T is for TriStar
"So…what ya listening to?" Drip asked while sitting directly behind her and Patch nearly spat out her coffee across her display in surprise.
"What?" Patch managed to stammer out the moment she managed to get her breath back.
"This." Drip pulled up and tapped the radio before looking her straight in the eyes. "It sounded like whatever it was particularly interesting."
"I am listening to the Stargazer collecting atmospheric samples. They passed over us not too long ago and are heading towards the Pacific Ocean, measuring dust coming off of the Gobi Desert in inner Mongolia."
"The Stargazer?" Drip asked with genuine interest.
"The Stargazer." Patch replied, not sure how to describe the plane; they were odd birds, to be sure; then she instantly made a connection. "Do you remember Thrust and Orbit?"
"Blade's friends?"
"Yep."
"How could I forget them." Drip replied with a full toothy grin remembering his last encounter.
"Well, the Stargazer is a modified TriStar, just like Thrust."
"Oh…" Drip closed his eyes and cocked his canopy towards the radio speaker, clearly trying to visualize the plane speaking on the other side of the radio. Patch joined the little smokejumper in his reverie, listening to aircraft high above them talk through the complex scientific mission they were working on…right up until Dynamite practically stormed her way up to the top of the lookout tower.
"Drip, what in slag is taking you so long?"
"I…" Drip refused to look the jumper captain in the eyes. Patch just looked at the ATV and shrugged.
Dynamite looked at the two of them and then at the radio. She quickly put two and two together and let out an exaggerated sigh. "Drip, you were supposed to go get Patch for dinner, not get distracted and require fetching yourself. But now that I am up here, I might as well drag both of your afts down to the main hangar."
Both Patch's and Drip's tanks grumbled at the mention of dinner, causing both vehicles to laugh and neither to protest as they followed Dynamite down the tower and across the tarmac towards chow.
Lockheed L-1011 TriStar: The Lockheed TriStar, otherwise known as one of AmbulanceRobot's favorite aircraft, is a medium-range wide-body trijet. 250 of these aircraft were built between 1968 and 1984. While the vast majority of these aircraft were only used as commercial airliners, nine of these aircraft were converted into Royal Air Force military strategic tankers, and one converted into a Stargazer scientific planform capable of launching Pegasus rockets. Currently, only the Stargazer is capable of flight. There are a handful of TriStars on display around the world, but oddly enough, Thailand is one of the best places to spot one of them.