The Castle Air Museum in Atwater, Calif., east of San Jose, welcomed its newest addition, a retired Air Force One airplane that once flew Presidents Reagan and Clinton and other dignitaries over its decades of service. The Douglas VC-9 touched down on Oct. 16 in Atwater to a waiting crowd of nearly 300 people, reported the Merced Sun-Star. “This is a great day, not only for the air museum but also for Merced, Atwater, Merced County, and the state of California,” said Joe Pruzzo, the museum’s chief executive officer. With the airplane in hand, the museum now hopes to raise $10 million for construction of the Presidential Pavilion, a 100,000-square-foot building to house 24 of the museum’s vintage military aircraft, according to the newspaper.
Today’s armament maintainers are tasked with performing flightline (O-Level) maintenance with an assortment of legacy test sets that greatly limit the ability to quickly and efficiently verify armament system readiness, diagnose failures, and ultimately return the aircraft to full mission...