Today in Aviation History: The USS Vincennes

July 3, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers.  Aviation history includes some wonderful moments of success, joy, grit, and triumph, all events we should celebrate.  Unfortunately, like life, aviation history also includes tragedies, horrible mistakes, overconfidence, and incomprehensible sadness. And if we’re to be a truly great nation, we must be honest with and acknowledge our mistakes, be self-aware […]

Commercial Space Flight and the Connection Between the X-15, the Rutan Voyager and the SS1

June 21, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers.  Twenty years.  That’s a long time.  While a few of us may live longer, 20 years is a fourth or less of most of our lives.  And how far we’ve come in that time.  Twenty years is indeed a long time, but then again, it’s not that long.  The past 20 […]

D-Day at 80: A Legacy of Air Power

June 6, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers on this 80th anniversary of the D-Day Landings at Normandy, France.  According to the US Defense Department, “thousands of U.S. paratroopers died during their drop behind enemy lines at Utah Beach, having been shot out of the sky by enemy fire or weighed down and drowned in flooded marshlands.”  Brothers were […]

On This Day in Aviation History-JFK Calls for Congress to Support the Space Program

May 25, 2024

Good Saturday afternoon fellow ECAHF’ers.  I hope you have (or “had” if you’re just reading this on Tuesday) an enjoyable Memorial Day Holiday, and did more than merely enjoy BBQ’s and family, but also recalled the sacrifices of the fallen men and women of our armed forces. I have to admit a certain amount of…well…let […]

From Dreams to Reality. This Day in Aviation History: Flying Cars

May 1, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers and happy Hump Day and May Day! Many of us remember when flying cars were predicted to be a future “certainty”.  Same with Dick Tracy’s wrist radios and futuristic video telephones where you could actually see the person to whom you were speaking. HAHAHAHAHA!  What were we thinking? Oh.  Wait a […]

Thursday Twofer: Tokyo and Beirut

April 18, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers.  America was already at war with the Empire of Japan and it took four months to plan and execute the Pearl Harbor “revenge attack”, an audacious, risky, and uniquely American “suicide mission” requiring only volunteers (of which there were none lacking), all of whom wanted to-and believed, as most young people […]

Aviation History Twofer: Okinawa and the Royal Air Force

April 1, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers, while most of us are probably too “mature” to put salt in the sugar bowl, cigar loads in dad’s cigar, or tell your spouse with a straight face that you’ve decided to sell everything and become a Tibetan Monk…and then exclaim “April Fool’s Day! (I’ve done all three…and more…and am not […]

This Day in Aviation History: Aunt Effie and Outdoors Play Time

March 16, 2024

Good Saturday morning fellow ECAHF’ers.  When I was a kid, we experimented a lot with launching things into the air.  We found a pipe that was just the right diameter to have a golf ball slip down. Jammed into the ground at an angle, we’d drop a lit cherry bomb followed by a golf ball […]

This Day in Aviation History: Malaysian Flight 370

March 8, 2024

Good afternoon fellow ECAHF’ers.  We should all celebrate another successful Gala event and the hard work put in by our Tourist and Event Center team led by Pam Holder and Dianna Vaccarella and MC’d by Tom Braaten. It’s a mystery to me, the level of volunteerism and giving of one’s time that so many offer […]

Tuesday Twofer: Yesterday and Today

February 27, 2024

Good morning fellow ECAHF’ers.  Happy Leap Year in two days!  Speaking of leaping, we’re going to leap between yesterday’s aviation history and today’s aviation history in our “Tuesday Twofer”.  First, today’s aviation history. Being the very first at something in our great, big country is a goal many might pursue.  But few achieve it.  But […]