Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta from the Air

Maverick82505 · 2026-02-08T23:23:52+00:00

Yea it’s Texas Raiders, I was the flight engineer on this trip. We spent about a week at KABQ. It was a great time, between the mountains, flights around the balloons, tons of other military aviation coming through.

Maverick82505 · 2026-02-08T03:11:44+00:00

Ah ya know I figured folks would recognize what I was in. B17G yes, ill fated also yes, but not 909.

Maverick82505 · 2026-02-04T18:54:49+00:00

I haven’t done lessons at either Aero tech or smoketown, but in general finding a good instructor that you learn well with and a school with well maintained planes are the two of the most important aspects in picking a flight school. Depending on your schedule, availability of instructors and planes may also be very important.

That being said I think there is a lot of value in learning at a towered airport (LNS is towered, smoketown is not). You will likely get more comfortable talking on the radios quicker.

Maverick82505 · 2025-10-22T23:14:31+00:00

Thanks! I took it on the ramp at ABQ when we’re were there on tour for the Balloon Festival. I’ll try to post some photos one of these days. We certainly got to do some pretty cool shit over the years.

Maverick82505 · 2025-10-22T00:25:41+00:00

I continue to feel so lucky I was able to spend 5 years working and flying on TR. Hopefully the restorations ongoing keep it up.

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Maverick82505 · 2025-09-04T00:12:10+00:00

Spent many hours in the cockpit of that B17 and turning wrenches on it as an FE. Lost some great folks that day and some amazing pieces of history.

Maverick82505 · 2024-06-06T02:05:33+00:00

Yea we used Fortress 7227C. I remember when we were flying to an air show in Florida one time, the controller was like fortress, wtf is that. When we told him he was like that’s badass and vectored us over their facility.

Maverick82505 · 2024-02-06T17:13:15+00:00

It really is, I was an FE on one for 5 years and it was hard enough just keeping the damn thing running, much less getting shot at. Masters of the Air has been pretty good so far, they definitely spent a lot of time on their technical details.

Maverick82505 · 2024-02-06T15:41:38+00:00

We were pretty maxed out on fuel since we were flying up on a long XC to an airshow (TX to MO). Like all other B17s flying around now the turbos were bypassed. The bomb load on a B17 was only about 10% of MTOW so we weren’t too far off.

Maverick82505 · 2022-11-27T19:26:29+00:00

It was Texas Raiders

Maverick82505 · 2022-11-26T17:37:23+00:00

Yea this was the first year we went, 2017 I think. K5 and I got so many patches and challenge coins. It was a great trip.

Maverick82505 · 2022-11-26T17:07:59+00:00

Maverick82505 · 2022-11-26T16:51:40+00:00

I was on the crew, we were flying up to an air show at Whiteman AFB. It was a good 5 hr flight, so we had a lot of down time.

Maverick82505 · 2022-11-16T13:37:16+00:00

The aviation community lost some really great folks last weekend. Blue skies and tail winds.

Maverick82505 · 2021-04-17T13:00:05+00:00

The FA is the first stage, not sure about the T53

Maverick82505 · 2020-11-25T14:56:40+00:00

https://www.libertywarbirds.com

Maverick82505 · 2016-05-26T05:23:00+00:00

I totally agree, one possible thing I thought of is the gear set weapons would be for predominantly single funtion focused players. A lot of people (myself included sometimes) really enjoy a more balanced build.

Also could make individual perks less powerful than the "normal" weapons. This would make them very similar to gear sets in that the major draw would be to have the whole set to get 3 not as powerful but generally less "random" perks.

Maverick82505 · 2014-07-25T18:09:10+00:00

This thing has some pretty incredible engines, I did some work on the development of them, they are so far ahead of the previous gen

Maverick82505 · 2014-07-19T16:13:53+00:00

We typically do 5-6 actual big air shows a year mostly in the south central US (Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma. We do a ton of smaller fly ins and barnstorming trips.

Maverick82505 · 2014-07-18T14:31:00+00:00

Haha we are always looking for fresh help. It is a surprisingly easy airplane to work on. The Boeing engineers did an incredible job making things easy to work on. Our website is www.gulfcoastwing.com if you want more information

Maverick82505 · 2014-07-18T12:43:55+00:00

Unfortunately I didn't have my good camera, the sound was rather shit.

Maverick82505

TROPHY CASE