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Arizona [March 2010] Roy the Phoenix Spotter

                It was time again to head out to Tucson again.  Even though I life only a few hours away from Tucson I don’t visit that part of our state that often because of the static nature of DMAFB’s surrounding scrap yards and Pima Air Museum. But this year’s pilgrimage turned out to be quite a surprise and different from the previous visits. After two hours I arrived in Tucson, first stop where the storage yards adjacent to Pima Air Museum, to my surprise allied (located in the corner of S. Wilmot Rd and E. Drexel  Rd) was completely empty , no more C-140’s and not even the resident CH37C’s where there anymore. The whole area has been cleaned up and the many C-141 hulks I spotted the year before are cleaned up as well. I know that EPA has been trying to crack down on the spare reclamation and scrapping business around Davis-Monthan Air Force base but that they actually successes came as a big surprise especially with the low return on scrap metal I figured much was going to be unchanged. I started to wonder where all these aircraft might have gone too and with the pile of scrap metal around the Minden’s scrap yard I concluded that is where they went. The situation however at United Aeronautical Corporation remains unchanged as well as Western International for as far as I could see. I decided to back track and visit Dross Metal / ARM which is located E. Nebraska the same grim picture emerged as I got closer, they too are cleaning up. Many aircraft have been scrapped but the good news was that some of the inmates have returned to active duty like one of the EC130Q that was modified to C-130H for the Royal Dutch Air Force and a P-3 ex.USN to P-3AM standard for the Brazilian Air Force. After spending some time at DMI I decided to stop by at Pima Air Museum because the mighty    Peacemaker was put on display that I missed last year. To my surprise the restoration area within the museum had some ex. Allied inmates in storage: 54-0619 C-123K, 62-4197 C140, 62-4200 C140.  Pima Air Museum is a must for every aviation enthusiast and it has an enormous collection of aircraft on display.

Main focus this trip was to get the Peacemaker on photo. The 52-2827 Consolidated B-36J Peacemaker on display has the honour to be the last ever produced B-36. This beautiful B-36J 95th Bomb Wing, Biggs AFB, El Paso, Texas

New at Pima as well are N4NA Gulfstream 4 (ex. NASA) and UH-1F 63-13141 (Titan Missile Museum).  Having inspected all the aircraft and taken quite a lot of pictures of those new aircraft I decided to head out and visit Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Having visited DMAFB and its world renowned AMARC in 2009 I didn’t expect too much to be changed because the majority of the 4000+ aircraft are stored there for years to come. Just like the scrap yards I was in for a surprise the enormous fleet of C-141 have been broken up and the area they used to occupy was being regarded. I only spotted 3 C-141’s left at AMARC. The new additions to AMARC beside several KC-135 are ex. Janet T43’s (B737-200). Was lucky to catch an F-16 84-1281/LF with PCN AAFG0607 which was put in storage. To sum all aircraft up that I have logged will take quite some time to compile into a list but when it’s done it will be posted here on the website. After spending nearly 5 hours at AMARC I had two more stops to make, one was at Tucson International Airport and Marana Regional Airport. Tucson houses Ascent MRO (formerly known as HAMTECHAERO) several very interesting Jets are stored at this maintenance facility

After 20 minute drive I arrived at the airport and saw a few Arizona ANG F-16’s on finals. The airport houses not only an MRO but it is the home of the 162^nd FW which co-chairs F-16’s with the UAE for pilot training.  A real bonus that day was N727NY B727-232 which was nicely parked on the executive tarmac. Resident Sierra Pacific had one of their B737’s parked at the Cargo Ramp N703S. Several stops later I arrived at Bombardier facilities and was ecstatic to find a CRJ-200 well within range of my camera C-FZQN Jetlink (new Tanzanian domestic carrier) as well as the last Atlas Jet CRJ-900 present (N565ES) along with some stored -200’s Delta Connection I headed out on my way back home stopping at Marana Regional Airport to catch the last few rays of sunlight with hopefully some of the Beech Starships still reported stored there (2009).  The airport has now a fence around the perimeter preventing access to the C-54’s and A-4 present, however there is a gate but because it was already late they might have closed up shop for the day. Nevertheless I was able to catch the Starships on film again.

                                    N30LH Beech Starship

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