Ill be honest, at air shows, i rarely watch the high performance stuff, i already know what theyre capable of. But ill always perk up and look to the skies when i hear the rumble of round engines. When i was a kid growing up in Alaska, there were plenty of them up there, thats where old planes go to live out their lives working as cargo ships. Slow, noisy, hard to find parts for, but easy to work on, reliable and tough...perfect for the frozen north.

My dad was USAF, but he wanted to make supplemental income so he worked a rental car counter inside the inbound MAC terminal at Elmendorf, as opposed to leaving me home, he would just take me to work with him every day. So i got to hang out right next to the runway (could never do that post 9/11), i would see all sorts of planes coming and going...C-130's and C-141's were the norm. The occasional C-5 was always a treat. I was hanging out there when T-33's and F-4's were based there, and i watched them phase out the Phantoms and replace them with the brand new F-15's. I watched all sorts of things land, DC-8's, 707's...including the Canadian PM's 707, and when they took off, the pilot forgot to take the flag down from above the cockpit, so he flew away with this poor flag hanging on for dear life. Im sure its still sitting out there, all tattered and old, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness somewhere. Saw a Canberra land there using the tail hook/arresting line they had set up. The very first Argosy was based out of there too. As well as a noisy old DC-2 that would come from a hanger way off to the side...it had to taxi across an active road to get to the airfield.


It was a very influential time for me, i got to know a colonel, he asked me what school i went to, i told him, he asked who my teacher was, i said "Mean, nasty fat Mrs. Brown! Shes a jerk!"...he started chuckling, i said "You heard of her?", he said "Thats my wife"...DOH! Early lesson in holding my toungue despite my emotional desire to speak my mind whenever i damn well felt like it. He used to let me back into the Base Ops (again, a serious no-go post 9/11), i went on FOD runs down the runway with him in the blue station wagon, picking up anything we found. I used to hang with visiting pilots, got to go up in the tower..all sorts of cool shit just wouldnt happen today.

Im glad i got to experience that stuff. Now, when i hear a radial engine, i know right away, no matter where im at. I always rush to a window, or outside...catch these while you can!