About
Hello, I am KR Machado. I am a former USAF pilot with 13 years of experience and nearly 4000 hours of flying time. I write family friendly military fiction that brings real world experience to your finger tips. After my service in the air force, I began a career in logistics, and currently work as a logistics project manager for a large multi-national corporation. I reside in South Carolina with my wife of 41 years. I have 4 amazing daughters and 2 equally amazing grandsons.
Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico 2017
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Short Bio
I grew up in Southern California. Born in Long Beach, we lived in an around Orange County until 5th grade, when we moved back to Long Beach.
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I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old sitting on a neighbor’s front lawn in Cypress, CA. We lived very close to the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station. One summer day I heard the sound of jet planes. I didn’t know them at the time but the Navy’s Blue Angels aerial demonstration team was performing that day. You could occasionally catch a glimpse of them when they got high enough. They were flying cool looking jets painted blue and gold.
Then they began their bomb burst maneuver where the four of them in close formation go straight up deploying smoke all the way, then they peel off in the 4 cardinal directions and the solo jet flies right up the middle doing a series of rolls.
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I was in awe and remember thinking that looks like fun. From then on, I was hooked on airplanes. Over the years I must’ve built a hundred models of every airplane I could get my hands on. I drew pictures of them and was just enamored with them.
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That interest in airplanes led me to apply to the Air Force Academy and subsequently to USAF pilot training. I was right – it was fun! I was fortunate enough to fly a variety or aircraft including my last assignment in the A-10 Warthog – which was the most fun of all the ones I flew. I like to say that I flew the Hog when it wasn’t popular. The A-10 was kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of the Air Force. It was slow and ugly. Everybody liked the F-15’s and F-16’s. they were the glamor jets. It wasn’t until the first Gulf War that the A-10 finally got its due. (For a good read on the A-10, check out “Warthog” by William L. Smallwood.)