Blog – When I get ’round 2 it… Began 25 April 2020…
June 30, 2020… June airplane sales were good. Am hopeful July 2020 will be on par! The Pressurized Skymaster is expected to be delivered to it’s new owner within the next two weeks. The Cessna 170A has been delivered. The Ghost Ship has been moved from Falcon Field to Stellar Airpark and awaits it’s new buyer. I just don’t know who that is yet…
Be sure to check into my Aircraft and Parts For Sale page! Some really sweet airplanes, sports cars, & even a motor home to taunt you with!
Cessna 421, Meyers 145, Beech C-23, F11C-2 “Goshawk” replica with 600 horse power! …really cool Jaguar Aston-Martin, & Mercedes are chick magnets!
Cheryl and I are staying home as much as possible and remain hopeful this Chinese virus will finally run it’s course and get us all back to what ever the new normal is…?
On this day in military history —
USS Ford Aviators Counseled After Wearing Patch Depicting a Bat as ‘China’s Newest Carrier’
Aviators in a small training detachment aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford were recently counseled by leadership after wearing an unauthorized and inappropriate patch, the Navy said.
Half of the patch, according to a photo on Twitter, included the aircraft carrier’s logo with the words “America’s Newest Carrier” and “Integrity at the Helm.” The other half, however, depicted an image of a bat with the words “China’s Newest Carrier,” a reference to one theory about the origins of the novel coronavirus.
“The patch in question was inappropriate and not consistent with uniform regulations, which state patches must be appropriate in nature and approved by commanding officers,” Cmdr. Jennifer Cragg, spokeswoman for Naval Air Force Atlantic, said in an email Thursday.
Officials became aware of the patch a week ago, Cragg said in the email. It’s unclear where it came from.
“The small number of aviators who had the patch were counseled, and leadership made clear to everyone in the squadron that the patch was not authorized for wear,” she said.
The Ford, based in Norfolk, Virginia, and commissioned in 2017, is the first of its class and has been intermittently underway for carrier qualifications over the past few months.
June 23, 2020… Our beautiful Arizona weather seems to be heading towards the warm side! While pleasant in the early morning, we are heading for 109º as a high…
TODAY IN AVIATION HISTORY — THANKS TO HAROLD “PHIL” MYERS (CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE)
1905: The Wright Flyer III made its first flight at Huffman Prairie, near Dayton. This first fully controllable aircraft could turn and bank and stay up in the air for 30 minutes.
1924: RACE WITH THE SUN. In a Curtiss PW-8, powered by a 375 HP D-12 engine, Lt Russell L. Maughan began his 2,670-mile from Long Island, New York, to San Francisco. He landed at 9:47 p.m after five brief refueling stops. He spent 18 hours 20 minutes in the cockpit and 3 hours 20 minutes on the ground.
1931: Wiley Post and Harold Gatty left New York on a global flight in a Lockheed Vega, the “Winnie Mae,” powered by a Pratt & Whitney 550 HP radial engine. The 15,474-mile trip ended 8 days 15 hours 51 minutes later. Ruth Nichols crashed in St. Johns, Newfoundland, during her attempt to become the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic.
1937: The US Army issued a contract to Lockheed to build the first XP-38. 1938: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Civil Air Authority Act.
1942: The first BOLERO flight with 7 P-38s and 2 B-17s left Presque Isle for England to begin the buildup of US Air Forces in Europe.
1944: While escorting B-17s on a raid to Ploesti, the 52 FG downed 12 enemy aircraft. This gave the unit 102 aerial victories in 30 days for a record that was never equaled by another group in Europe.
MEDAL OF HONOR. 2Lt David R. Kingsley, 97th Bombardment Group, Fifteenth Air Force, earned a Medal of Honor for putting his own parachute on his wounded tail-gunner (whose chute had been damaged). Kingsley thereby was directly responsible for saving the life of the wounded gunner by sacrificing his own.
1950: FIRST USAF LOSS IN KOREAN WAR. A C-54, grounded for a damaged wing at Kimpo Airfield, near Seoul, South Korea, became the first aircraft lost in the Korean War.
1952: KOREAN WAR. Through 24 June, combined air attacks by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines nearly destroyed the electric power potential of North Korea. The 2-day attack involved over 1,200 sorties in the largest single air effort since World War II. The Sui-ho complex sustained seventy percent structural damage, rendering it non-operational.
1953: TAC transferred its F-51 aircraft, “the USAF’s last propellor-driven fighter in front-line service,” from the 366th Fighter-Bomber Wing.
1961: Maj Robert White set a speed record for manned airplanes by flying the X-15 at 3,603 MPH. He attained this speed with a 75-second full-throttle operation of the XLR-99 engine. (9)
June 12, 2020... Grandson Dylan arrives in Colorado! He begins his collegiate football career with Colorado State University, the CSU Rams! Stay tuned!
Below: Preston & Dylan practicing safe distancing at the airport…
June 4, 2020... Good Mornin’ my goodness I’ve been busy and haven’t taken the time to update. D-Day anniversary is fast approaching as is my sister, MJ’s, 77th birthday! She arrived a year before Operation Overlord!
Airplane sales have been going much better than I expected given the Chinese virus issue. The C-170A, The Ghost Ship, and the Pressurized Skymaster have buyers lined up. Roger’s beloved Stearman (832) has a new caretaker, Captain Rick Ferrin, Rome, GA. He flies 832 every day he is home from his “day job” as a Boeing 767 captain for UPS.
Bees! We have literally thousands of bees using our pool. Hundreds have ‘committed suicide’ in our pool. So, we are asking a beekeeper to assist removing them before more die. These are Western Honeybees and it’s so important to keep them alive!
May 21, 2020… Today in 1927 Charles Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris. His epic 33 1/2 hour flight across the Atlantic ended with his becoming the world’s first Super Star!
Ten years later, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan departed on their ill-fated round-the world flight flying into history with their disappearance still a mystery…
On a personal aside, today, I feel like mentioning the fact that a number of my adolescent years was spent helping my father build Wyoming’s first all-grass golf course at the Saratoga Inn Resort that he and his brother built in 1949-50. It remains to this day a beautiful place. My father would be delighted with the care given to maintain the links he produced seemingly single-handed.
Famous golfer, Willie Low, was the golf pro and radiated a quality that seemed to set the atmosphere. So, in my mind, if you were a golfer, you were a step above other popular sports. Classy stuff this golfing gig. Alas, it was not for me. Airplanes, football & girls filled my day. Every day.
My wife and son play. My mother loved playing golf until turning ninety. I’m sure she’s found the perfect course in Heaven and is likely playing with her group “The Flapping Lips!” Classy ladies, all.
The reason for my reflection on a sport I am not involved in, is that I have been forced to see golf in a totally different light. It is no longer played just by class people! Many who play are assuredly classy folks who carry forth that traditional aura. They are overshadowed, of late, by individuals who have denigrated golfing into a gutter groveling game respite with low-class people.
We live on the 11th fairway of the Phantom Horse Golf Course (Ahwatukee, Arizona). It’s part of the Arizona Grande Resort. We’ve been in our present location nearly 17 years.
All those past years we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly golfers passing by. Seems like lately the ugly golfers have supplanted the good ones.
Our next door neighbors are exactly what anyone would hope for as neighbors. Just east of us are friends who are neighbors. Next door to the west are recent additions to our neighborhood. They are amazingly talented and renowned musicians with two young sons and a nifty little dog named ‘Oscar.’
The demographics of our golf course living didn’t change overnight, but it seems that way! Ugly showed up big-time!
Loud and profane golfers stopped outside our neighbors yard. Seven and nine year old boys do not need that as part of their education although home-schooling has become the norm these days.
At least one bottom-feeding golfer tossed his/her empty beer bottle onto the neighbors back yard. All reasonable steps were taken. Calling the resort turned out to be a total waste of time. Calling the police had little value without evidence.
So, cameras were installed which produced shocking images of other bottom-feeding golfers peeing unabashedly in full view of anyone who happened along. The camera captured a low-class person doing a low-class thing in pubic in a family neighborhood.
We have seen an increased rowdiness with loud music (when did they start putting entertainment packages in golf course golf carts?)…
The neighbors never received a whit of support from the resort. So, they put up a sign politely asking golfers to respect their privacy. Sadly, their plea was ignored. The rudeness continued.
The neighbors had to install a new block wall to protect their privacy. Today! Up went the wall, away went their view of the desert and South Mountain Park. Away went their/our hope of seeing the Arizona Grand do the right thing. Sad!
My hope is good golfers will see this and feel a need to start a self-policing effort. Perhaps even the course operators will feel a need to be more pro-active in enforcing rules that have long been part of the game…
May 14, 2020… Cheryl and I are still hunkered down at home with a minimum of outside activitiy. I’ll be at the airport t’morrow to do a bit of cleaning and run-up N-29XF.
| T’day in 1969 | Three companies of the 101st Airborne Division fail to push North Vietnamese forces off Hill 937 in South Vietnam. |
May 9, 2020…
My career in the Navy was so short-lived I shouldn’t consider myself as “Navy” but I just can’t help myself. To this day my greatest regret is not winning my “Wings of Gold.” But that story is already told within other stories herein.
A Vietnam era F-8 pilot, is sending me things such as “This day in Naval History” May 9, 2019 Thanks to Skip Leonard:
1502 Christopher Columbus leaves Spain on his final trip to the New World.
1754 The first newspaper cartoon in America appears.
1813 U.S. troops under William Henry Harrison take Fort Meigs from British and Canadian troops.
1859 Threatened by the advancing French army, the Austrian army retreats across the River Sesia in Italy.
1860 While off the Isle of Pines (now named Isla de la Juventud) near the south coast of Cuba, the screw gunboat Wyandotte captures the slaver William, which carries 570 Africans.
1864 Union General John Sedgwick is shot and killed by a Confederate sharpshooter during fighting at Spotsylvania. His last words are: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist–“
1915 German and French forces fight the Battle of Artois
1926 Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd and Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett report reaching the North Pole in their heavier-than-air-flight aircraft. Both receive the Medal of Honor for this event. Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole.
1936 Fascist Italy captures the city of Addis Abba, Ethiopia and annexes the country.
1941 The German submarine U-110 is captured at sea along with its Enigma machine by the Royal Navy.
1942 USS Wasp (CV 7) launches 47 RAF Spitfires, British carrier Eagle accompanies Wasp and launches 17 additional Spitfires.
1945 German submarine U 249 surrenders to PB4Y-1 Liberator from (FAW 7) off the Scilly Islands, England, becoming the first to do so after hostilities ceased in Europe.
1946 King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy abdicates his throne and is replaced by Umberto I.
1962 A laser beam is successfully bounced off the moon for the first time.
1974 The House Judiciary Committee begins formal hearings on Nixon impeachment.
1992 USS Ashland (LSD 48) is commissioned in New Orleans, La. Following the ceremony, the dock landing ship sails for its homeport at Little Creek, Va.
2017 A South Korean fishing vessel collides with the port side, amid ship of USS Lake Champlain (CG 57) while the guided-missile cruiser is conducting routine operations in international waters. No one is injured in the incident.
Thanks to the Bear and Rolling Thunder
Jane Fonda’s Debut as a Traitor—50th Anniversary
Dutch… On 9 May 1970—50 years ago—one hundred thousand American young activists held a rally in the area on the National Mall now occupied by the magnificent Vietnam War Memorial. Jane Fonda was one of them. She wrote about “her inauguration ”…
“It was the first national demonstration that I was asked to speak at. Donald Duncan asked me to speak on behalf of the GI movement (Vietnam veterans against the war), and they basically wrote a speech for me. It was scary to stand on that platform. As far as you could see, there were people, and there were a lot of soldiers in uniform. Of course, there were a lot of guards, military people, that were armed and keeping order.
“My job was to say: ‘The soldiers are not our enemy. They are in growing numbers, understanding that the war is wrong. We cannot treat them as the enemy.’ I wish that all these people who accuse me of being anti-soldier knew that I’m the one that said, ‘They’re not the enemy. They didn’t start the war. Let’s be real clear, the enemy (North Vietnam) are the architects of the war.’
“So that was my inauguration to that post. I opened my speech with ‘Greetings, fellow ‘bums’ because Nixon had called (anti-Vietnam war demonstrators) bums a few days earlier.”
A traitor was off and running. Her path ahead would include visits with enemy troops, our POWs in Hanoi Hilton, and a pep talk for a battalion of North Vietnamese antiaircraft artillery gunners.
Jane Fonda lives in shame. She remains an unpunished traitor to the United States of America. Likely, someone would have shot this sub-human bottom feeder were it not for the act martyrizing her.
Visit American Legion Posts or VFW posts. You are likely to see these in the urinals! I am one of many thousands who has found some sycophantic pleasure taking aim at this target!
May 7, 2020…
“ Pray so big and so often that when God meets you at Heaven’s gate, He says with a smile, “Kid, you kept Me very busy”
This was a quote sent this morning in his “Mornin’ Smile” by Captain Phil Stallings, one of the Best of the Best! …and my response:
Actually, Captain Flip, it’s St. Peter who meets the new arrivals at the Pearly Gates! St. Peter does the vetting! Then, if you haven’t been too bad a person, you get to meet God! This was explained to me by Reverend Robert Ware, rector of the Saratoga Presbyterian Church, Saratoga, Wyoming on the 18th of May, 1950.
My mother insisted I go to Sunday school every Sunday. The church was right across the street from our house in town. Every Sunday I dutifully put on my Sunday best, walked across the street, up the steps, and in the front door. I marched through the sanctuary to the back of the church, where Sunday school was held. Then, out the back door, across the street (around back), to the Barn behind the house. Up the stairs to the loft where I’d change clothes into my more suitable attire for messin’ around with other like-minded miscreants.
Around the time Sunday school was over, I would return to the loft and change clothes again. Then, I would go back across the street skirt around the church and then back across the street to our house. “Hi Mom,” I’d say before heading to my room to change into other suitable clothes.
Months later, Rev. Ware was visiting with my Mom and asked, “Why don’t we see Billy at Sunday school anymore?” My Mom said, “Why, Rev. Ware, Billy is there every Sunday! I see him leave and return all dressed in his finery. “No, Mrs. Walker, we haven’t seen Billy in Sunday school for over a year!” Then he showed my Mom “the book!”
I had not considered the roll where these types of records were kept. Rev. Ware showed Mom. Mom called me downstairs and asked me point-blank, “Have you gone to church every Sunday like you promised?” “Yes Mam! I can truthfully say that I have, every Sunday!”
Mom, using her accusatory voice said, “Rev. Ware said that you have not been to Sunday school in over a year!” Realizing, the jig was up, I said what I had been doing explaining that I was honoring my commitment of going to Sunday school every Sunday but just not staying!
My Mom looked at me for an eternal minute, then at Rev. Ware. Then she shrugged her shoulders and that was the end of it. From then on I never had to go thru the clothes-change ritual. When ever I saw Rev. Ware he never said anything, he just looked at me and shook his head…
And, that was the way it was.
May 4, 2020… Yesterday, I sent out a notice that I had updated my website and invited most of my friends to peruse it. I am delighted with the response. To all of you who sent me comments, a sincere “Thank YOU!”
T’morrow we celebrate fellow ATΩ Bob Chafey’s 55th birthday AND Cinco deMayo perhaps differently than ever before. Cheryl and I are hopeful we will have a flock of neighbors practicing Social Distancing in front of our home. We hope to have cerveza Corona (the GOOD Corona!) and Modelo Especial on hand along with some tasty Mexican food. WE count our blessings to have such great neighbors!
April 29, 2020… If you have yet to try Stearman Blend, a coffee from Mississippi, give it a try!
New Albany, MS 38652
Call: Dan Skinner
662-534-9797
e-mail: hpcoffee@bellsouth.net
April 26, 2020… I have just put a separate story about one of my all-time favorite people, Mark Berent. I hope you enjoy the read and that you take the time to read his books, all page turners.
T’day is the 25th of April 2020 and the beginning of a new BLOG. Turns out space is limited to each posting. Solved! …just start a new Blog!
Cheryl and I are listening to a great audio book about Winston Churchill “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson. Excellent!
So far this self-imposed quarantine is working for us. We are still civil and lovingly together. Turns out our decision to spend our lives together fifty years ago was a really good decision. Next April 8th (2021) we will celebrate our Golden Anniversary. How ’bout that!
Below: Cheryl with Billy when he had hair in the cozy living area of our SLC condo where we were married.
