Air-Minded: Fitting In, Part II
I believe the best person should get the job and if that person is a woman, so be it. You cannot tell me I don’t belong and women shouldn’t or can’t fly fighters if I just beat you on the range and/or at BFM.
Air-Minded: Bitchin’ Betty (Updated 4/25/19)
When Sexy Sally started warning B-58 Hustler crews about engine fires in the 1960s, it was a major innovation, and using a woman’s voice was considered a brilliant stroke: human factors researchers thought a woman’s voice—rarely heard on the radio and never on the intercom—would cut through other chatter and get the crews’ attention.
A Be-No from the Boss
This morning our volunteer coordinator sent an all-hands be-no* message about injecting politics and personal opinion into the information we share with museum guests.
Air-Minded: Yellow Peril
“Carry a barf bag whether you think you’re prone to airsickness or not,” my instructor pilot said, “because you never know.”
Air-Minded: Eagle Versus Flanker
Hush Kit, “the alternative aviation magazine,” has published another piece of mine, this one about how F-15 Eagle pilots trained to face the threat posed by the Soviet Union’s then-new Su-27 Flanker in the late 1980s and early 90s, when I flew F-15s at Kadena Air Base in Japan.
Air-Minded: the FAA and the 737 Max
“Satisfying the needs of aviation interests” and “encouraging and developing civil aeronautics”? The conflict is baked in, part of the FAA’s DNA.
Air-Minded: First Flights
Everyone has to start somewhere. Do you remember your first airplane ride?
Air-Minded: Little Friends & Aerial Refueling
In an earlier Air-Minded post, I wrote about the early days of aerial refueling and the initial development of USAF tanker aircraft and refueling methods. This post is about the USAF jet fighters, interceptors, and attack jets that depend on those tankers to get to where they’re going and back home again.