As close to Top Gun as it gets. Again.

As many of you know, aviation has been a huge part of my history.  And it just so happens I have a friend who owns - and sometimes flies - a cold war era F-104 Starfighter.

That's yours truly grinning like a 12-year old with a new toy.

I sure wish you could manually control exposure on the iPhone like a 'Droid.  Eh, whatya gonna do...

(Here's a link to a video shot a few years ago of us starting up this old bird:  http://youtu.be/vdDoKosn-88)

Anyway, we were out there again yesterday with another engine run-up, no flying unfortunately, not even a fast-taxi down the runway to fire up the afterburner.  But it was fun hearing the howl of that old J-79 engine and sitting the cockpit dreaming that one day we'll get this thing airborne again.

Here's the view forward from the front seat:

That's a P2 Neptune being used for fire-bombing sitting in front of us and.  You can see the long pitot tube with a tennis-ball on the end of it pointing at the red air compressor.

If cars were built was robustly as this 1960's fighter the only things that would wear out would be tires, brakes and rubber parts.  This thing is a tank with wings.