NPR – Elisa Nadworny
“Visiting a museum full of airplanes and rocket ships is a pretty awesome field trip. Now imagine camping out for a whole night in Smithsonian’s huge hangar outside Washington D.C. You’re there with a few other lucky kids, some grownups, and aviation treasures like the space shuttle Discovery. Sean Mclaughlin, 10, is one of those kids. He’s picking out his pilot code name — using the aviation alphabet: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot. He reads each word aloud, sitting just to the side of a F8U Crusader — the first carrier-based jet fighter to exceed 1,000 miles per hour.”(more)