Pima Air & Space Museum
Visited
2017.11.11
Tucson, Arizona
One of the world’s largest aerospace museums, the Pima Air & Space Museum is home to over 350 historical aircraft, and as you'd expect, it takes some time to see everything. Outside of the hangars, where aircraft are parked under the desert sun on 80 acres, the one-hour tram tour was definitely the way to go. It provided welcome shade, the narration was interesting and informative, and once I knew where everything was, it wasn't much trouble to trek back to specific aircraft for a closer look and better photos.
[ Note on Subject ]
S1030 High Altitude Flight Suit
[ Note on Subject ]
A rare photo of me, standing next to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. I was obsessed with this aircraft as a kid.
[ Note on Subject ]
US Air Force MC-3 Pressure Suit
[ Note on Subject ]
Russian VKK-6M Pressure Suit
[ Note on Subject ]
Bede BD-5 Micro, a small, single-seat homebuilt aircraft created in the late 1960s.
[ Note on Subject ]
Pentecost HX-1 Hoppi-Copter, a functional backpack helicopter that was developed in the 1940s. Unsurprisingly, it was extremely hard to control.
[ Note on Subject ]
Sperry ephemera.
[ Note on Subject ]
The Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH, a small, drone helicopter built for use as a long-range anti-submarine weapon on ships that would otherwise be too small to operate a full-sized helicopter.
[ Note on Subject ]
Russian Ekranoplan models.
[ Note on Subject ]
A Convair B-58 Hustler, the first operational supersonic nuclear bomber.
[ Note on Subject ]
A Super Guppy on loan from NASA.
[ Note on Subject ]
A Boeing EC-13J Stratotanker Airborne Command Post. One of these things was flying at all times during the Cold War, to provide command and control of US nuclear forces in the event of a surprise attack.