BirdDog's Story
I have been a aviation nut since I was a kid. Maybe I was influenced by the constant roar of F4 Phantoms flown by the "weekend warriors" out of Ellington Field that always seemed to be over the house growing up. Maybe it was my proximity to Johnson Space Center, but it was in my blood for sure. Being a math and science type of guy, I headed off to Texas A&M for my degree in aerospace engineering (Class of 1992...WHOOP). Yes folks, I am a rocket scientist.....at least by education. Jobs in that field can be fickle, and none could be found at graduation so I spent about 2 years in a small manufacturing company that makes springs and machined parts out of exotic materials for the oilfield industries. The next 5 years were spent as a space shuttle safety & mission assurance engineer specializing in on orbit operations and real-time flight support. I probably worked in the mission control center for almost every flight from 1995-2000. That's when I returned to that same small manufacturing company...hopefully to stay.
When I left for college I got an IBM clone with those infamous "dual floppies", an amber monochrome monitor, and a copy of Falcon. I flew those missions all from the keyboard while I should have been studying. Fast forward to about 1998 or so when I discovered Air Warrior (II, I believe). One session and I was hooked. I happened upon good 'ol Ken and experienced that whole fiasco. But, of course, the SkyKnights survived and improved. I finally had to bow out once the migration to AH came about due to insufficient computer resources (otherwise known as pc envy!). And here we are today...a fresh copy of AH2 on the hard drive and I'm still a crappy fighter dweeb (though still better in the little birds) that likes to blow my wad of E at the first chance I get. I never was good at B&Z....didn't have the patience....but I DO want to learn.
I'm looking forward to re-learning all the key commands and trying to program my X36 stick/throttle combo (after I get all the dust out of it).
Oh, and I have no interesting story regarding my callsign. I guess I just liked the sound of it from the old BAT21 movie. The mugshot was taken June '04 somewhere along the 'Road to Hana' on Maui. A good spot to jump from, too, after a night of getting repeatedly pinged and porked!
<S> Keith 'BirdDog' Thomas
