Air-Minded … But Why? (Updated)
Yes, I’m a boy when it comes to aviation. I hope I always am.
Air Minded: Close Encounters
“Yeah, we know what you fly!”
Air-Minded: Yellow Peril
“Carry a barf bag whether you think you’re prone to airsickness or not,” my instructor pilot said, “because you never know.”
Transonic Cat Wars
I remember a huge flap at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands when a new guy, one of the first of a wave of evangelical Christian officers from the Air Force Academy (a wave that continues to plague the USAF today), recorded Spielberg’s awful “1941” movie over all the alert shack’s Betamax porn tapes. Funny now, but an existential crisis at the time!
Air-Minded: F-15 Pilot Reveals All
Here’s a project I’ve been working on the past few days, an interview with aviation blogger Joe Coles, publisher of Hush Kit, “the alternative aviation magazine.” Joe ran across one of my Air-Minded blog posts and contacted me. I agreed to answer interview questions via email. Happily, his questions were well-informed and provocative, not the […]
Air-Minded: Influencing the Future
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 […]
Air-Minded: Non-Starter Option Revisited
In July, I posted an Air-Minded Diary titled The Non-Starter Option. In it, I proposed purchasing new F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s (all of which are still in production) for the USAF and USN. My argument was that new F-15s, which are far more capable that the older models currently in use, are needed to supplement […]
Air-Minded: Where’s a Black Box When You Need It? (Updated 7/23/15)
In an Air Force pilot’s career there are few tasks harder and more frustrating than trying to figure out how and why a fellow pilot crashed, especially when he or she is so inconsiderate as to die in the crash and either disappear completely or leave very few clues behind that would help others figure out what happened.