Yesterday afternoon a couple of interesting looking military style jet aircraft dropped in at Midland Airpark. One was solid dark blue color, and the other was two tone desert sand with a red star on the tail. And I'm sure I wasn't the only person on the freeway craning his neck for a better look.
The friendly folks at Basin Aviation were kind enough to relay their tail numbers: N139CK and N39ED. FAA records indicate that the planes are owned by Mach 1 Aviation, Inc, and Maya Properties LLC, respectively, of San Diego, CA.
Each plane was an Aero Vodochody L-39, and according to Wikipedia, that's a jet trainer made in Czechoslovakia. Many of them are now in private hands due to their relatively inexpensive resale value of somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 a piece.
In any event, they certainly made a dramatic entrance at a small airport in flyover country.
Interesting. My wife works at the Claydesta Building and her office faces Air Park. She said those two jets took off and buzzed the building close enough to almost tell the color of the pilots' eyes!
No idea why they were in town, huh?
Posted by: Eric | April 07, 2007 at 02:17 PM
Eric, given the unusual markings, that could have been a bit disturbing to the folks at Claydesta.
According to the specs, those planes have a range of 620 land miles, so I would have to speculate that they dropped in to gas up and rest a bit before proceeding toward one of the coasts.
Posted by: Geo | April 07, 2007 at 04:25 PM