{"id":22066,"date":"2018-04-06T15:19:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T22:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=22066"},"modified":"2023-01-31T17:51:56","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T00:51:56","slug":"air-minded-san-diego-air-space-photoblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=22066","title":{"rendered":"Air-Minded: San Diego Air & Space Photoblog"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend John is a former Navy flight surgeon and Navy pilot, which makes him a member of a very small community. He flew F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats at the same time I flew F-15 Eagles for the Air Force. We’ve been friends since the early 1990s, when we were both on active duty and flying; he attended my retirement at Nellis AFB in 1997 and I attended his at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego a year later.<\/p>\n

\"Convair<\/a>
Flyboys reliving past glories<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donna and I visited John and his wife Melanie in San Diego earlier this week. As part of our visit, John and I took a side trip to the San Diego Air & Space Museum<\/a> on Tuesday. That’s us out front, posing in front of a Convair YF2Y-1 Sea Dart. You don’t see one of those every day.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t been to SDASM in 20 years, but wanted to see it again because Iremembered it had many pre-WWII aircraft in its collection, an era of aviation not represented at Pima Air & Space<\/a>, where I volunteer as a docent. This time around I was surprised to see a number of WWI and pre-WWI aircraft as well.<\/p>\n

Some older aircraft are the genuine article; others are reproductions. The reproductions are so\u00a0expertly done I didn’t know I wasn’t looking at original aircraft until I got home and\u00a0started matching my photos with SDASM’s exhibit listing<\/a>. I was convinced their Bell X-1 mockup, for example, was a genuine flight article. It’s so much better done than my own museum’s X-15 mockup, which is crude in comparison.<\/p>\n

SDASM’s building in Balboa Park is small, but like Doctor Who’s Tardis, there’s a lot inside. Here are a few samples. Hover over the photos for aircraft identification, or click on them to see the full-sized originals on Flickr (there are several more photos in my Flickr SDASM album<\/a>):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Boeing<\/a><\/td>\n\"Gee<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Bell<\/a><\/td>\n\"McDonnell<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Ford<\/a><\/td>\n\"Chance<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Fokker<\/a><\/td>\n\"Horton<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Mitsubishi<\/a><\/td>\n\"Douglas<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"NYP-3<\/a><\/td>\n\"NYP-3<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\nAnd, since it won’t fit in a table like the others, here’s one for the road:<\/p>\n

\"Consolidated<\/a><\/center>\u2014 back to the Air-Minded Index<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend John is a former Navy flight surgeon and Navy pilot, which makes him a member of a very small community. He flew F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats at the same time I flew F-15 Eagles for the Air Force. We’ve been friends since the early 1990s, when we were both on active duty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,3,14],"tags":[1312,158,2520,1000],"class_list":["post-22066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-minded","category-flying","category-military","tag-aircraft","tag-aviation","tag-museum","tag-warbirds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22066"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32675,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066\/revisions\/32675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}