Air-Minded: Story Time
“Well, he told me he worked for NASA—he didn’t tell me he had been to the moon and back.”
I Know, Let’s Have a Debate!
We watched the first Democratic presidential debate this week. Judging by the wealth of post-debate comments posted on social media, we weren’t alone. Most of us who sat down to watch already knew our own favored candidate would win, and funnily enough, that’s exactly how it worked out. I’m no different. I favored Hillary Clinton going in, […]
Air-Minded: Air Tanker Photoblog
Last week, during a break between tram tours at the Pima Air & Space Museum, I spent an hour exploring a seldom-visited back lot where we keep retired air tankers and water bombers. These are civil and military aircraft converted to carry and drop water or retardant on forest fires. Most of the aircraft on […]
AIr-Minded: The Museum of Flight
During our recent road trip to California and the Pacific Northwest, Donna and I spent a couple of days with our niece Rebecca in Bremerton, Washington. While there, we visited The Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle. To me, any visit to an air museum is special, but this visit was extra-special. My oldest friend, […]
Air-Minded: Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum
We spent a weekend in Portland, Oregon and while there I visited the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in nearby McMinnville. The Evergreen museum is the current home of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose. I’ll say this about the Spruce Goose: it has presence. When you stand under it, or […]
Air-Minded: Escaping the Fall of Saigon
One of the volunteers I work with at the Pima Air & Space Museum is a young University of Arizona aeronautical engineering student. His family is originally Vietnamese and I have the impression his father or maybe grandfather immigrated to the USA after the communist takeover. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind that, and I’ll have […]
Air-Minded: Burning and Turning
The controversial and over-budget F-35 fighter is under almost constant attack. Some of the shortcomings identified by critics are no doubt real, but the story of a previously-unidentified F-35 glitch that emerged last week was, at least to this former air-to-air pilot, a bit of a shock: a report out of Edwards AFB stating that a clean (no […]
Thursday Bag o’ Nukes
It’s been extremely hot in southern Arizona. Every day we hear about electric power outages in different sections of Tucson. Are these intentional rolling blackouts? Sure looks like it. So far no power interruptions in our hood, but since our air conditioner crapped out last week and we had to spend a night and a […]