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There I was at 30,000 feet
The end of the week has come again. The world’s most interesting couple doesn’t eat much steak, but when we do we eat it on Friday night … and with that in mind I took a flank steak out of the freezer this morning. This afternoon I’ll put it in a marinade of soy sauce […]
I’m working on the motorcycle today, so this’ll be a short entry. As an Air Force pilot I had to pass a complete flight physical every year. Under civilian rules, airline transport pilots are inspected even more often: two physicals per year, administered by FAA-certified doctors. So it’s unsettling that a pilot with obvious mental […]
So how’s the weather? Actually bad, for a welcome change. When Tucsonans complain about the weather, we’re usually griping about scattered to broken clouds, and, once in a great while, rain — weather that would be innocuous anywhere else, so don’t pay us no never-mind. When it snows, we act like the Apocalypse is at […]
Walking around the outdoor displays at the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) the other day, I stopped in front of a dusty relic, a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter. I always think of the P-80 (later redesignated the F-80) as a Korean War-era fighter. It’s true that the P-80 first […]
GOP Debate Audience Boos Contraception. Oh give me a break! Nearly everyone in that audience uses contraception or has a spouse who does, and none of them are planning to give it up. So what are they really booing? They’re booing the other tribe: liberals, Democrats, progressives, those hippies down in Tucson. A rough translation […]
Project Boneyard is now on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum, where I volunteer as a tour guide. It’s an art project using old aircraft and aircraft parts as canvases. When I wrote about it last week, the exhibit hadn’t officially opened and just a few outdoor aircraft were on display. I thought […]
The aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB turned local artists loose on some old aircraft. The results are soon to go on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum. I watched them tow a few out into the yard this week and took some photos: There are more to come, and the exhibit, called The […]
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 […]