Aviation Museums and Closing Remarks

This is the Airplane Geeks podcast. We aim to educate and inform you, explore and expand your passion for aviation, and entertain you a little along the way. In this episode, we flip the script and start with top you sent us. Then we cover the aviation news . From our listeners, we talk about owner produced airplane parts , airport weirdos , a new album released by Spe ed Break Armed , More on how the NTSB uses audio spectrograms , fourteen hours lying flat on a broken polaris seat , and Roman numerals. That's right, remember those? Then in the news, the US plans to reduce the number of aircraft for NATO operations , another A ten lifeline , and restarting C seventeen production . All that and more coming up right now Welcome to the Airplane Geeks podcast. This is episode eight hundred and ninety seven of the show where we talk aviation. I'm Max Flight and with me is first David Vander hoof. He's our aviation historian from the American Helicopter Museum . Okay, this makes three episodes in a row. I'm due for a vacation . I know you're on a street, David, we're happy about that. That's one for each kidney. This is true. There you go. Also with us is our main man Micah. He co hosts the Journey is a reward podcast. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are. It's great to be here and I'm looking forward to the show . Yes. And to help us with that is, of course, Rob Mark. He's a Bizjet pilot, a journalist. He's a CFI. He publishes Jet wine dot com and he also produces the stories about flying podcast. Hey, good evening from beautiful downtown Chicago , where it's finally summer , it's wonderful. Very good . All right, well this week we're going to do it a little bit differently. We're going to start with some topics that you all sent us because they're good . And then we'll circle back and go to the aviation news from the past week after that . And just a note, remember always or almost always , we use podcast chapters that are supported by most podcasts players or at least the good podcast players, and that'll let you listen in any order that you like. So if you are unhappy with the format this episode , which is a one time thing I think, , you can change it to suit your own preference I didn't know that. Yeah , yeah. Most of the podcast apps do chapters now and it is pretty handy, especially if you want to go back and relisten to a chapter or you've gone into the back catalog and you want to listen to a specific story , you don't have to scrub through the whole episode to try to find what you're looking for. So it's it's pretty it's pretty handy. And with the new artificial intelligence, one day you'll be able to get your chapters in verse. Yes . Oh, you know, you know, some people are making entire podcasts with AI. You know, feed in the news stories and say create a podcast with four guys sitting around in a round table talking about it. And you get something. It's not well, we like to hope it's not as good as the four of us, but yeah, it's not that bad. Well, Brian has this idea that he told me about again today. I don't know that I want to do it where he wants to interview an AI , one of those AI things as a travel agent and start asking questions and see how it responds. And doesn't sound appealing to me, but I suspect we're probably going to do it in the next few weeks . No doubt. Yeah. And those things are pretty conversational now too. They have a lot of kind of human, I don't know if you call them mannerisms, but ways of speaking that make them sound like they're human. But anyway, the four of us, you got some real humans , this episode. And let's speak for yourself. Okay, so three and a half . So let's jump right into some of this list ener mail . And first off , Mark Newton sent us an email about owner produced parts. And last episode we were talking about parts for the eclipse aircraft and the shortages of those . And we talked about using only certified parts , but Mark pointed out something to us one of the FARs twenty one point nine A five that actually creates a framework for owner produced parts . And this is applicable when a certified part is unavailable . I don't Rob, are you familiar with this? Had you seen this before? No, I'd never heard of it before Mark mentioned it and I'm glad he did. And you know, in the email that we were all on , I made a note back to Mark, and I said, you know, this could be a good idea except realize that the cost to produce some parts could be exorbitant . How and on top of it, Eclipse already has all of the tool and die work sitting there to make parts. That's what they were trying to sell and nobody wanted to buy it unfortunately . So it just, yeah, okay, you could make it, but maybe you could just buy some of the some of the equipment and make 'em yourself and sell them to other serious people, or I'm sorry , to other eclipse people. But again, nobody wanted any part of the eclipse hardware . Yes. Well, Mark mentioned that there he says there are rules about quality and the fact that owner produced parts need to be of equivalent specification to the OEM parts, which that makes sense . But as long as an aircraft owner can put their hand on their heart and assert that those conditions are met. They can supply parts to their maintainer and tell them to install them . So it does sound a little bit risky. It could be depending on the type of part. I mean, it's easy to well, easy. I think some parts can probably be fabricated pretty easily, but other parts maybe not so much . You get different failure modes and the materials used and so forth, but Mark sent a link to some AOPA guidance, AOPA guidance on aircraft maintenance owner produced parts. So we'll put that in the in the show notes . All right, and we heard from Kobe . This is a crowd sourced gallery of airport weirdos . So Kobe has developed a site . Now Kobe said he's a longtime fan of the show complimentary. He says there's nobody else covering the aviation world with quite the same mix of depth and genuine enthusias . Thanks for that Kobe, but he wanted to share this site he created airportwirdo . com . And he characterizes this as a crowd sourced gallery , photo gallery where travelers can submit funny photos of strange things you've seen in airports and it doesn't require an account. You just submit your photo and it joins the gallery . And there's some photos in there right now. There's a guy doing full yoga at LAX. There's someone laid out on the floor doing floor stretch in Dallas . And then there's a dude who turned the Boise baggage carousel into his personal nap zone . So I think we've all seen kind of crazy things at the airport or interesting people doing strange things or strange people doing interesting things . So he's trying to create this sort of photo gallery photo site at airportwirdo. com . You know, I get I guess Micah it always pays recognize that when you're out in public , don't do anything too crazy because someone may capture it and put it put it up on YouT ube or I mean, you could show up anywhere, right? You know, the guy walking around in his bathrobe in the airport, that just something about that just doesn't sound right to me, you know? And then there's this other person in their pajamas, you know, I don't know. I thought that was a clown suit . Maybe could have been . I don't know, either way. Or clown . There was an elf suit, that's for sure. You know , there's no decorum anymore. Yeah, that's true . So I don't think it should be very difficult to build up quite a collection here. So if it's something you're interested in, check it out. If you've got some photos that you want to submit, go ahead and try that. Pete Buffington wrote in he's got a new album release by Speed Break Armed. We've talked about Pete and the Mus ic that he creates . And so this new album, it's a new age album. This one is, he characterizes it echoes above the infinite sky . And it takes the listener on a journey of flight. He says from South America to Spain to the cosmos and back to ancient Greece . And he puts these up on YouTube and they're free. The entire album is up there. You can listen to it. I think this is the I think he says this is the eighth studio album that's been created . And these are , I mean, they're musical, but they're kind of developed with the perspective of a long time pilot. Very interesting. And the types of music that he's created are, you know, there's some differences between these different albums . So , you know, you may prefer some styles to others, but he's got a he's got a new one out that's been out, I think within the last month. Hey this, next one I thought was really helpful. It gave me a lot of good information and I'm so glad that we're sharing it with our listeners. Yes, this is on the topic of spectrograms. Why spectrograms? Audio spectrograms? Well, this came up when we talked about the fact that the NTSB had an image of a spectrogram as part of investigation documentation . And we and NDSB learned that if you're really clever and have the right kind of software, you can analyze an audio spectrum and kind of recreate basic audio that generated it , which has several implications. To the NTSB they don't generally publish the actual audio from cockpit voiceord Reersc . And these spectrograms show up in past investigations. And so there was a big concern that people could go in and start transcribing in effect these spectrograms . Well, somebody did, didn't they? They did for the yeah, the most the most recent example of that. Right . So that's the background. So Andy wrote in and he said that he wanted to add his perspective to the conversation and he states that he has absolutely no actual knowledge of the NTSB processes or how they actually use spectrograms. But because of his experience with them , he can he can speculate what was happening here. And I'll come to it at the end, but it turns out he is Andy is entirely is really correct in what he thought might be going on. So Andy says he says, I've been an audio engineer over thirty years . Probably the last twenty or so, Spectragram's been a tool that I use fairly regularly in production . To me it mostly comes down to being able to recognize things that are hard to pick out. For instance, if there is some kind of unpleasant noise in the background of a recording, sometimes I can identify it and potentially filter it out purely by ear . Other times, particularly if it's not very far above the noise floor, it can be very difficult to pick out by ear You can sort of start to see why how the NTSB might have a use for this . In that case, he says I'll look at a spectrogram. It's certainly not always helpful, but sometimes there are things that I can pick out visually that I can't audibly . He's been using Adobe Audition for this and one of the things that's really interesting he says that Adobe did was take the spot healing technology from Photoshop and apply it to audio by manipulating it in the image in the spectrogram . So there have been times where he's used this to help clean up otherwise unpleasant recordings . So he says I can imagine that in a cockpit recording with a lot of background noise, examining the spectrogram might allow patterns to be detected that would not be obvious audibly . My guess is that they wouldn't be looking at the speech, but rather for indications in sound of what was happening mechanically. For instance, if there was a sound at a particular frequency happening at a particular interval regularly, that might be an indication of something. That's the sort of thing you can often see on a spectrogram, even if it is audibly buried in the noise floor. And if you're curious about what the spectrogram looks like. We have an image of one in the episode where we talked about these so you can back up and take a look at that. So I did a little bit of extra research and as I mentioned , basically Andy was completely, completely accurate . So the NTSB uses these spectrograms to analyze cockfit voice recorders . They can use them to identify engine sounds like turbine wine or compressor stalls or fan blade failures , power changes because those all have distinct frequency signatures . Now you might not be able to hear it with your ear in the actual audio, but using a spectrogram, you can identify these kinds of things . Also warnings and alerts, TCAS, install warnings and things that can be identified . And they can also use the NTSB can also use these to reconstruct soundscape basically, the background noise in the cockpit, the wind noise, the landing gear noises, flap deployments, things like that that provide clues . And then another way they can use this, the NTSB has a lot of information available, right? The cockpit cockpit voice recorder , the data recorders , other indicators and it's usually very important to these things be all synced up in the for the investigation and using this technique with the spectro grams that helps them identify points in time that lets them can let them line up basically data streams from other sources . So very fascinating . I think we've we've kind of clearly identified what with Andy's help , how the spectrograms are used by the NTSB. Pretty fascinating. You know, and after Andy explained it, all of a sudden it made so much sense because I think about how I record with Audacity, which is freeware and it's great. It's cheap, it's easy. I don't have all the fancy stuff that you have, Max , but when you record real Audacity, you get that visual wavefile. As if you're looking at your peak meters, which that's what I used to do when I was using a real to real machine, and you'd see the peak meters, but you have a visual cue of these the view meters or the peak reading meters. And just by looking at that, I can tell, oh, I made a mistake here or no I need more space here or no I need to take this out or there's a hum. And just by looking at that, I could tell. with So a spect rograph where I'm getting every frequency , if I know how to read it, it makes complete sense that I could look at it and say, Oh yeah, there it is and put in a filter for it. Yes, absolutely. It's kind of like the spectrogram is kind of like , you know, the audio waveform that you look at on steroids . So next up, we have an email we got from Patrick Wiggins , this is fourteen hours lying flat. And basically he sent us an article from Simple Flying fourteen hours lying flat United Polaris passenger pays seven thousand four hundred dollars , gets just three hundred and fifty dollars for broken seat . So this is the story of a United Airlines passenger who purchased some tickets , two tickets, I guess , to Beijing . And these were Polaris seats . And they paid a lot for them . Seven thousand three hundred eighty eight dollars per ticket and the seat didn't function properly. The polaris seats will go lie flat and I guess this seat went lie flat and then got stuck there . Actually, it didn't even go completely lie flat. Is that right? Yeah , I read about this in the New York Times because she wrote into the New York Times for help . She was flying San Francisco to Beijing and she went to put her seat down and it wouldn't go . It got stuck halfway. And so the flight attendants came down and forced it down so she could lie flat, but the seatbelt got stuck, so she couldn't buckle in, but she could lie flat . And she was lying flat, and then there was turbulence and she couldn't buckle in. And she pressed her call button and the flight attendant said yeah, sorry, nothing we can do . You'll just have to lie flat and hope everything goes okay . And then one of the flight attendants said, Yeah, this happens all the time, which I haven't heard about a lot. But then the flight it was time to land, and she needed the seatbelt. And the flight attendants came back and were able to force the seat up, two of them together, and the seat belt came loose and she was able to buckle up to land. Okay, so that's fourteen hours she was stuck in a lie flat seat, which isn't necessarily bad if you're sleeping, but not being able to buckle in, that can be kind of scary. But with all this happening, she went to United and said, look, this happened. And by the way, every other seat on the plane was full in economy and in business class in Polaris. Everything was full. She went to Un theited and said I wanted some money back, you know, this is not fair. I paid for this. And the United said, okay, and it was a seven seven thousand eight hundred dollars flight ticket. They gave her one hundred fif andty dollars travel vou cher . And when she said this wasn't fair, I want more. Give me two hundred fifty thousand miles on my United One pass . And that's an equivalent of about three thousand dollars . And they said no . And she wrote in to the New York Times for help because they have a travel advisor that does these kinds of things . And the travel and she ended up getting three hundred and fifty dollars back. And that travel advisor that handles the stuff all the time said, Yeah , you did okay. That's about all they have to give you. If they moved you back into economy, then they would have to refund you the difference in fare . But because you actually had a lie flat polaris seat, you paid for it, you're stuck with it. You could try to appeal it with your credit card, but you probably won't get anywhere with it. And that's what happened. It's kind of a bad PR . I mean kind of a bad PR thing? Well, you know, which is worse, the fact that the seat didn't work or the fact that they the flight attendant said , this happens all the time . I mean , yeah, you know, if I were Scott, and I realize Scott Kirby and I don't run in the same circles even though, you know, United's based here in Chicago and you know, we don't see each other often, in fact, not at all. But seriously, it just amazes me. If I were the CEO, I'd say , guys, you know what? I'm making, I don't know how much he makes. Anybody know how much Scott Kirby makes in the year? More than one million . That's a lot. Wait, I can't hear you guys. You can't hear us. Oh, there you go. I don't know because I saw Micah say something, but I said he makes more than he deserves, Rob. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, and I was gonna say you want to eliminate some PR issues , say look, take two hundred grand off my salary and stick it out in a little fund . And when this kind of happens , just pay our customers something decent so that you know if there is a story in the New York Times , somebody writes about the fact that man , you know, United really went to bat for this person. They realized how stupid this is, what how awful this was that this happened. Imagine if that airplane would have hit turbulence along the way somewhere and that person had gotten thrown around the cab in and been injured or killed. I mean, it would be a whole different story. This was where the airplane geeks comes into effect because then she would have called Erin and everything would have been taken care of . If she was around to do it. But But any other you know , you know what, but Rob, even though that's a brilliant idea Miles don't cost them anything . And she just asks for Miles. It's just like oh, okay, here, take the miles . What's the miles going to cost a cost? Usually what happens though is that whoever is dealing with problem is not empowered to make that kind of decision. They've got to send it upstairs a few levels and somebody, you know, and that person's immediate boss, oh, forget it. They're never gonna do that. Forget it . And but again, just you know, it's crazy. It's just nuts. And then they wonder why people don't like flying the airlines. And that's why I mentioned that , you know, it's not just United. daughter's coming home tomorrow on southwest out of LA . And I got the impression from the email that she got that the flight is overbooked because they were kind of saying you know, if you have any flexibility and you could go Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday we could make it worth your while . And so having been, you know, raised by a guy that's always looking for a deal , I don't mean me. I mean Mike. No, that's right. She wasn't raised by Micah. But no, seriously. And I said, well what do they offer you? She said, Dad, you won't believe it. They wanted me to give up my seat. They were going to give me twenty dollars . I said twenty bucks. Come on. That is a joke. It is, you know, it's not even a joke in this day and age. That's insulting. I mean to have frequent flyers . You know, and that's why somebody asked me the other night , what's your favorite airline? I said, You know what? None of them. Southwest used to be my go to, but not anymore. Southwest , yeah, I mean, that's this is what happens when an airline gets bought by a company that's just in it for money . You know, I mean, Herb Kellah is probably rolling in his grave. Oh, I'm sure you're right because 's not the airline he created . This nickel and dim ing everyone by the airlines is just it's there's got to be a bottom I mean it's a race to the bottom and it doesn't ever seem like there's a floor. It just keeps going and going and going . Well, I got a couple things to say . First of all , as you can imag ine, Brian writes to United all the time, and I'm always copied on what he gets . And it's ridiculous in terms of the kind of service when you email them for an issue and how many times he has the right to finally get to some place that can do something and what they do has been ridiculous . But what she could do and this is again where airplane geeks comes in is that this woman should get in touch with Pete Buffington and have Pete write a song about this, just like United Breaks Guitars or Thank You Republic Airlines for Breaking the Netgun My Guitar like Tom Paxton wrote. And with a song like that, I'm sure she would get refunded if it gets heard like that . And then lastly , I can say that I have had some amazing experience with Breeze Airlines, where I've had friends who were stuck or lost their flight because it got canceled and got moved out of their business class seats into the back of a plane that didn't have business class and Breeze Airline absolutely positively took care of them. And I think that's the difference between David Nielon and Scott Kirby. David Nielon wants to run an airline that handles people well and treats people well. It might also be the delegation authority to deal with situations like this. I mean, Rob was, I think, maybe sort of hinting at it. You know, who , you know, what authority does the person you're dealing with have to give you some kind of compensation ? And it probably happens at levels, right? The first point of contact is probably very limited in terms of how much they're empowered the employee, how much they're empowered to give to the customer. And then if there's still dissatisfaction, then it's got to go up a level. And then maybe they have, you know, more authority to compensate and then maybe it goes up and up . So it kind of can come down to the to the company culture. You know, how much do you push down and how much do you retain up at senior levels to give to give compensation? And if it's, a you know, if it's a company that where it's got to go really high before you get, you know , more than one hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars, then that's a problem. But Max, at this point, like United you're not talking to a human until you're getting three or four levels up the chain because of AI . Yeah . I mean, it's it's not just it's not just a call center anymore. I mean I have fifteen years of experience in managing call centers . You had, you know, a call chain before they got to a customer service rep, but that customer service rep had a decent amount of authority and they could always reach up to their manager. But if you're talking to an AI that's programmed to just make you so disgusted that you'll just go away , you never get to that human that right but and that's where the airlines want to go. They don't want even you to interact with anybody else because because all you're going to keep wanting to do is you're going to want your money back. The more frustrated you make it , the better it is for the company because people if this lie flat thing happens all the time, quote, unquote , how many people didn't get refunds at all? You're right. Yeah . And then let's not forget the opportunity cost analysis that says, hey , how many people has United lost or United or Jet Blue or Southwest or whoever it is because these people were so irritated that they just up and left and said, We're never going to fly you again . But then as I was going to say, but then it probably doesn't matter because the people at the top say, there's only a couple they can choose from anymore anyway, soon they're going to fly somebody. So we lose a few here and there. No big deal . And then that's a sad state of airline travel . And the other thing you need to remember just in terms of United is that back in twenty ten when Continental and United merged, one of the things that Continental was very concerned about and the Continental employees were very upset about for a long time. Most of them are long gone is that Continental employees had the ability to make those decisions and do what was right to make their passengers happy. That was taken away from them in the merger. All right, one last email from a listener. This came from from Rob, a different Rob . Listener Rob with the subject line of DC XCIV . When I saw that, what the heck is this all about? So Rob wrote in and said Grey Geeks , only just got around to listening to episode eight hundred and ninety four. It's always great program. And the lovely Aaron is a very good value and a pleasure to listen to. He says it occurred to me that with the very welcome return of David , this episode may well be the first podcast ever where the hosts have an odd number of kidneys . So thanks for the contribution to our unique podcast, David. Yeah, I actually was at the doctors today up at Jefferson and my transplant team, and they're very happy with the prognosis. So we're going to be stuck with an odd number of kidneys for a long time. Very good. That's great . And Max, you better explain the title. So the D C XCIV , it kind of looked like Roman new murals. And then I started looking at it and go, wait a minute, he's talking about episode eight hundred and ninety four. So that's eight hundred and ninety four in Roman numerals , which it took some figuring, I didn't have to look it up. I sort of figured out. D is five hundred and then C is one hundred. So the CC is three hundreds . So now we're up to eight hundred, right? The five hundred and the three hundred is eight hundred . XC, well usually when you put an X in front of a Roman numeral, it means like one less. So XC would be ninety. C is one hundred, so XC would be ninety. And then the IV , of course, is four. And so if you add all that up, that's eight hundred and ninety fourth, the episode number. I'm wondering how many people under the age of oh, I don't know, what do you think? twenty , maybe have no idea what Roman numerals are. Under twenty ? I bet you it's a lot higher than that . Yeah , it could be. I mean, other than the Super Bowl, I mean, you don't see Roman numerals much anymore . Look at my practice when I watch old movies because the year came out always is in Roman numerals. Right. In the credits, right? The copyright year or the year that it came out. Yeah, yeah. Except that usually that flies by too forem to decipher . So thanks to Rob for getting us to dip back deep into our education and remember how Roman numerals work . So with that, and finally , let's let's jump into some of the aviation news from the past week . And we can start out with in well, there's an article in Reuters also in USA in US News and cite European officials, according to the New York Times reporting, that the U. S. plans to reduce the number of F sixteen and F fifteen E fighters from roughly one hundred and fifty to one hundred and this is that support NATO operations in Europe . There's some other cuts as well . So Roby, I can think of several meanings behind this or several reasons why this is kind of interesting , maybe predictable, maybe a good idea, maybe not. I don't know. What do you think? Maybe a good idea in what sense? Just tell me your thinking on that. Well, the I think the administration would like our NATO allies to take on responsibility, let's say, for which really means more cost of operating , you know, the NATO alliance and I think would like to see the United States provide less aircraft , less ships, less fewer submarines in support of NATO and for the NATO countries to pick up the difference themselves . Well , you know, Mr. Trump has been talking about this since his first term you know, nobody paid enough into NATO except the U. S. and there was truth to that. I mean, but again, I don't know how those how those allotments were chosen. Yeah, but certainly I know the first term , his words did have an effect and they and countries did anti up . And I think that's a good thing . However, I know that when I saw this, what was really disappointing to me is that, you know, when I was a young airman in the Air Force , my first duty station was in Europe in England actually , and I was stationed at an RAF base and realized this was just roughly twenty years the end of World War two . So if you mention the Germans to obloke over there , I mean they got pretty upset because they didn't really care for the fact that during the blitz that the Nazis practically destroyed London, and God knows how many tens and hundreds of thousands of people died . So the NATO Alliance meant something very special to them. And again, okay, maybe it needed to be tweaked. I don't know. I don't think any of us know enough or necessarily you know believe what we hear coming out of Washington about who paid what or didn't pay what ? But you know , allies are all ies. I don't even know if some of them are our allies anymore . And I think that's the real cost to me is that we've lost a great deal of that. I mean, look at the war in Ukraine with the Russians . I remember when that started, it was going to be a special military operation, Mr. Putin said. And now it's five years on it. We know damn well it's just a war . But look at how the Ukraine population and military have handled it . And And imagine if Ukraine had been a part of NATO , would that have kept the Russians from invading ? Maybe . Or if they had invaded , would everybody have come to their defense , which is the , you know, the mutual aid kind of strategy of NATO . And so again , there's just so much that is lost, I think , in addition to just pulling troops out. And I think what you're saying, Rob, without wanting to put words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong is that US superpower credibility has deteriorated . So to me , US superpower , what was that super power ? Credibility. Thank you. U. S. superpower credibility has deteriorated. And you're right, it has. I mean it there are people I know in Europe that in fact we just visited with some that said you know , boy , they don't really welcome Americans like they used to because they don't like our politics anymore because it seriously affects them like this issue with Iran and the fight over oil . I mean, nobody even knows anymore what the point of the invasion and this, you know, the beginning of the fighting between the Israelis and the Americans against Iran. Well, they shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. Okay, you're right, absolutely. I buy that . But then what's all the other stuff that's going on that, you know, it changes , the story changes every day . And I think that's what people around the world say , you know, we don't believe what the Americans are saying. They don't we don't even think the Americans believe what they're saying. And that's a really sad state of things because again, when I was there , I grant you it was a long time ago, but they absolutely loved Americans because as one bloke said to me a pub one night, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the fact that you guys came and helped us beat those bastards in Germany . And now who knows what would happen if some kind of conflict began in Central Europe ? Okay , and let's talk from a readiness standpoint . You are red istributing aircraft personnel , forward operating supplies back to the Continental US . Yeah, great. I mean, the Continental US we're a very lucky country . We've got two oceans surrounding us . The reason why we were parking aircraft in Europe it takes a long time to get aircraft from the United States to Europe . You know, and this withdraw is acknowledging do not and our allies depended on the fact that the US would be able to react quickly because our aircraft and weapon systems were already prepositioned Europe correctly. Now we're pulling them back and we're losing all of that time. Not to mention we when we were fighting in the Middle East, where were we deploying aircraft from? It wasn't the continental United States. It was Great Britain . You know, it was Italy . It was our allies. It's our forward positioning that support our allies and give us the edge where we don't have weeks and days to build up if there's something should happen, you know , and I know it's hard , but the only time the article that says that NATO will defend other countries if they're attacked was only implement ed because the United States was attacked and all of our allies came to our support . And currently , our administration is so focused on spite that because our allies did not support our invasion of or our attack on Iran , and they have a right to it wasn't it wasn't a defensive act The president has made the decision to pull back because he's going to teach the Allies how much important the United States is . You know, and Germany and France aren't necessarily the best friends, but you know what? When you have a common enemy , you suddenly become really good friends. And right now they're in the process of working up a program to create a sixth generation fight . So the Allies at this point have realized in NATO that they can't depend upon largest military in the world like they had for the last God forbid, almost a hundred years. I mean, eighty years . And you know, David, what you had to say about readiness and forward deployment, I think that it leads us right into number three. It does. This is an item from the war zone Boeing, quote, encouraged by C seventeen production restart discussions . The C seventeen Globe Master three production of that ended quite some time ago . twenty sixteen? I think yeah, around twenty sixteen or so, maybe twenty fifteen the line was shut down. The last one was delivered in twenty thirteen. That's right. Okay, so the last plane was delivered in twenty thirteen and the line was shut down in twenty fifteen. And the C seventeen has turned out to be a great aircraft and has been used extensively in many conflicts in many different situations. So they've really been working these planes hard . And many allies , they're they're flown by a number of other allied countries . India, Canada, Great Britain , so AB It's been a hugely successful product . My question is , did they keep the tooling? Because if they didn't , restarting this line is not going to happen. I would agree with that. I read this article and I went, okay, who's smoking what, where ? You know, it's it's a matter of it was a McDonald Douglas line in Long Beach , okay? And it wasn't even a Boeing product at the time. It was this product was created before the merger . Lockheed can't build F twenty two s anymore because they scraped the tooling . I can't imagine Boeing being the way they are, that they kept the tooling, you know? And you're talking about building a whole new aircraft for all intents and purposes. I mean it would really be hard to believe and I don't even think Long Beach exists anymore to build the factory to build the aircraft . Well, the issue I think is this is that we really have three different types of aircraft in the air mobility command. We have the C five, the C seventeen and the C one hundred thirty. The C one hundred thirty is still in production, but it's the smallest of the bunch. We don't have any C five s being built anymore. We don't have any C seventeen s being built anymore, and they're getting long in the tooth. And this is an incredibly important type of aircraft to be able to again be ready to deploy if and when we need to deploy. And actually Mike, in all fairness, it's our allies besides the United States that are chafing at the bit for more of them. But the question is are the engine, are the Prat ts still available, Max? Are they on anything else? So the engine that powers the C seventeen is the Pratt and Whitty F one hundred and seventeen PW one hundred , which is the military variant of the PW two thousand that powers the Boeing seven hundred and fifty seven . So the engine's not in production per se , but the military maintains the C seventeen engines . And so there's, you know, an ongoing overhaul and repair capability for those for those engines. So they're not making new ones, but they're completely able to to maintain and to keep serviceable the ones that they've got. You know, one of the questions is if you do if the C seventeen was relaunched again, do you do it you just make a carbon copy or would there be a desire to say, well look, you know, that those engines were designed a long time ag o. And if you were picking an engine to power that plane or a plane of that class now, would you pick the same engine? And the answer is probably no . So what engines available, you know, something from CFM or I mean who knows, who knows what? But you're talking about a re engineing probably it just the costs associated with doing this just add up and up and up everywhere you turn around. I think David is correct though that the tooling is the key because people who haven't been in manufacturing kind of underappreciate cost and the value of the tooling. The tooling costs more than the product because you know you're making you're making product with incredibly tight specs , very tight tolerances, and so you need tooling with even greater tolerances. These things are incredibly it's incredibly expensive to produce this tooling . And question is, does it still exist ? And if it does exist, has it been preserved ? Because that's a whole nother issue because that tooling will deteriorate over time if it's not preserved carefully and properly. You know, there's there's a really good example of the importance of tooling In the late eighties , early nineties , Boeing Vertal was producing the Chinook and they actually took the Chinook production down to two aircraft a year for an extended period of time because it did one thing . Then eventually the army realized they needed more and they could ramp up production. They never stopped production and they never lost the tooling to the Chinook . So here we are almost thirty years later, they're still producing them. But it was the smartest thing Boeing Vertal ever did was they never stop production because when you stop production , inevitably you lose the tooling and after you lose the tooling you can't build them back again . You know, and I really think that that if Boeing is encouraging these kind of rumors , you know, they're they're just blowing smoke up people's butts . If the tooling exists, great, but Max says, there's a does it exist, B has it been maintained ? C , is it going to meet the specs or you know ? And it's not the alternative is you need to make a clean sheet aircraft . And maybe it's time to start looking at that . It is kind of amazing that when we enter conflicts like we currently have, suddenly tank and airlift mobility is suddenly a priority for the Air Force when normally it's just general sixth generation fighters , et cetera. So maybe it's time to think about a replacement for I can't say it for the C seventeen, the C five , and she one hundred So it's it may be time , but I will buy anyone a drink if the C seventeen ever gets into production . And you can mark this words because yeah it ain't gonna happen . Yeah, yeah. And of course it's also a well, you can do anything in life almost if you spend enough money. But the question is if you did restart the C seventeen line , how many aircraft would be produced , right? Because you've got to you got to take those fixed back of money costs and spread it over. I mean, if you're talking about, you know, a hundred airplanes, well, it's good, you know, can't you just can't the economics just doesn't work out And the question becomes, is it cheaper to restart something and make more C seventeen's or come up with a clean sheet design? And that's what it comes down to. We do have a reasonably new clean sheet design fored the Hercules, I'm sorry to say David. And that's the C two hundred ninety from Embryer, which looks like it might work out, but the Hercules has become ubiquitous and they're still making them. Yeah. So my overall takeaway from this is that the big issue is not so much, is it crazy to contemplate restarting the C seventeen line or starting a C seventeen line . I think the more interesting thing is that this discussion is being had . This discussion about, to your point, Mike, you know, I think is we have a need for a certain class of aircraft and we need to start talking about how we're going to fill that need long term, whether it's doing this with a C seventeen or creating something new or modifying something , you know, the discussion needs to be had, I think. Well, and the same thing is happening with the A . We have a need for close air support aircraft and apparently the title of the article on the war zone is Congress throws the A ten Warthog another lifeline. I was going to say that they threw it a bone, but the bone would outrun it too quickly. It would . That's a good joke . Thank you if you know what the bone needs? Yep. Yeah . But we don't have anything to replace the A ten in terms of really high quality close air support. The Air Force doesn't like close air support , but Congress has realized that we don't have that and they have decided that they need to keep the A ten alive, even though it was supposed to be retired, I believe in this year , they have reactivated it. They have started continued training say that before it can be replaced, they need to find something before they can close it down, they need to find something to replace it with. There's been two stories about the eight ten regarding that. One of them is that they also have outfitted it with probe and drove aerial refueling. The eight ten is an Air Force aircraft, and it was always refueled by the flying boom , and they have developed a probe and drove refueling so that it can be refueled by navy aircraft if it's being used throughout the Pacific or as it has been used pretty regularly throughout the Middle East . Actually, Micah, it's not Navy aircraft. I'm going to correct you. Please do. The reason why they decided to implement the probe and Drogue was to be refueled by KC one hundred and thirty's of the in the mission of the special operations forces . The one thirty is designed the Combat King is designed to refuel Air Force helicopters , the MH sixties , but they also decided that in the recent conflict, it was vitally important to be able to have a refueling system for the A ten's who were flying low and slow and they did not have the ability and they needed the ability to refuel from one hundred and thirty tankers . The logic being that they will be in support of close air support for special operations missions like they were in the recovery of the F fifteen E pilots . So that mission specifically said that if you're going to send in a package of special operations aircraft , the A ten needed to be refueled for the same loitering time as the MC one hundred thirty ' s and the H sixties. So that's that was the reasoning behind not necessarily refueling by navy aircraft, but because they could fly low and slow over the and actively work with the special operations mission, which is it goes back to what A ten's were supposed to be, which was the replacement of the Sky Raider and the Sandy mission. And this all came together pretty quickly, didn't it? David, like in six weeks from the Yeah, which show s you when you got a need it's a very simple it's a very simple basically they just basically bolted a probe on the if you know the A ten, the A ten's got an interesting refueling receptacle, which is it's on the very pointy point of the nose . And basically they bolted a refueling receptacle on top of the boom and with the with the boom and what you get is for all intents and purposes in A six you got a you got a nose with a probe sticking out the front , you know, it's a lot of nations have converted aircraft from probe and drog from refueling specifically the Israelis . Because they did not have a lot of boom tankers . They have probe and drogues. So they finished sixteen's and phantoms and basically all they did was they took the probe and they plummed it right into the air refueling receptacle, which is what the Air Force did on the A ten . It's a simple just bolt on . I can't imagine there's much other than some tubes for it to connect and flow . And yeah, I mean we're back to Vietnam era where we've got we had for a long time , Rob's favorite airplane the F one hundred was capable of doing both probe and drog and and boom, you know? And for the air force, the last aircraft that had the probe and drog was the A thirty seven. If everybody remembers a little mosquito , the little dragonfly, they were the last ones that were officially fitted with probe and drog , but it's surprising it never came up earlier, but now that we've gotten so few , they're going to be needed mostly for special operations and they proved themselves worthy to be able to loiter over doing what they were advertised to do back in the seventies , fin weally're getting into so David, was the other reason for the probe and drug because they're still having so much trouble with the boom on the with the KC forty six and the KC forty six still can't I don't think it can refuel the A ten . No, no, I think more to the point it was the operating environment that the A ten's in lends itself to Probe and Drogue over because Mike if, you look at it this way, you're doing a special operations mission and you're recovering someone in the middle of mountainous territory and something . You want to loiter. You don't want to have to go all the way up to altitude to refuel . Whereas you've got an MC one hundred and thirty loitering at five thousand feet, you can just go up to it refueling and get back to your mission . It's more expedient than anything else. It's in the operation environment of the A ten. I mean, Air Day, you don't want to you definitely do not want to bring your tankers down to the level of where the A ten's are operating and you don't want to waste time having the ANS go up to the or go out of the airspace that they're needed in. So well the other thing that's great about this Congress keeping it alive is that they are also requiring the A ten demonstration team to continue to operate, which is wonderful for those of you who have seen it or will have the opportunity to see it again in the future. It's really a great demo team to watch. It is. I saw it once in an air show in upstate New York, but that was gosh, that was like at least fifteen or maybe more years ago. But yeah, that was impressive. But yes, we'll still see the A ten s for a number of years. And there was even discussion. I thought this was interesting that once they're retired rather than retiring them, but possibly what it says is transfer them to a another military department, which doesn't make a lot of sense. The Marines don't want it , and the army can't fly a fixed wing. So not sure exactly what that means, but these congressmen that put it into place want to keep it. They see the value of it. And we should mention that this all becomes or became a topic because of an amendment in the House Armed Services Committee's version of the National Defense Authorization Bill . And that amendment includes some of these things to keep support going and training going and sustain ment going and and so forth because yeah, because they ended the pipe they ended the training pipeline . Yeah, yeah, they've in fact didn't they close the yes they they closed the school and , you know, and they the last pilots graduated from it like two months ago. How many ATN's are in service? You have any idea There's like a hundred, about a hundred most. . Well, we have one more military story. It's a late breaking story. That's right. We're talking about the B fifty two crash that occurred just today, I mean hours in the last what ten, twelve hours or something. So there's very little very little known. Yeah, it happened about eleven thirty this morning central time. Right. Ed Edwards Air Force Base, right? Yeah, it was eleven eleven twenty AM Pacific time. I meant say Pacific. Yeah. Yeah, apparently it was just taken off and it went in right from there, but all eight people aboard were killed and the I'm not sure who used that comment about this being unsurvivable, but I'm sure the airplane was full of fuel and the pictures I saw made it look like there was nothing left of the airframe. There wasn't a recognizable piece of metal left of that airplane . It looked like it melted onto the runway . So I'm sure the fire must have been absolutely intense. There were eight people on board two of them were Boeing employees , as it turns out . And I guess families have been notified. And again, there was the press conference was about two hours ago from the time we're recording this. And the person leading the press conference was the one that said it was an unsurvived tragic and unsurvivable. It was Colonel James Hayes who said that . And I think they mentioned that this was a routine test mission, something supporting the radar modernization program . And maybe that's why the Boeing Yeah, I mean a normal B fifty two crew was four . So you can imagine that there was four there was four additional people besides the pilot the pilot co pilot r,adio man and electric warfare pilots, which are standard on the B fifty two. So there was four additional yeah some of this there's always speculation, you know, you turn around the mainstream news and there's speculation. Some people are talking about the age of the B fifty two, which I think is not an issue . I mean, it could be, but I don't think that's an issue. Some people seventy year old airplane. How can that possibly be safe? You know, people don't know what they're, you know, what they're talking about. Other people are talking about, well, there was a re engineer program. Did this have the new engines or the old engines and the new engines have not flown I'll dismiss that right away. The new engines have not flown . Now the new engine upgrade goes with that new electron ics upgrade . I mean, basically the J or the K, I forget what they've decided the designation gives it a whole new glass cockpit. So that aircraft might actually have had the upgraded cockpit that the new upgrade with the new engines are coming with. So who knows ? Yeah. Too early to tell. Another topic of convers ation in the news is about ejection seats on the B fifty two , which I mean, you can tell this thing didn't didn't get very far up in the air at all from the looks of the video. I mean, this thing is just right off the edge of the runway . But there's multiple ejection directions on the B fifty two, aren't there, David? Yeah , two up and then two down . So but I don't know what the parameters would be for the other four people, but the pilot and co pilot eject up through the cockpit , up through the glass . The crew that are internal to the B fifty two, which is a deck below where the cockpit is , eject downwards . So and basically then everybody goes out away from the aircraft. So you eject the two lower seats down, one goes left to the aircraft, one goes right to the aircraft, and then the pilot and co pilot eject up through the top . But there's no way that could even have time to eject given that they didn't even clear the end of the runway. Right. Yep, yep for sure . And if anybody, anybody has ever seen a B fifty take off , it's kind of striking because it takes off with a nose down attitude . And it really does not climb like you would see a normal aircraft sort of lift off in the nose sort of goes up . The B fifty two sort of forces itself in the air. It is a nose down attitude while that wing gets all of its lift . Also remember that the landing gear is eight wheels that are retracting the fuselage as well as two outside bogeys . It's a different aircraft , but will say it is not because of the age, you know, it's something happened and we probably shouldn't even speculate on this and we'll probably touch base on it next week. And of course, the military will own the investigation of this because it's a military aircraft. So the NTSB , well, I don't know if they'll be involved at all, but they won't have the lead. I don't know , but they might be in an advisor . I was gonna say, I don't know, I interrupted you, David. I don't think the NTSB gets involved in this kind of thing, does it? I think they might be in an advisory position . Yeah, I mean I would say that they would be in an advisory position, meaning that they'd be available if there were questions or something like that . Boeing of course will be involved about the product. I guess in whoever's electronic testing was, I mean, because that there may have been something failed in the electronics that they were dealing with . What's up with the geeks Let's see. You've got some catching up to do a little bit . Micah, what have you been up to? It's been a busy couple of weeks on Day on june sixth. I got a call from actually the day before from Bradley Jay from WBZ News Radio ten thirty out of Bost on, and he asked me to be on the show on D day . And so I was on with him for about an hour and we talked about travel tips and tricks and just had a great time on the air and that should be available if you go to the WBZ website. If you want to find the podcast, you can find that there. And it was a lot of fun . And then last week, last Monday, episode one hundred thirty five of the Journey is reward was released. And we talk about Brian's trip to New Jersey for his mom's ninety first birthday and the big meetup . And there are some great people at that meetup. There was this guy named Max Flight and David Vanderhofe and all sorts of cool people. And it sounds like it was a fun time. It was, it was . And then the other night on Apple TV, there is this new film and I gotta say it's not very good, but it was kind of fun. John Travolta put it together and it's called Propeller, one way night coach. And it's all basically kind of about one of his first trips in some ways. It's fictionalized. But the first trip coast to coast on a constellation and what it was like doing that in, I guess, it must have been the mid sixties Lot of John Travolta's family is in it. And again, not the greatest film in the world, but some beautiful views of the constellation, even if it was cartoons . That's what I like to call that kind of image , but certainly worth watching and the fascination of a young boy with flying and flying from his perspective. So give it a check, check it out. And that was on Apple TV, you said. Apple TV, propeller one way night coach. Okay . And we have some events coming up, some air shows, a couple events in Maine. The great state of Maine Air shows coming up . Yeah, that's going to be Saturday and Sunday, july eleventh and twelfth up at the Brunswick Executive Airport, which was the former Brunswick Naval Air Station. Good news about that that I didn't realize until recently is that if you're in the Boston area, you can take the train right up to Brunswick and then Uber or lift over to the air station and get to the show. So it's pretty easy. You don't necessarily have to drive and park. We knew that the Blue Angels were going to be there and the F thirty five demo team and the C seventeen demo team, which is very apropos of today's show , but just announced this is wonderful and I may have to go just for this . The red arrows are going to be there . And I would love to see the red arrows. David, you've seen them. They're pretty incredible, aren't they? Actually, ironically , David's going to get something. He's got a model. He's wearing a red arrow shirt. He is what are the ads? From Langley twenty twelve . twenty twelve. Very good. Yeah , if you haven't seen the Reds , they definitely it's a very different air show than what you're used to seeing with the blues and the thunderbirds . So if you are on the east coast anywhere over the next couple of weeks , there's plenty flying to see . The French are here , the red arrows are here , the blues and the thunderbirds are scattered throughout . They did the super delta last night over the White House . So and Aerobatic teams that you're not used to seeing oh and the reds are supposedly going to Ashkosh. So if you're going Nazkosh you'll get to see him . They're really great blokes They are very casual when it comes to getting ready for their flights, etc . But they are really good at what they do . I quietly say that of all of the teams I've seen they have been my favorite . I'll update that when I when I see the French team later this month at Baltimore where they're going to have the blues, the reds and the Patrol for Defranca . Well, I can say and you guys may remember this when we were at Pittsburgh and Captain Al Evans was there, a good friend of the show. He was staying at the same hotel as the Thunderbirds at the time, and he walked up to one of the Thunderbirds pilots and said, Hey, are you guys anywhere near as good as the Red Arrows? He almost got killed. I can imagine. That sounds like him, doesn't it? But anyway, that's Saturday and Sunday, july eleventh and twelfth, the Great State of Maine Air Show. But if you're going to go on Sunday before you go there , Sunday july twelfth from eight AM to eleven thirty is the twenty ninth annual Spur Wink Farm, pancake breakfast and fly in. It's my favorite annual event. Just beautiful location, great airplanes, terrific people, wonderful pancakes with or without main blueberries and with real main maple syrup. And I'm certainly going to be there next. Do you know if you're going or not yet? Well , about in July, I probably need to head north in search of cooler temperatures. So it's a possibility. Well, that would be great. I would love to. It's definitely my favorite fly in. I mean, it's just a great grassroots fly in . Well, I'm going to be there and my good friend Eric the Matmaker, my Krepluck br other is going to be there. So come on up, you'll love it . Right. And looking a little farther into the future in August as a matter of fact, the DARPA lift challenge . It going' tos be at the National Museum of the Air Force. That of course is in Dayton, Ohio, another fantastic museum . That's one of those destination museums. You almost can't possibly see it all in one day. It's just enormous . But the DARPA lift challenge , they're looking for drone designs that are capable of carrying payloads more than four times their weight . So they're looking to kind of develop the capability for drones for heavy lift drones basically . And the public is invited. You can watch the challen ger the challenge competitors rather demonstrate their small drones lifting more weight than you'd think possible. It's also co located with flight fest , which is a radio controlled aviation event. So that's there. But as far as the lift challenge, there's prize money involved, serious prize money. Six and a half million dollars in prize money. And then that'll go to some of the contestants, I guess , things like university researchers , independent innovators, industry and all of that. So that's august sixth through ninth, twenty twenty six against the National Museum of the U. S. Air Force, often called just called the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. So the challenge als are open to the public, but seats are limited. So we'll have a link in the show notes to the website that you might want to take a look at if you're thinking about attending. Rob , have you ever been to the Air Force Museum? Yes. How would you rate that sort of overall on the scale of museums ? Well I spent better part of a day there by myself, which to me is the only way to see a really good museum . Because if you have people with you, it's always somebody else always wants to move on and go see some . And as David mentioned, the F one hundred 's my favorite. It was the first place I went to in the museum . And I just, oh, wow, look at that. And then I wandered over there and I wandered in a different direction. And before I knew it, I mean, they were getting ready to shut down and they were they were going to kick me out. They said I couldn't stay overnight, but I loved it. I really did. Yeah, one of my one of my favorites. I was just blown away by the XB seventy . Oh yeah. Inside, this thing is inside. It is so enormous and I mean, I remember that from , I don't know, I guess I was a kid when they were trying to develop develop that and just I had seen pictures, but the C one in person was just amazing, just really amazing. Ironically, that was designed to replace the B fifty two. Right, yeah. So was the B one . And the B two? Yeah, yeah. David, I would say that you are our museum expert for so many different reasons. How would you write the Air Force Museum compared to others you've been to the Air Force Museum is my favorite museum , but it's the Air Force Museum's mission from the beginning was to educate Air Force people about their adversaries and their history . So it's a very dense collection of U. S. Air Force military aircraft as well as Allied aircraft as well as enemy aircraft . Some of my favorite aircraft are at the Air Force Museum are actually the German aircraft and some of the foreign aircraft . That being said , for the general public, I still say the Smithsonian is probably better because there's something for everyone . If you're a military geek , you gotta go to the Air Force Museum and leave yourself two days at minimum . In my opinion, I have to leave myself three days because it takes me a day to get out of the bookstore . It is like Pensacola. Pensacola is the same way . The general public can have a great time at it, but if you're a serious aviation historian , yeah, those are two . PIMA, S an Diego are probably are probably the other one. Pima is the one that I'm looking forward to going to. Have you never been to Pima? I've never been Pima. Oh, you're going to love it. You're going to love it. And for those that may not know, I was going to say, for those that may not know, Pensacola is the Naval Aviation Museum, isn't it? Right . Yes . The National Museum of Naval Aviation , which also includes the Coast Guard the Marine Corps . So wow the problem with Pensacola and also problem with Dayton is museums are pretty much you have to go there to go there . There's not much Dayton is there's not much to do with Dayton after the museum closes . And Pensacola is out in the middle of nowhere on the peninsula in Florida. So both of those museums, you really need to plan a trip to go to those museums . Now living in Philadelphia , I have been known to get up at five thirty in the morning, get to the Air Force Museum PM , then stay overnight and go from it opening at nine AM to five PM and then drive back home to Philadelphia and arrive at about two o'clock in the morning. So it can't be done as a day trip. Well, I can having lived in Ohio, that I can tell you that if you're at Dayton, and if it closes, you can drive about, I don't know, forty five minutes an hour south to King's Island and go to the amusement park, I guess , in near Cincinnati . Yeah, yeah. I don't know, so many great museums and not enough time, but they all have different characters, you know? Some are just about the airplanes, some where about more about education . You know, they all have different a different flavor, I think . The Pima Air and Space Museum, I mean, that's just about hoarding. That's about hoarding, yeah . Yeah. I think that's where I saw my first SR seventy one. Was it Pima? I think they had it under a shed . But in any event, yeah, they're they're all great, they're all great, all worthwhile . And one of my favorite back to Maine , Mike is the Owlshead Transportation Museum. Yeah, which has more than just airplanes. It has a lot of vehicles, ground vehicles as well, but that's a pretty exciting place. Who would want to go to a museum that didn't have airplanes in it Well , you can see Michael Schumacher's Formula One car that Dowles had or at least it was. I don't know. I would go to a museum with helicopters. Yeah, I would. Oh, I did. I wouldn't I wouldn't. There's no way in hell. Oh, that's right. I get paid to do that. Yeah, you do. Okay, well let's wrap this up. Want to thank you for listening. We really covered a lot of different topics this episode . Hopefully you'll find or had found many of them interesting . And I want to thank our listeners for those great emails that really made the show changed things up a little bit and they were really all so good. Yeah, yeah, we have great listeners. We have the best listeners, I think , of all of them. But of course you can, find us at airplane geeks dot com Our email is the geeks at airplane geeks dot com Feel free to write us. Actually getting fairly caught up fairly. And let's see. David Vanderhoef, where do folks find you? Where's the museum? Tell us about that. You can find me at the American Helicopter Museum in Westchester, Pennsylvania . You can also find me with Max Trescott. We recorded episode four hundred and forty one this morning of UAS News Talk . That should be out on Wednesday. So tune into that. We're getting that band back together and slowly that's coming along that we're coming out every other week . So I'm back to podcasting and it feels kind of weird . It should feel good. We're glad that you're back though, David . And Micah, our main man, how about you? Well, you can find me with Pasadena Brian Coleman on the journey is reward dot org podcast. We should have a new episode coming out this coming Monday . And of course you can find me on X Twitter and Blue Sky as Main Fly . Good . And Rob Mark, you're everywhere . I'm yeah, we used to have a show in Chicag o where they said he's everywhere, he's everywhere and I should have that clip. Anyway, any place that has jet wine in the name and of course stories about flying and oh here, yes, here and there was someplace else Oh right with Max Strescott on NDSBNews talk dot com Yeah lots of great aviation content coming out . All right, and of course I'm Max Flight . You can find me on Blue Sky, look for airplane geeks on Blue Sky . And so please join us again next week as we talk aviation on the airplane geeks podc ast. Bye everybody. Nighty night . See you real soon . Thanks for listening.