Is it just me, or does the KOLD News 13 staff seem giddy with excitement? I mean, check this shit out:
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) – A convoy of truckers demanding an end to coronavirus mandates is coming through Tucson this week.
The convoy is expected to pass through Phoenix around 9 a.m. Thursday and Tucson about two hours later. The group is called “American Convoy I-10 Division.” Their Facebook group can be joined at https://www.facebook.com/groups/659737228500794.
According to an Eventbrite post, supporters are meeting at 3346 South Sixth Avenue. It is a commercial parking lot that is a “short distance to the South 6th Ave Bridge” that overlooks Interstate 10.
Attendees are asked to bring their flags and signs and wear patriotic gear.
Well, I’m thankful we don’t have to deal with 40-mile-long Russian convoys of tanks, BMPs, rocket launchers, missile carriers, and support vehicles. Just little fifth-column agitprop convoys, organized by home-grown useful idiots, funded (probably) by Putin.
The CDC says the Covid threat level in Tucson remains high, although most people you see in stores and restaurants no longer mask. City, county, and state buildings … libraries, schools, DMV offices … still require masks. At a doctor’s office last week the receptionist handed me a disposable surgical mask and asked me to put it on in place of the cloth mask I was wearing. Funny thing was, for the past four or five months I’d only worn surgical masks; the day I went to the doctor was the first one in a long time I’d felt safe going back to cloth.
I think, even if Arizona follows California’s lead and ends mask requirements, they’re still going to be required wear … at the very least in hospitals and doctors’ offices … for a long time to come.
A former squadron mate plans to fly to Tucson in late March for a visit. In his Piper Cherokee. I haven’t seen him since the early 1980s, when he and I flew F-15s at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands. Even though the folks I worked with in the military were pilots, with many going on to second careers with the airlines, only a tiny fraction own their own aircraft. There’s just three I can think of right off. The friend who’s coming to visit later this month, who has both the Cherokee and a Chinese aerobatic two-seater he flies in airshows; another Netherlands squadron mate who’s part owner of a MiG-15, which he also flies on the airshow circuit; and a man I taught to fly during my Air Training Command instructor days, now a rich stockbroker with a Cirrus. All three struck it rich in their post-USAF careers. As much as I love flying, if I had their money I’d collect classic cars and motorcycles instead!
Veterans who flew in the military are not much more likely to fly General Aviation planes than non vets. Piper, Cessna, Beech and the others were pretty sure a large percentage of airmen would remember their service flying fondly and buy airplanes post WWII. And they did sell well for two years or so. Then, with all factories working three shifts in 1946, demand dropped like a shot duck and factories were shuttered and firms bankrupted. It took years to reduce the glut of over 35,000 planes built that year from the industry’s miscalculation and wishful thinking that nearly broke light plane manufacturing for years.
The good side? Pug Piper developed the wonderful little Vagabond in 1947 to use up excess parts and stave off bankrupsy. And that era has supplied semi-affordable aircraft to the less well heeled pilots to this day. Spend $175 euros for a LSA Czech glass speedster or $26,000 for a good used Ercoupe, T-craft or Luscombe.
‘Tod’ recently posted…Treason Plus Grifting: Today’s Republican Party