Indy Transponder 26-DEC-2013 1630z

Local Hero: Excitement soars as Flathead graduate visits air-show organizers - Daily Inter Lake | Excitement about next summer’s Mountain Madness 2014 Airshow began to soar Monday as Capt. Jason Curtis stopped in to visit with show organizers. Curtis, a Flathead High School graduate and member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, is home for a couple of days over the Christmas holiday before heading out for a Thunderbirds flyover during the Rose Bowl parade on New Year’s Day. “Man, we are excited as anything to be coming back to the valley,” Curtis said. “This is a special treat for the entire Thunderbirds team.”...

Aviation buffs of Condor Squadron keep vintage WWII aircraft flying - Los Angeles Times | On the west side of Van Nuys Airport it's like World War II never ended. Vintage propeller planes once flown by U.S. Navy, Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force pilots are parked wingtip to wingtip along the taxiway. Nearby buildings are painted in camouflage. The sound of swing music sometimes drifts across the tarmac, and olive drab flight jackets are de rigueur...

Navy aviator surprises family Christmas morning - abc13.com | HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A Navy aviator is back home with his wife and three children just in time for Christmas. They were not expecting him home. But he arranged it so it would be a surprise. And our cameras were rolling to see it all unfold...

Living History Day slated at Pacific Aviation Museum · General Aviation News Staff | HONOLULU — History comes alive at Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014, when visitors can experience the people, the aircraft, and the stories of Pacific aviation “stars”— from the early years of flight to today’s space age. The event is free to museum members and free with museum admission. For those who become a museum member that day, the event is also free...

Museum slates Open Cockpit Day · General Aviation News Staff | WINDSOR LOCKS, CONN. – The New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Conn. will hold its next Open Cockpit Day on Sunday, Jan. 19. On that day, visitors will be permitted to climb into the cockpits of up to 12 vintage aircraft, a full-motion flight simulator and two static flight simulators. Aircraft include the P-47 Thunderbolt, the North American F-100 Super Sabre, a DC-3 airliner, several helicopters and more...

One more payment will settle Spruce Goose title - McMinnville News-Register | Evergreen Aviation Museum of McMinnville and the Aero Club of Southern California agree that one more payment is required before the Aero Club will relinquish legal ownership of Howard Hughes' famous wooden airplane, the Spruce Goose...

Italian Reggiane RE.2000 Update · Warbirds News | Few weeks ago we reported the successful rescue of an Italian Re.2000 which  had sunk in the waters of Portovenere (La Spezia) in 1943 . The operation was carried out for free by the company Micoperi (the same company which  has completed he straightening of the cruise ship Costa Concordia).The Falco, originally discovered  in April 2012, was about twenty feet deep and it crashed off the Liguria coast during a training mission...

Too Hot to Handle: McDonnell XP-67 Moonbat - Air & Space Magazine | Damn Continental engines. No matter how advanced an airframe is, and the McDonnell XP-67 was plenty advanced, you can’t fly a fighter fast and hard if its engines are the product of one of the biggest weapons-procurement boondoggles of World War II...

Winter Arrives for Old and Cold Warriors at St. Louis Museum of Transportation By Fred Harl, The Aero Experience | Winter in the Midwest is difficult to predict, and a distance of just a few miles can make the difference between a foot or an inch of snow.  On a recent foray north following a significant snowfall, it was a little easier to catch the aircraft outside of the St. Louis Museum of Transportation with just a few inches of snow for this photo shoot.  Although mostly a haven for historic trains, the museum also features two aircraft...

New details about the epic B-52 mission to rescue a Cessna in Alaska - The Aviationist | As we reported few weeks ago, on Nov. 10, two B-52s, launched from Minot and Barksdale AFB for a training mission, flew hundreds of miles off course to give assistance to a Cessna plane that had lost radio contact with Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center in bad weather, over Alaska. While all the details about the successful rescue mission were released by the U.S. Air Force and can be found here, little was known about the mission the two Buffs were flying when they received the distress call...

Avenger - Apron 6

Too Ugly to Print in a Magazine - Air & Space Magazine | Four aircraft so ugly they could only be published on the web...

Book Review: Unknown Rider by Major Scott D. Anderson, USAF By Carmelo Turdo, The Aero Experience | ...Unknown Rider is the fictional manifestation of Major Scott D. Anderson's experience of achieving the title, "Fighter Pilot."  Anderson sums up his writing process in the Acknowledgements page: "When I was training to fly the F-16 at Kingsley Field in Oregon, each evening, after a day of flying fighters, I sat down and typed a little bit of this book...All I had to do was invent a few characters, put them in an airplane, and make them the...