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Remembering Columbine – 10 Years Later
It began as an ordinary, early spring day – teachers going about their business of teaching students; students doing what normal high school students are wont to do. At 1140, it dramatically, tragically changed with 12 students and a teacher dead and 23 others physically wounded – many more emotionally scarred. Two years, four months…
Flightdeck Friday Special Edition: The Space Shuttle – Thirty Years of Dreams, Sweat and Tears
The dream was given form and fire on April 12, 1981 with the launch of STS-1, the world’s first reusable spaceplane — the Shuttle Columbia. At the controls were a crew of only two, Astronauts John W. Young, commander for the mission, and Robert Crippen (both Naval Aviators) for this first “test flight” which would…
Saturday Comics-II: Of Wayward ‘Dogs
There is a long-standing tradition in Naval Aviation that no screw-up goes unrecognized…just check out the variety of callsigns out there. Sometimes though, the screw-up is so monumental that it deserves special recognition — sort of like, um, landing on the wrong carrier. Recognition is afforded not unlike re-branding a steer that wandered off its…
“99 Steeljaws” – Reunion News
I’ll be there — how about you? VAW 122 Alumni
Take The Long Way Home
Talk to anyone from Northern Virginia (NoVA in the vernacular) and guaranteed, within five or so minutes, the issue of traffic will come up. Usually in the context of how unbelievably bad it is, even on the best of days and something out of Dante on the worst. In the Old World, all roads may…
Reflections: Of Youthful Exuberance and the Search for Speed.
Prologue This past weekend Your Humble Scribe (YHS) was engaged in fleet maintenance of the various assorted vehicles assembled under his garage’s roof. Whilst pausing between oil changes (and silently cursing the designers and engineers who placed oil filters cheek-to-jowl with exhaust headers) he gave reflection to the variety of speedmobiles that have graced said…


