Air-Minded: Sabres & Horseshoes

The F-86 Sabre has been on my mind lately. The Sabre was a pure air-to-air jet fighter with a high-mounted seat and 360-degree visibility, father of the F-15 Eagle, grandfather of the F-22 Raptor. As a boy living at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in the 1950s, I dreamed of someday flying the Sabres I saw flying overhead. Today I’m a volunteer […]

Air-Minded: the Army & the A-10

Army A-10s? Not gonna happen, folks. Here’s something I posted to Facebook the other day: People ask me why, if the Air Force no longer wants A-10s, it doesn’t just hand them over to the Army. The answer boils down to roles. From the 1960s into the early 1990s, the Army flew an armed observation aircraft […]

Air-Minded: Christmas Photoblogging

Guess who got a new telephoto lens for Christmas? Any guesses where he went with it? Clearly I have much to learn. Here are a few of the less-embarrassing shots I took at Pima Air & Space Museum the day after Christmas: As always, clickage will take you to the full sized images on Flickr. — […]

Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog III

I think it’s time to post another batch of photos from the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, where I volunteer as a walking tour docent. As always, you can click on the individual photos below to see the full sized originals on Flickr, or you can click here to view my entire […]

Air-Minded: US Military Aircraft Insignia (Updated 8/25/16)

This all started when I posted a cool photo on Facebook: When I posted that photo I didn’t bother to identify the nationality of the jet, but some of my friends wondered about it. Good question … what are those colors? I used to know those markings pretty well: the answer is Belgium. Then, two or three days later, a […]

Air-Minded: Coffins

Earlier this week the Pima Air & Space Museum stayed open late for its annual Halloween Fright Night, an event for kids. When I went in yesterday to lead my weekly walking tours, the Fright Night decor was still up, so I asked another volunteer to snap my photo by this macabre diorama. The coffin and […]

Air-Minded: a Cars & Planes Photoblog

Back-to-back car shows this weekend. Saturday’s show was an annual event at St Gregory’s Academy; Sunday’s was at the Pima Air & Space Museum. As car shows go, the air museum event was a small one, but it gave me an excuse to combine a motorcycle ride, a photo session, and a visit to the […]