Too Soon … As Always (Updated)

So the 14-year-old kid who committed the latest school shooting started making threats when he was 13, came to the attention of the FBI and local law enforcement, was questioned, put on a watch list … and, I bet, promptly forgotten.

The threats contained images of guns and the FBI determined that the posts originated in Georgia, specifically in Jackson County. The FBI turned over the evidence to the Jackson County Sheriff’s office, which interviewed Gray and his father, who said that he had hunting guns in the house but Gray did not have ‘unsupervised access’ to them.

There was no probable cause at the time for an arrest or additional law enforcement action, the post said. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.

How often do budding school shooters send out warning signals beforehand, alerting teachers, classmates, and authorities? Fairly often, I think. And how often, after a school shooting, does law enforcement reveal they knew about the shooter beforehand but were unable to take action because no crime had yet been committed? A reasonable person might think that after a few such cases, states would pass laws making exceptions for kids (and adults) who make threats, so that they can be preventively locked up or committed to behavioral crisis facilities for treatment and counseling.

Then again, a reasonable person might think assault rifles would have been banned after Columbine. So no, we’re not going to do anything, and it’s going to keep right on happening.

At the risk of repeating myself, I hope President Harris appoints Mark Kelly to her cabinet. Why? Because Kelly’s wife, Gabby Giffords, is a leading voice of the gun control movement. Mark himself appears to be firmly on board, as does Kamala. Maybe, just maybe, something will finally happen.

Hey, a reasonable person can dream, can’t he?

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A friend sends an article about an author. In the accompanying photo you can see a watch on the author’s wrist, and my friend thought I might know what kind it is. Alas, the image gets blurry when you zoom in. If he was a celeb, especially an actor, it’d be a different story … legions of watch enthusiasts double as spotters, and you can almost always find posts on Reddit identifying the watches of the rich & famous. But this author is also a pilot, so it’s safe to assume he wears a worthy timepiece.

I dug a bit deeper and found another photo. Not good enough to ID the watch, which in any case appears to be a different one, but definitely one this pilot would wear. Also, too, it turns out I read and liked an earlier novel by this author, and now I’ve put his latest on hold at the library.

Donna and Polly are driving to Phoenix tomorrow, spending the night with our friend Millie, then on to Las Vegas for the weekend. They’ll stay with Gregory and Beth, our son and daughter-in-law, and look at a house that’s coming up for sale in their over-55 gated community. Yes, Donna still wants to relocate to Las Vegas and I see the sense in that. But a lot of things would have to happen to make it possible and I also see the sense in staying right here in Tucson. Then again … happy wife, happy life, am I right?

Meanwhile, my three sisters and a niece, mostly living in the Midwest (with one in Montana), have suggested a get-together with us in Arizona. We’re thinking of meeting and staying together in Flagstaff and taking the train from Williams to the Grand Canyon as a main event, with a day trip down the mountain to Sedona as another.

Fall and spring are the times for visiting Arizona. This fall and next spring are too soon (i.e., the train’s probably already sold out); Donna and I have a big wedding to attend in the fall of 2025 and that’ll wipe us out; spring of ’26 looks good but now we’re edging into we-might-be-living-in-Las Vegas-by-then territory (and at least one sister has misgivings about holding our reunion in Sin City, and I get that … Vegas is actually a nice city for families to live in, with good schools and parks, but as for visitors it’s not family-friendly, no matter what they try to tell you).

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Someone posted this photo to an F-15 Eagle group on Facebook. I should probably make this the subject of a separate Air-Minded post, but I really don’t have a lot to say. Moreover, the kind of radar cross-section testing they’re doing here is well outside my expertise, leaving me with even less to say.

But I took one look at the blue paint on that old Eagle and said to myself, “that’s an A model, probably one of the very first ones delivered to the Air Force.” The paint was called Air Superiority Blue and seemed like a brilliant idea for an air-to-air fighter, but it turned out you could see blue F-15s a long way off and the USAF quickly adopted a harder-to-see shade of light grey. When I went through F-15 RTU in 1978, there were still several blue jets on the ramp at Luke AFB, and I flew a number of them in training. Once I got into the fleet, though, they were all grey, and eventually even the early blue jets were repainted.

So anyway, as with the author and his mystery watch, I checked to see if I could learn more about this photo. According to this source, the Eagle on the pedestal is actually a C model. All C models came in grey, so it’s a puzzle to me why this airframe is painted the way it is, but the conformal fuel tanks it’s wearing pretty much confirm it’s a C. It’s also interesting to note that it’s configured with a mixed load of air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance, plus some kind of centerline pod. External stores affect your radar cross-section (hang a bomb or fuel tank under the wing of an F-35, for example, and all your stealth goes away), so it’s logical you’d want to test every conceivable configuration.

The photo was taken at the Rome Air Development Center’s Newport test site in New York, dates from 1988, and is in the public domain. It’s also cool as hell, which is all the excuse I need to share it with you.

Update (9/7/24): A reader (see Robert Hoeting’s comment, below) tells me my source is mistaken and my first impression is correct: the blue Eagle on the test tower is indeed an early A model, tail number 72-0113, older than any F-15 I ever flew, and as noted I flew some of the early ones in training. If you’re too lazy to scroll down to the comments, here’s the source Robert provides. There are several photos of the F-15 on the test tower at the link, with and without conformal fuel tanks. Robert, by the way, wins the coveted Friend of Paul’s Thing™ award.