-air flying were hand-held devices.  USAF pilots weren’t (and aren’t, AFAIK) allowed, for safety reasons, to use cameras or video recorders in single-seat cockpits.  If you were flying a two-seater, which you might do once a month or so, and you […]

Go Air Force! Go Tribal!

On April 13th, during a practice flight before a weekend air show, a member of the Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team went supersonic over Tucson.  The sonic boom frightened people and broke a lot of windows.  Going supersonic over populated areas is a huge USAF “be no” (as in “there shall be no …”) and I […]

Air-Minded: Son of Duck

After my post about the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, I asked some friends if they wanted me to blog about any aircraft in particular.  My niece Rebecca voted for a floatplane, I imagine because she lives in Seattle and sees them all the time … also, of course, floatplanes being so cool.  It happens that […]

Photoblogging (in Lieu of Writing)

Nothing much to say today, so I’ll post four photos instead. Wednesday at the air museum I photographed some aircraft awaiting restoration.  It wasn’t till later, downloading the photos, that I realized all three aircraft were British.  In the top left photo, sitting in front of the museum’s restoration hangar, are a Hawker Hunter (in […]

Friday Bag of Steak Marinade

The end of the week has come again.  The world’s most interesting couple doesn’t eat much steak, but when we do we eat it on Friday night … and with that in mind I took a flank steak out of the freezer this morning.  This afternoon I’ll put it in a marinade of soy sauce […]

“We’re Not Going to Vegas”

I’m working on the motorcycle today, so this’ll be a short entry. As an Air Force pilot I had to pass a complete flight physical every year.  Under civilian rules, airline transport pilots are inspected even more often: two physicals per year, administered by FAA-certified doctors.  So it’s unsettling that a pilot with obvious mental […]

Monday Snow Sleet Sneet Blogging

So how’s the weather? Actually bad, for a welcome change. When Tucsonans complain about the weather, we’re usually griping about scattered to broken clouds, and, once in a great while, rain — weather that would be innocuous anywhere else, so don’t pay us no never-mind.  When it snows, we act like the Apocalypse is at […]