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There I was at 30,000 feet
Poor Maxie. I called her Schatzi this morning. I don’t know if she noticed, but I did, and it set me back a little. Donna’s away again, though not far. She’s at a retreat with fellow members of the local American Sewing Guild. Every year about this time they hole up in a Tucson resort hotel with their […]
The golden age of air travel dawned with the advent of pressurized commercial airliners that could fly above the weather and turbulent air closer to the surface, flourished under FAA control, and ended in October 1978 when the Carter administration deregulated the industry.
In 1979, when I was stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, Prince Claus and two of his boys came to visit. I was on air defense alert that day with Jim Kellogg. We were pretty sure the Dutch would arrange a scramble for the royal family. Sure enough, the klaxon went off and five […]
Donna’s been visiting family in California since the 12th. She returns on the 25th, next Tuesday. I’m over the hump now. Today, Friday, is the last long day with nothing on my schedule. Saturday morning I’m going for a short bicycle ride with friends; Sunday a longer ride with local Hash House Harriers; Monday of […]
Is it time for another batch of photos from Pima Air & Space Museum? Let me check. Yes, my overflowing Flickr account says it is! First up, our newest exhibit, a Supermarine Spitfire Mk XIVe recently acquired from the RAF Museum in Hendon, London. The Mk XIV is a late-WWII model of the original Spitfire, […]
Aerial refueling: also called air-to-air refueling and in-flight refueling. You can’t send a B-2 from Missouri to hit a high-priority ISIS target in Libya without it; nor can you deploy an expeditionary air wing to a combat zone in Afghanistan or the Middle East. Aerial refueling allows receiving aircraft to fly long distances or stay on station […]
A few years ago I wrote a short post about the B-36 Peacemaker bomber. Here’s an excerpt: … even though I was around during the B-36 bomber’s heyday I never saw one in flight. It’s not something you’d forget: it would have been akin to seeing the Hindenburg or a tidal wave. They say the ground shook […]
Looking for photos to add to my Promise of Air Travel folder on Pinterest, I came across this: It’s a Speedpak, a conformal cargo pod or pannier designed by Lockheed for its Constellation aircraft. It wasn’t used for passenger luggage but for extra cargo. It appears to be the grandfather of the conformal cargo pods […]