Welcome Squeaky Force; MSU Gets A-10s; and Battle Creek Kicks Off

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio, please check out the other entries.

Please greet the newest Airspeed listener. Stephen John Summerfield was born Thursday, June 25. And, yeah, the “Stephen” comes from where you think it comes from. How cool! Youngest listener to be coined (two days old). And he already has a callsign. “Squeaky.” For reasons that become obvious when you meet him.

Cole drew the above picture for me recently. He’s a big Michigan State fan (for no apparent reason – his parents went to Albion, Western Michigan, Wayne State, and U of D) and he also loves the A-10 Thunderbolt II (affectionately known as the “Warthog”). So he merged his loves and came up with this bit of speculative imagery. Might be a draw for AFROTC at State if they had A-10s, I think. Especially if, as Cole has drawn them, they had Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-200 afterburning turbofan engines.

I leave tonight for the Battle Creek Field of Flight Airshow and Balloon Festival. Arrival day tomorrow, practices Friday, and the show Saturday and Sunday. Can’t wait to get there and sport my nine-gee pin!