hey all,

my wife and I are heading to a health spa in Tucson next week. Health food and meditation. Blah.

I want to sneak out and use my new camera to get some boneyard shots.

Can anyone suggest any roads or intersections where good pics of old aircraft can be snapped. I would love to see some real aircraft like F-4's and maybe F-14's.

Thanks in advance,

PT

 

Pima air museum next door to DM.Great place this time of year.

 

Go to Pima.
I did the bus tour of the boneyard that Pima offers... wasn't impressed. However, if Pima doesn't have the photo shots you want, it might be worth going on.

 

Try calling the Public Affairs office at DMAFB. They used to offer a free bus tour of AMARC (aka the boneyard). Call ahead of time for a reservation as it used to fill up days if not weeks in advance depending on the time of the year. Also, if you have access to the base, the perimeter road offers some good views through the chain link fence. IIRC the road just outside of the base hospital/clinic had a great view of a couple of squadrons worth of F-4s.

Edit....I also second the Pima Air Museum.

 

They used to offer a combination ticket which included the Pima Air Museum, a bus tour of AMARC, and admission to the Titan Missile Museum (about 20 miles south).

Home : Pima Air & Space Museum : Tucson, Arizona

Home

 

thanks all for the info.

Looks like a tour from Pima is the go.

Cant wait . . . . . for the meditation that is!

cheers

 

Don't bother calling the base--they passed this off to the Pima Air Museum years ago.

I used to be a tour guide 20-something years ago when I was at D-M as a Lieutenant. Took the Pima tour myself a couple years ago--still pretty similar. Just not free anymore!

Also a good tour is the Titan Missile Museum just down the highway in Green Valley. Very cool tour.

 

Thanks all for the info.

I managed to see lots of aircraft from street level and the roof of an Avis Camry. And a great tour of Pima also.

Sad to see all of those F-4's lined up doing nothing. Could I take just one please. It would look so cool parked in the driveway.

A question for the experts - why would they base F-16's at a civil airport when right next door is an AFB?

 

Are they guard F-16's? I've seen that often enough...I'd guess the AF doesn't want to share and the guard wants to have control of it's own base.

 

That's the 162nd Fighter Wing of the Arizona ANG. They're also home to the AF Reserve Component Test Center (AATC), which tests primarily weapons but also trains foreign nationals to fly F-16s too. As far as I know, all reserve component AF units are based at civilian/joint-use fields.

They also man the air defense alert facility at D-M (Montana ANG used to do it), as well as have a D-M detachment that runs the snowbird operation, in which other units--primarily from cold weather states, come in to train in the good weather during the winter.

About 70 F-16s at their TUS faciity. Side note, I've seen more and more military aircraft at civilian FBOs in my travels of late, everything from jet fighters to trainers, to heavy cargo aircraft, of all services. According to the crews I talked to, it's more convenient to use civilian fields because military fields have weekend operation hours and quiet hours that are so restrictive that they'd rather go to civilian fields!

I couldn't believe it. When I was flying in the AF, you planned your hops to stop at military fields exclusively, or you didn't go. I wonder how much money the DoD is wasting buying fuel from FBOs because military bases aren't open 24 hours like they used to be. Ridiculous.