TBWAIN - AKA Jeff Svare's Blog

After an extremely successful career as the premiere example of carrier-based aripower, the Navy has retired the F-14. And I'm sad to see her go. The F-14, in all it's variations has been described as the 60's musclecar of naval aviation. Her replacement, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is easier to maintain (read: cheaper) and carries a heavier payload. It also has shorter range, and lower top speed. More Super Hornet specs can be found here . Most people never had the opportunity to see a Tomcat in real life. The closest most got was Top Gun or JAG . Which, I'll have to admit, isn't all that bad. But having seen VF-1 Wolfpack deployed on USS Ranger CV-61, real life was so much better. The Tomcat was a maintenence-intensive craft, requiring 40 hours on the ground for each hour in the air. But, dang. She sure was pretty. Even sitting in a hangar, she looks mean, cool, and sexy. Put her in the air, and she's mean, cool, and sexy. Here's to everyone who

\Roddenberry taught the world to say\"Beam me up, Scotty." Actually, that line of dialogue was never uttered in an episode of Star Trek. It's a popular myth. "Mr. Scott, three to beam up." That is actual dialogue from the series. But not in the first episode. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the tv in our house on 13th Avenue South in Fargo, North Dakota at 7:30 pm to watch the first episode of Star Trek . Little did I know then what an effect it would have on my life. I was barely seven years old, but I was already a die-hard sci-fi fan. While I liked Star Wars when it came out, and anxiously awaited each and every movie that followed, they never caught my imagination as totally as Star Trek did. Maybe it was because Star Wars was about humanoid aliens and Trek was about the human experience among aliens. I don't really know. I do know the best Trek eps have always been about how our humanity reacts to the larger world around it. Some o