Well, I’m finally back home in sunny California. Although coming from being in the mid 80′s in Santiago to overcast and in the low 70′s is a bit hard. But I am very glad to be home. As much fun as I had down there, I do enjoy sleeping in my own bed. Especially after [...]

Lucky 13! Well, my time in Chile has come to an end and it’s time to bid it a fond adios. It sure has been very bueno, but come 7am, it’s time to load up my bags onto our AZ KC-135R and ship off. Luckily it was dark and I had two seats all to [...]

Day three of the NEWEN exercise between the US Air Force and Chilean Air Force left me in a bit of a lurch.  With a miscommunication on the bus times, I found myself sitting in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express all morning.   But at least I had good company.

As we began the second day of the NEWEN exercise, I was able to fly with the Gucci Boys from Travis once again.  Today’s mission: refuel the Chilean F-16 as the participate in the aerial war games with the US Air Force F-16′s and F-15′s.  With two “wars” to be fought in the skies today, [...]

FIDAE has officially ended, and now begins the NEWEN Exercise (which I’m told means “Force”in the Mapucho dialect). It’s a collaboration between the US Air Force and Chilean Air Forces and has three parts to it. The first is a joint air to air exercise pitting the Chilean F-16′s as the Blue (good guys) Force [...]

The final day of FIDAE is finally here, and it’s has been a very long week.  Hundreds of US Air Crews have traveled thousands of miles to do one thing: Establish relationships. And they’ve done a fine job doing that.  And the easiest way to connect with the people of Chile is to just be [...]

With over 30,000 people expected to attend the first public day of FIDAE, expectations were high for everyone. FIDAE only happens once every two years and is an air expo that is fast moving to the top.  The vendors are recognizing this and flooding the conference halls, and the ramp is filled with aircraft.

After a quite evening and recuperating from my 9 hour KC-10 flight, it was back to FIDAE early in the morning. Today was my first real day of shooting the air display acts. The line up was sparse at best since it was a practice day and half of the teams weren’t even preset yet. [...]

As I mentioned in my last blog, day 6 started out really, really early. But it was well worth it. I was going to fly on a KC-10. And even though it was my first time on the -10, I was more excited to be flying with the Gucci Boys from Travis AFB. For the [...]

Ok, first off let me apologize for not keeping this updated. For those of you who are reading this blog daily, you’ll notice that I’m a couple of days late. It’s been quite a busy couple of days, so I’ll keep the writing short and let the pictures do all of the talking. But I [...]