#dc-9

Vandys F-4 Phantom VX-4 and F-14 Tomcat VX-9 alongside Playboy Enterprise's famous “Big Bunny” all-black DC-9 aircraft.

Obsessed with these DC-9 diagrams in this station number booklet. They're such silly creatures and I love them.

When working on aircraft mechanics have to use these "station numbers" in our logs to provide exact references to certain locations on that aircraft. They're typically expressed in "inches from the datum" which is an imaginary 0 point the engineers of the aircraft came up with that typically starts at the nose or firewall, or a few inches forward of the nose (I have a theory it's where the prototype's test pitot tube would have stuck out to) it varies from aircraft to aircraft. Datums also get kinda weird with ultralights/light-sports/taildraggers (the Ultra Pup I'm trying to fix up starts in the center of it's forward landing gear), but they're super important in calculating the weight and balance/Center of Gravity of aircraft.

Pacific Southwest Airlines PSA DC-9 postcard

Oh no! Movie star Albie Going’s husband was accidentally sucked into the jet engine! “One minute he was there and the next he was gone. It was like whoooosh aaah grind grind chunka chunka splooey.”