Just saw

[ThunderBritches]

a T38 with the Thunderbird Colors fly over my house in the west part of the county (Bexar) west of San Antonio. By the time I got to a scanner it was too late to get the callsign at Kelly. Did anyone hear a new or different callsign today about 3 in the afternoon? I wonder if they move the old birds around for some reason? Maybe taking it somewhere to make a display out of it? Made me wonder.

Rich

 

[texasemt13]

a T38 with the Thunderbird Colors fly over my house in the west part of the county (Bexar) west of San Antonio. By the time I got to a scanner it was too late to get the callsign at Kelly. Did anyone hear a new or different callsign today about 3 in the afternoon? I wonder if they move the old birds around for some reason? Maybe taking it somewhere to make a display out of it? Made me wonder.

Rich

Weird. I also caught a weird glimpse of a white F-18 leaving SAT today. Wondered who it belonged to.

 

[DMBFireman]

a T38 with the Thunderbird Colors fly over my house in the west part of the county (Bexar) west of San Antonio. By the time I got to a scanner it was too late to get the callsign at Kelly. Did anyone hear a new or different callsign today about 3 in the afternoon? I wonder if they move the old birds around for some reason? Maybe taking it somewhere to make a display out of it? Made me wonder.

Rich

Ross Perot Jr. has a T-38 that is painted in the Thunderbirds colors. The callsign is "Spirit" and I'm sure he was probably joyriding down in San Antonio. The aircraft is based at KAFW (Ft. Worth Alliance).

Brandon

 

[ThunderBritches]

Did not know that, thanks!

 

[texasemt13]

I have seen this T-38 three times in the past week leaving SAT now. Evidently, according to this article, H. Ross Perot Jr. had some trouble "acquiring" this aircraft, and it is probably owned by the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field. As you can see comparing the 2nd picture of "Perot's Thunderbird" to the 3rd picture of an actual Thunderbird, the underbelly is different, with minor differences visible on the sides.

 

[texasemt13]

I found it used to belong to NASA (as N5784NA) and was transferred to N38MX (which is probably H. Ross Perot Jr.'s registration until invalidated) and now sports N385AF as seen here.

The old N38MX actually might even belong to the second T38 that Perot owned and scrapped since it's last flight was to Tucson for scrapping (Davis-Monthan AFB is in Tucson, the Air Force boneyard).

 

[pr57001]

I believe this T38 is under lease by a San Antonio company using it for product development.