Edwards AFB. Thunderbirds. TOO COOL for words.

Edwards AFB Airshow!! Heritage Squadron Flyby!!

Custard, made from scratch, a few weeks back...

This one's thanks to Kerry! Custard made from scratch w/ Eggland's Best! 8-)

Kansas at the LA County Fair!

Girls rule the skies!

R. and I finally flew together! With me as PIC of necessity at my rental place, but she was awesome on Comms.
Avoided the coast after WX and Saturday's view indicated marine layer ready to come back inland in a breath.
So simply went to POC, but TOA-> POC (and back!) is a route with LOTS of VOR changes and of course SoCal freq changes. And 'twas a super busy day. ABSOLUTELY GREAT to have another pilot along! Haven't had this experience since riding "shotgun" myself for S. sometime in the spring; her Ms. EE has been down for avionics, etc. for a time.
We were some of the few women on the freqs, so not as awesome as that one day I had w/ my CFI A when she, me, the tower and SoCal were ALL girls, but still way cool.
Will do again soon!

EAA-esque Saturday!

Second month for my newish buddy R. and I to participate in maintenance day at the flying club we are hoping to join...she and I have moved up the list since last month, now #s 5 and 6!
Anyway, I got to do/did even more on the Skylane this time! Most interesting thing was checking the fluid in the hydraulic wells for the brakes on the pilot side -- very, very small plastic screw at the top of the cylinder that must be removed; Air Force guy and member D. showed me how to do; the 182 crew had made a teeny dowl (sp?) to use as a dip stick - it worked, and the fluid was fine!
Last time I was this EAA-esque (that is, do mechanical work under an A&Ps supervision) was crawling around in the PE/PW 182 with Don K., circa 2002!
Way cool!
I shall never be an engineer, but this taking apart and putting back accurately parts of an aircraft definitely makes me a better pilot!
I went home greasy, tired, and happy.
Blue Skies!!

Physics/Astro Webliography

In libraryland, B4 there were blogs there were "webliographies"! 8-)
Bibliographies on the web that is.
I used to do for a colloquium series at FNAL; now I'm doing at USC, w/ Prof./Blogger CVJ's blessing! It is here: http://isd.usc.edu/~sarat/PhysColloqBibliogs.html

Amazingly, greased landings and little rust!

Well, once again a month elapsed b4 I got aloft, sigh.
But yesterday rocked!

SO GREASED the landings at SMO and TOA! K was impressed and complimentary. Maybe some of my total best landings ever, truly - center aligned, 3-point, gentle, gentle. [His hip was bothering him, so as I told him I took that in part as a guide, using a commercial pilot approach, "injured" passenger, give 'em a smooth ride. He said great, thanks, but aim for all the time. Yup!]

I'm totally convinced the studying the previous and just prior Friday eve's, plus the bit of "closet flying" Sun. am helped clinch it.

Only one minorish faux pax (sp?) -- right around LAX, got the handoff to second controller in SoCal Departure in about 6 mins., previous controller gave heading of 080, so I stayed on that past the VOR. Next guy asked in a few minutes, snippily, what my heading was. Told him. Then, more snippily, "Weren't you cleared to SMO VOR and beyond?" Me, "Yes. Oh...my bad [actually said that on freq, oh well, think he knew meaning]." So apparently I shoulda been on the 125 radial, since that was the original, on the ground clearance; apparently the 080 heading was only to get me to the VOR faster.

So guy #2 turned me due south which sent us closer to shore for over LAX, so really no harm done, we were high enough, and just a bit inside "the corridor." I suppose that last point is justification, ah well. As I said, shoulda been on the 125R, but it wasn't quite clear. Need to talk to colleagues about just what clearances override what other clearances.

All the pre and post ATC guys were great, esp. enjoyed the guy who alerted us to "interesting traffice crossing overhead"....it was a Mustang warbird! Beautiful!