Tucson, February 2019

We went to the Pima Air And Space Museum with Scott Seibert, Ken Hathaway and George Denninghoff, all Foretravel folks we know. Scott (and Carol) and Ken (and Dori) are at Diamond Js, George (and Steph) are staying over at the nearby Airforce base campground, a benefit to being retired from the military.

George on the left and Scott are waiting for the shuttle that takes us around the out door displays. Harley is Scott’s service dog. He has the waiting part handled pretty well.

Inside we got a close look at an A10 Warthog. Davis Monthan AF Base has one of the larger squadrons of these formidable air planes. We see some flying almost every day. They entered service in 1976 and have been continuously upgraded recently with new wings and are expected to stay in service until about 2040.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II

This is one of my favorites. In all of the air museums we have been to I have only seen one more. It is a Grumman OV-1C Mohawk. The bug eyes made it well suited for its job as an observation plane. Wouldn’t this be a cool private aircraft?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_OV-1_Mohawk

This is a Beechcraft 2000A Starship. It was a very advanced Burt Rutan designed all composite pressurized business airplane. Only 53 were built, only 2 or 3 are still flying. I made a presentation to Beechcraft in 1989 on an advanced composite curing process. It never made it into a production aircraft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Starship

And here is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner! It is one of the first built as test aircraft. Serial number ZA002. It has hundreds of miles of cables and instrumentation installed and was never intended as a passenger model. Boeing donated it to the Pima Air & Space Museum in 2015. This is the only one of these I have seen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner

We had a nice lunch and a unhurried chance to look closer at a few planes. A nice way to do it.

Art’s Birthday

An older fellow from Canada here at Diamond Js had a birthday one day. He smoked a large brisket and invited lots of folks over for dinner (at 4:00 PM). Everyone brought something to share. It was a great dinner, as you can see it was a cool evening.

That’s Art standing up in the back of this two fire pit gathering. Glen, another fellow from Canada, brought his guitar for some very good music and sing along.

More later, Much Love,

Roger and Susan