Usually, when we visit the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, my camera is pointed in the opposite direction from the Center. I thought that I would take a panorama of this nice facility and put it up as a supplement to the shots we take in the opposite directions. Click the image below to see the panorama in the image viewer.
Last spring, we visited the Western Museum of Flight. Today, I was going through some of the photos from our visit and found this one of “Sierra Sue,” a 1953 demonstration aircraft.
Image: Sierra Sue (Click to enlarge)
Here’s what the Western Museum of Flight webpage says about this aircraft:
Built in 1953, the Sierra Sue was Northrop Company’s flying demonstrator for the Air Force’s AX close-support aircraft design competition in 1972. The AX Competition led to the manufacture of two prototypes, Northrop’s A-9A and Fairchild-Hiller’s A-10A. After an extensive flight test program, the Fairchild-Hiller design won the competition.
Designed and flown by Ron Beattie and Walt Fellers, the aircraft was manufactured by Acme’s (Sierradyne Inc.) Crawford and Keeney. It was used by Sierradyne in the ’60s to test and promote Northrop’s and Dr Werner Pfenninger’s boundary layer control concepts. The plane was never officially considered a Northrop aircraft.
Manufacturer Acme Aircraft Co ( Sierradyne Inc) Number Built 1 Wing Span 20 feet 2 inches Overall Length 18 feet Empty Weight 590 pounds Number of Seats 2 Power plant 85 hp Continental C-85 pusher
I got a little wanderlust when I saw this photo I took of the two of us on Saturday. We were just on Catalina Island last month and already we want to go back. The overnight windstorm blew most of the marine haze out of the area and left us with this clear view of the island. Click for bigger.
I can’t take credit for this photo of the Harbor in Avalon, Catalina Island. I captured the image from the Catalina Island Webcams page. This view is from the perspective of the Casino looking back into town. Be sure to click the Casino link for a photo of the Casino at night that I took during our visit.
UPDATE:
Apparently, this picture was NOT taken in Lafayette as indicated. In the middle of the picture you can find a small hand on the swing chain just behind my brother; that would be the hand of my sister, also enjoying the swings. I’m guessing that this was taken in Mar Vista, CA in the back yard of the parents’ home on Colonial Avenue. Thanks to Pam for the update.
My niece, Pam, posted this picture on her website and emailed it to me a week or so ago. I decided to put it on here and tell about what things I remember from those times and where these people are now. Click on the image for the big picture.
Forty-five years ago, my younger brother, Jim, took this in Lafayette, Indiana. In the picture on the swing with my older brother, Bill, is his daughter Pam. Behind them is Pam’s mother, Ruth, talking with (I presume) one of Bill’s NESEP buddies. NESEP is Naval Enlisted Scientific Education Program, an initiative to offer college educations to enlisted men who qualified and would commit to a Naval career. This was at the time that Bill was studying at Purdue University and would later graduate and be commissioned in the USN.
Just prior to this, Bill was an enlisted instructor at the US Naval Air Technical Training Center in Millington (near Memphis) Tennessee. I was there too, but as a student in the Center. I stayed with Bill, Ruth and Pam for a couple of months before returning to the barracks for the rest of my assignment. After Bill’s acceptance to the program, we went our separate ways – Bill went to college and I went to the US Naval Missile Center, Point Mugu, California, to become a real Naval Aviator and airborne crew member.
Forty-five years later . . .
Today, Pam is in Paris with her true love. Pam and has a son, Trevor, who was in Alaska the last I heard.
Bill passed on in 1997 from complications of brain cancer – an untimely death at under sixty years old – we scattered his ashes over the same place in the Pacific Ocean where Bill and I scattered our Dad’s ashes several years before. I can’t be sure of it, but I think the friend barely in the photo may have been one of the several NESEP guys that came to the house for Bill’s memorial.
Ruth lives in California in the Antelope Valley, close to Pam’s brother, Bill and his family.
Brother Jim, who took the photo, hasn’t been heard from for a couple of years according to my Mom, when I spoke with her a couple of weeks ago.
Me? I just filed my retirement paperwork and rollover options from an old employer and plan to do the same with my current one next year.
Tempus Fugit.
Last month at the annual Orchid Show and Sale held at the South Coast Botanic Garden, I took this wide-angle image by taking several overlapping photos and then using my photo stitch software to combine them into this view.
The colors and variety were very nice. Displays were arranged around the hall with individual winning entries on tables arranged as a six-spoke display. The big winners were closer to the center of the spokes with the grand prize in the middle.
Click the image for full-sized.
