Andy Takes His Last Flight

Today was Andy's final flight for the military. In honor of his last mission, the squadron came out and "hosed" him. It's a time honored Air Force tradition. When an aircrew member takes his or her last flight, they must get soaked. They fill buckets with ice and water, use hoses and bottles of champaign. Before today's flight, Andy logged 1,290'ish hours in military aircraft. Of those hours, over 185 hours were flying combat missions! He also spent 1.6 hours documenting the infamous Air Force One plane over New York, which proved to be more hostal than any combat zone! LOL! Andy has logged time in nearly 50 different airframes - both foreign and domestic military. Some of his highlights were flying in F-16's test engineer "super sonic" school airframes.

Andy said, "It was fun flying with the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his C-32 too."

"To this day, the coolest thing I did was document an SR71 get refueled by a KC135. It's the coolest looking airplane ever. The after burner trail like 50 feet long. It was awesome!"

With so many hours logged on so many airframes, I'm sure his head is full of great stories. Be sure to ask him sometime.

While his flying days are over for the Air Force, he will always be up in the air. whether training young photograhers or shooting a natrual disasters.

There's more we will see from him!

From his loving wife, Stacy