Air-Minded Addendum: Hucks Starter

More on the Hucks starter I described in an earlier entry. One of the aircraft at the Pima Air & Space Museum, a Japanese WWII fighter,  used this starting method. When I was at the museum today I took a photo of the prop spinner so you could see the boss they’d hook the Hucks […]

Lunatics and Retards

Yesterday, Congress voted to eliminate the word “lunatic” from federal laws and regulations dealing with mental health. The lone dissenter was this guy here, Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Imbecile). Personally I don’t have a problem with the word. I probably wouldn’t use it around an actual lunatic, but hell, we all know what it means and […]

Air-Minded: Spy Shots from the Museum

I went down to the Pima Air & Space Museum for a volunteers’ meeting and while there took some photos with my cell phone camera, feeling quite the spy. This first photo, for example, was taken inside a storage room not open to the public. It’s a Japanese Kamikaze flying bomb, and there can’t be […]

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 […]

Don’t Be That Guy

Who’s the guy running behind her?  That’s race official Jock Semple, trying to tackle her and pull her out of the marathon, yelling “Get the hell out of my race and give me that number!”  The men running with Katherine blocked him and she was able to finish the race.  Click here for the full […]

Air-Minded: the Super-Duper Sabre

I love the jet fighters of the 1950s.  Built for speed, sleek and swept-back, they were the embodiment of the fantasy planes of comic book superheroes.  The North American F-107, an orphan fighter-bomber abandoned by the USAF, embodies the go-fast exuberance of the period. The F-107 began life in 1953 at North American Aviation as a drawing-board […]

Air-Minded: V for Victory

When I started conducting walking tours at the Pima Air & Space Museum a few months ago, I quickly realized I’d talk myself hoarse if I didn’t overcome a certain egotistical reluctance to use a portable voice amplifier and speaker.  The museum had two but they were big heavy things, each one powered by eight […]