On the road again...

[nikon50bigma]

Wow! Excellent shots Moose!

[lijk604]

Moose, AWESOME stuff...defintely a candidate for Thread of the Year.

[moose135]

Had spotty internet access the last couple of days, but I'm back online. After a couple of days at the AF Museum, I headed up to Kokomo, Indiana, for a visit to the museum at Grissom AFB (where I flew KC-135) and see a couple of friends in the area. For those unfamiliar with the area, Kokomo is about an hour north of Indianapolis, and the base is about 15 miles north of Kokomo. The town has really grown in the past 20 years, but some things are still the same. We had a ton of rain Sunday and Monday, but it stopped long enough for me to visit the museum. I posted a thread with photos from there here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9139



There's a lot of farm land around these parts.


In 1994, the base was closed, and converted into an Air Reserve Base. The active duty -135 wing was moved (it was the 305th Air Refueling Wing - it's now the 305th Air Mobility Wing at McGuire AFB). It's now home to the 434th Air Refueling Wing of the AF Reserve (they were assigned to GAFB when I was there). The airfield facilities are still in use, as well as some of the administrative areas, but much of the base is no longer in use - part of it is now a business park, the base housing was sold to a developer and it's now something or other "estates" - I did see my old house! But it's sad to see many of the buildings closed up, not in use.

Here is the old alert facility. Back in the day, we had 10 to 12 crews on 24 hour alert, living in the facility, with the aircraft parked on the "Christmas trees" outside. It's empty now, but the local SCCA chapter uses the ramp area for sports car meets during the summer.



Here's the main entrance to the facility - the guard booth was manned by AF Security Police, and we had to check in here to enter the facility.


Here's the ramp, with the Reserve KC-135R's. I never got to see any of these fly while I was visiting.


Sunday night, and again Monday night, I got together with my old aircraft commander - we flew together for better than a year, and he and his wife remained in the area after separating from the AF. He flew with the Reserve wing for several years (including 2 tours in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War.) He was hired by American Airlines, where he flew Fokker F100s for about 9 years. He's been a 777 first officer for about 7 years now (with a ways to go until he has the seniority to move to the left seat) He flies out of ORD, and typically flies to London, Narita, and Shanghai. We've kept in touch over the years, but this is the first we've seen of each other since 1988. We spent hours talking about the airline industry and remenicing about our AF days - he even found the video he shot on our TDY to England in 1987!

[mirrodie]

Great photos moose, keep em coming!


I just learned about Joseph Kittinger, USAF last week. His story was featured on a Discovery Channel type show. Pretty remarkable to hear the interview. And he mentioned that during the jump, something went wrong with the glove seal. Ended up with hypothermia on one hand due to the jump.