"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
There I was at 30,000 feet
One of the men I flew with in the early 1980s, Dave Baker, died last Thursday. We called him Bull; I blogged about him a few months ago. Bull had been a prisoner of war; captured and held after being shot down in Cambodia near the end of the war in Vietnam. They teach you […]
A friend in Melbourne sent me this absolutely chilling video of a Russian IL-76 taking off from an RAAF base in Australia. Granted, I flew the F-15, a fighter with so much power we never had to compute takeoff data, but in training I flew T-37s and T-38s, where running the numbers (gross weight, pressure […]
Wow. Just wow. Who doesn’t need a bit of good news once in a while, especially lately? The incredible and ongoing story of US Airways Flight 1549 delivers the feel-good in spades. Of course I’m heavily prejudiced in favor of fighter pilots, and the actions of the former fighter pilot in question, the captain of […]
Dropping ballast in anticipation of retirement: satellite radio. Talk about not living up to promises. When I listen to Sirius today, not only do I hear the exact same playlists of songs I heard five years ago (particularly on the Blues Channel, my one-time favorite), I hear commercials. Yeah, terrestrial radio is ten times worse, […]
I was fascinated by this exchange during Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin the other night: Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians? Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears […]
In an earlier post, I promised to tell you about our resident spy at Soesterberg Air Base in The Netherlands. His name was Jack van Beek, but we called him Jack the Clock. I honestly don’t know that he was our resident spy, but everyone knew there was a resident spy, and most of us […]
When I told my son I wasn’t going to vote for John McCain, he said, “But he was a fighter pilot. And a POW!” Meaning, I suppose, that McCain just has to be my kind of candidate. I understand the fighter pilot part. Indeed, my ideal candidate would have served in the military. If he or […]
I invited a few F-15 buddies to join me on Facebook, where I started a by-invitation group for current and former military aviators. For the past year or two I’ve been looking for the presence of other F-15 pilots on the net. Just did another quick sweep, and AFAIK I’m the only one. Although the […]