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Coffee Coffee Coffee …
Coffee Coffee Coffee … I love coffee. I started drinking coffee in my late teens. Back then coffee was either made in a percolator or a Mr Coffee. Either way it was bad. There were no Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts was king. There were still real coffee shops were you could buy a cup of coffee…
The 39’ers
Typically deployed USAF air crews have crew names. These names are usually given because of some attribute of the crew, usually not complementary. Sometimes a crew will come up with a name on their own and the name sticks, if they’re lucky. This was the case on my last C-130 deployment. Some members of the…
Welcome to the Hey Eng Blog
Welcome to Hey Eng. I’m interested in the history of flight engineers and enlisted flyers in the USAAF and the USAF. Why do pilots say “Hey Eng!”, where and how did the phrase originate? I’ve wondered why there weren’t FEs on bombers after World War II but they remained on cargo aircraft. In addition to…
101 Nights
At one point in my military career I had over 800,000 Marriott points. The crew would walk into the Marriott for that night and there would be a welcome sign with my name on it some where in the lobby. I would usually get a room upgrade to at least a junior suite. My C-130…
San Diego Personnel Air Drops
Every once in a while, a trip comes down the pipe that you must get on. It is a moral imperative. Missions are picked up by Current Ops from out in the system. These missions could be any DOD, Department of Defense, “client.” As a C-130 unit, we’re either hauling stuff or drop it out…
VA diagnoses: anxiety, chemical dependency, depression and PTSD.
I didn’t start out depressed. I didn’t wake up one day and was depressed. It’s a journey, like many I’ve been on. Except that I don’t know when or where the journey really began. I don’t know where depression is going to take me or when the journey will end. There were road markers along…

