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Shortfinals' Quilt Was Delivered
Shortfinals (aka Ross Sharp) during better days. He was standing in my driveway when this photo was taken.More technically accurate, the quilt is really for both Shortfinals and his beloved Jan. They...
View ArticleAir-Minded: Waiting Until the Facts Are In
"Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise."— Alexander PopeJust over two months ago, a pilot assigned to the US Air Force F-15 wing at RAF Lakenheath died when he crashed into the North Sea. The crash...
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Air-Minded: A Day in the Life
It's fun to get a question from a reader, especially a good one I can share the answer to with Air-Minded readers. Like this one:What's a day in the life of a fighter pilot? Your alarm goes off and you...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XX
Today I visited Pima Air & Space Museum for the first time since I quit as a volunteer docent in early February. My departure predated the museum's COVID-19 pandemic closure by a week or two; PASM...
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Air-Minded: Buck Fever
An aviation photographer and writer I follow on Twitter posted this the other day:I couldn't resist commenting:My response triggered questions, mostly from people wanting to know when, where, and how...
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The Princess and the Pilot
Since Mrs. Kong and I share our countrymen’s odd fascination with British royalty, we have been binge watching The Crown on Netflix. Or as I like to call it “Keeping up with the Windsors”.Now I am not...
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Air-Minded: A Christmas Story
Well, it's not exactly an aviation story, or a Christmas one either, but it's aviation-adjacent and wait, there's more: it has snow and a happy ending. Best of all, it's a story I haven't shared...
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Pandemic Flying (With cats and bikes because why not)
My Editor Miss Avril will be helping me with this one.“Meow”(That’s your majesty Queen Avril to you sub-creature! Now let us discuss the matter of my food bowl)Hauling boxes in the middle of the night...
View ArticleAir-Minded: Hymn, Hymn ...
Remember that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the one where everyone bursts into song? Bear with me, because I'm in a musical mood today.You know the Air Force song, right? Off we go, into the...
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Air-Minded: Zipper
USAF F-104 Starfighters (USAF photo)In a post about aircraft I've flown, I wrote a brief description of my one-time flight in the Zipper, Lockheed's F-104 Starfighter:The 32nd TFS hosted a Royal...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXI
I decided to drop by Pima Air and Space Museum today. My previous visit was in September 2020, documented in Photoblog XX. That was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and the...
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Air-Minded: Planes, (no) Trains, and Automobiles
I have some aviation and automotive updates for you today.Two USAF pilots ejected from a Qatari F-15QA after landing at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport yesterday morning.Interestingly, the pilots punched...
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Air-Minded: Following up on Eagles & Eagle Eyes
First production F-15EX Eagle II arrives at Eglin AFBMy friend Joe Coles, who publishes the excellent Hush Kit aviation blog, asked for my thoughts on the USAF's new version of its legacy fighter, the...
View ArticleAir-Minded: a Catastrophic Breakdown
In an Air-Minded post dated August 16, 2020, I mentioned a fatal F-16 mishap at Shaw AFB, South Carolina that had happened during a night landing a month and a half earlier. As with other mishaps I...
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Air-Minded: Air-Manned
The Federal Aviation Administration may ditch the word "airman." The FAA doesn't use the word casually -- it's the agency's official term for aviators, pilots, and aircrew members, and appears in all...
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Air-Minded: Shirtsleeves ... In Space!
Yesterday, watching the livestream of Virgin Galactic's first commercial spaceflight, I couldn't help noticing the shirtsleeve environment inside SpaceShip II. What hit me first was that Richard...
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Air-Minded: Doing More With Less
The U.S. Air Force says it has a pilot shortage. Journalists, and much of the pubic, take the declaration at face value: OMG, the USAF doesn't have enough pilots to fly its planes!What's really going...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXII
I made one of my periodic treks to Pima Air and Space Museum this morning, wanting to see if anything's changed. The answer: not much.My last two PASM visits, documented in earlier photoblogs, were in...
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Air-Minded: MIDAIRs & ZELLs & FOD, Oh My!
I started riding motorcycles when I was 15, and still ride today. Over the course of 60 years, cagers (car drivers) have tried to kill me more times than I can count. Two came close, scoring direct...
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Air-Minded: Son of More With Less
In a recent diary I described big changes to U.S. Air Force's undergraduate pilot training (UPT) program -- big changes from my era, that is, when I spent more than a year in UPT, followed by three...
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Sorry Ohio. NC is still where the first flight took place.
Having grown up in NC, and having lived in Ohio, I’m well aware of the consternation over NC’s claim to “First In Flight.” We’ve got it on our license plates, our quarters, T-shirts, just about...
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Air-Minded: Prophecy Fulfilled
When I started working there as a tour guide in 2011, Pima Air and Space Museum had a robust volunteer program. I was proud to become part of it. PASM's volunteer docents were, almost without...
View ArticleAir-Minded: Story Time
I first posted this on my personal blog, Paul’s Thing, in May, 2007. I retold the story at a friend's retirement party yesterday and forgot a couple of details, so I looked it up this morning to...
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Air-Minded: the Last Step's a Doozy
This will be a short post, inspired by this photo of an F-15A taxiing in after landing from an air defense alert scramble at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands.Been there, done that (photographer...
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Royal Canadian Air Force Moose Milk
The holidays are upon us, so in order to assist those aviators and airport bums who enjoy entertaining at home, I present the secret recipe for the concoction known to Royal Canadian Air Force...
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Air-Minded: Roger That!
Here's a fun article sent by a friend who served with me at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands. It brings back fond memories.American aircrews who fly regularly in Europe are familiar with the...
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Air-Minded: Go Fish
I'm following news reports of January's "landing incident" aboard the USS Carl Vinson, wherein a Navy F-35C pilot misjudged his carrier landing approach in the last seconds, struck the ramp, and...
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Air-Minded: Skid & Patches
Names are traditionally painted below the canopies of U.S. Air Force fighters: pilot/aircrew on the left side, crew chief on the right.Friends ask me about this often, wanting to know whether I always...
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Air-Minded: Speedbrake Chaff
The F-15 Eagles in service today are equipped with countermeasures dispensers which pump out chaff and flares to defeat or decoy enemy radar and heat-seeking missiles. Chaff and flares can be dispensed...
View ArticleI am on television!
Yes folks, there’s no living with me now. I’ve had my Andy Warhol designated 15 minutes of fame. I made it onto a TV show.If you watch the show Air Disasters on the Smithsonian channel I am featured in...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXIII
I visited Tucson's Pima Air and Space Museum this morning. Here I am in front of one the new exhibits, which I'll get to in a moment.I was a volunteer docent and tour guide at PASM for nine years,...
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Air-Minded: Hack
I've written a bit about wristwatches lately (here and here, if you're interested). Even though GPS and computers do all the work today, student pilots are still taught to calculate speed the...
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Air-Minded: A High-Speed Abort by Any Other Name
Whew, that was close!How close? This close.Photo by @Lloydyy22 on TwitterFriday, during practice for a scheduled Sunday exhibition at Wellesbourne Mountford Airfield in the United Kingdom’s West...
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Air-Minded: Habu
This photo, posted to an F-15 Eagle Facebook group this morning, brought back memories of my time at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, during the final two years of SR-71 Blackbird operations at the...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXIV
I was a volunteer docent and tram tour guide at Tucson's Pima Air and Space Museum for nine years, quitting just days before PASM shut down for the Covid pandemic in March 2020. I'm just a member now,...
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Air-Minded: Zulu Nostalgia
I read something yesterday and had a nostalgia attack. There are days I really miss the Air Force!According to a report in The War Zone, F-16 Viper pilots from Alaska Air Command's 18th Aggressor...
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Air-Minded: First Blooding
I've avoided writing about the first aircraft accident I investigated for the U.S. Air Force. The official report I and the other members of the mishap board wrote is privileged information. The clock...
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A Reunion
Tucson is a great place for bicycling, at least during the months where the temperature doesn’t approximate the surface of the sun.On a recent weekend layover I found myself in Tucson with a rented...
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Air-Minded: Ramming Speed
Cross-posted from my personal blog, Paul’s Thing:Initial news reports of the downing of a U.S. drone over the Black Sea strongly suggested a Russian fighter pilot had intentionally rammed it. That...
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Air-Minded: Know Thine Enemy
In another major study, scientists determine water boils at 100°C.I'm in codger mode, triggered by social media selfies and videos taken by gloveless military pilots in single-seat fighters. When did...
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Air-Minded: Whoa Nellie!
An F-15 pilot earned a tactical callsign yesterday.Landing mishap: Oregon ANG F-15D Eagle in irrigation canal (photo credit: unknown)Probably not, though. It's true that tactical callsigns often...
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Air-Minded: Nostalgia
I came across a neat photo of a former home:Company town, military styleThat, right there, is where I spent the first four years of my flying career: Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. I was there...
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Air-Minded: To Fly, Fight ... and Twerk?
I don't know about this.Click to linkIt's an Instagram post from the manager of an entertainment act hired for a recent U.S. Air Force open house & air show. I tried to embed it but my version of...
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Air-Minded: the End of the Whip
This won't be any kind of organized Air-Minded post, more a collection of thoughts & memories. But there's a theme, and it's flying in formation.F-15 Eagles from Kadena AB, Japan, flying to Tyndall...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXVI
I dropped by the Pima Air & Space Museum yesterday. As you may know from prior posts and photoblogs, I was a PASM volunteer docent for almost ten years, right up until the week before the COVID...
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Air-Minded: Mid-Airs on the Ground (Updated)
Update: I’ve corrected this diary. A source I had relied on posted incorrect information, which I repeated. The source has since updated and corrected that information, and I have edited this diary to...
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Air-Minded: Speed Is Life ... But How Much Speed? (Updated)
Last week, speaking at the Singapore Air Show, Boeing's F-15EX program manager said the new version of the Eagle is capable of Mach 3 in a clean configuration. I questioned that claim, and did so...
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Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XXVII (Updated 3/26/24)
photo: Paul WoodfordIt must be spring, because I made the first of two annual treks to Pima Air & Space Museum today. I like to take advantage of the pleasant outdoor weather in early spring and...
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We Have Met the Enemy (and He Is Us)
I posted a photo of U.S. Air Force aggressor aircraft to Facebook. Friends were intrigued. I answered some of their questions in comments, but it's a subject worth exploring in more detail, and my blog...
View ArticleAir-Minded: the Big Reveal (Corrected)
Here's a tweet that caught my eye.xAn interesting video showcasing the emotional reactions of U.S. Air Force pilot trainees upon learning the types of fighter jets they will be flying.(U.S. airforce is...
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