Category Archives: Flying

Monday I flew in “Fifi” from Camarillo to Palm Springs and shared pictures from the loading, takeoff, and flight over Simi Valley. Yesterday I shared pictures from our trip over the Los Angeles basin.

Getting to the far east end of the Los Angeles megalopolis we flew south of one of the more odd airports in the area (at least in my somewhat limited experience). The San Bernardino International Airport (SBD) is the former site of Norton Air Force Base, which was decommissioned in the 1990’s.

The plan was (and still is, I guess) to make it a major alternative to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) since LAX is massively overcrowded, at and above capacity, and has very little ability to increase capacity. There are other alternatives for commercial air travel into and out of the Los Angeles area – Burbank, Orange County, Long Beach, and Ontario all have significant commercial services. But they’ve all got their own limitations on growth, so for at least thirty years the politicians have been looking for someplace to have a second, huge, major airport.

There have been plans off and on to put one up in the Lancaster/Palmdale area of the Antelope Valley, and SBD is another attempt to do the same. There is always talk of high-speed rail links to the new proposed site, but none of those plans have ever gotten off the drawing board either. Hell, they can’t even get light rail or the subway to get to LAX! (But that’s a different rant for a different day.) I heard the other day that the biggest growth industry in SoCal was designing NFL stadiums that would never get built. Designing secondary major airports that will never be built must be a close second to that.

Anyway, when I was doing my flight training we flew out to Redlands Airport (REI) one day (just off to the right in this picture). At the time, SBD didn’t have a control tower and anyone landing or taking off had to use the standard procedures for an uncontrolled airfield. The main use of SBD was (and still is) for cargo aircraft. I was warned to watch out for converted DC-10’s and 747’s barreling in and out of there using only VFR procedures, which I still consider to be astonishing. Big planes like that need to be watched over by ATC!

Then we had company ourselves, a hundred yards or so off the port wing. Not a rogue cargo jet, but a friendly SNJ-5. We were under surveillance, but it had been pre-arranged so that someone could get some high-quality air-to-air photography done. You can see the photographer sitting in the back seat with the canopy cracked open, his camera trained on us.

We did a couple of big, wide 360° turns out over the Fontana and Colton areas while the SNJ-5 dipped and dove around us to get the pictures they needed. Here we’re just coming up over the Rialto/Miro Airport (L67) at the lower right, before breaking off and heading over the mountains.

Going through Banning Pass, the San Bernardino Mountains to the north were still showing snow up around Big Bear and the ski resorts there. It may be Southern California, but with many of the peaks up over 10,000′ we have snow and skiing to go along with our sun and surfing. Also, if you notice the land’s a bit “crinkled” here, blame San Andreas. It’s his fault running parallel to our path, left to right through the pass at the bottom of those foothills. One of these days, the bottom half of this picture is going to be about ten feet closer to San Francisco than the top half and there might be just a few unpleasant side effects.

Running though the Banning Pass pretty regularly are winds, and lots of them. Our ride had been pretty smooth up to this point, but once in the pass we started bouncing around and doing some “interesting” slips and skids occasionally. Coming through the other side, miles after miles of power generating windmills can be seen.

A number of my fellow passengers were of the opinion that the windmills were ugly as sin and ruining the landscape. I’ve always thought that they were beautiful and graceful, their “lazy” spinning a calming thing to watch.

Of course, in addition to the windmills, there is a LOT of empty out in the desert with a LOT of sun, so solar power farms are springing up everywhere. With the combination of solar on the ground and windmills above, this overstocked pile of empty is producing a bigger and bigger percentage of our energy supply every year, which is a good thing.

When we got to Palm Springs we did one “show” pass over the runway before pulling into the pattern and landing. I was really impressed with how “Fifi” handles at low speed and low altitudes in banking around the pattern. We’ll often fly like that in a commercial jet, but somehow it’s different with those four huge 18-cylinder radials roaring out there on the wing of a seventy-year-old bomber.

Finally we were on the ground in Palm Springs, with Mt. San Jacinto towering to the south. It was warm in Palm Springs, 92°F, but still nothing like the 107°F daily average and 123°F record high temperatures they have in July and August.

Yeah, grinning like an idiot again. I have to give so many thanks to the Commemorative Air Force B29 B24 Squadron and the crew of “Fifi” for the opportunity to join them on this flight. Tom Travis and Joe Broker, our pilot and co-pilot, and Don Thurston, our Flight Engineer, gave us the ride of our lives up in the cockpit seats. Gene O’Neal from our SoCal Wing of the CAF, who also serves as a crew member on “Fifi,” is on my Christmas card list forever for helping to get this set up. It was an adventure I’ll never forget.

Of course, after an hour’s ride in a B-29 to get from Camarillo to Palm Springs, it’s a three-hour-plus ride on the SoCal freeways to get from Palm Springs to Camarillo. (I’m not complaining, mind you — I’ve seen it take five-hours-plus.) My thanks as well to Bill O’Neill and his son for ferrying us all back home. It was quieter than in “Fifi” (oh, and thanks to John Knopp for having the sense to bring extra earplugs for the terminally clueless like myself who didn’t think of it) but the conversations were easier to hear.

It was really a great day’s adventure.

Yesterday I got to fly in “Fifi” from Camarillo to Palm Springs. (If you don’t know what “Fifi” is – welcome to “We Love The Stars Too Fondly”! Just scan back over the last dozen or so posts, ogle the pictures, then come back. We’ll wait…) We’ve loaded, seen “Fifi”s innards for the first time, and taken off to head east out over Simi Valley.

Looking toward the south out the (still open!) flight engineer’s window you can see my neighborhood. I’m still surprised that we weren’t exposed to a 200 knot hurricane from the open window, but I guess that’s aerodynamics for you! (Or black magic, I could go either way on this one.)

For reference, we’re looking south from a spot over the 118 Freeway, just east of the Santa Suzanna Pass. The big white group of buildings just barely seen above the bottom of the window sill is Fallbrook Mall, the white horizontal line is Ventura Boulevard, and you can see the mini-skyscrapers of Warner Center just to the right of the left window edge.

Dead center out the nose is Van Nuys Airport, the place where I first started to fly and the busiest general aviation airport in the world. By the way, if you missed “Fifi” in Camarillo and you can’t see her this week in Palm Springs, she’ll be at Van Nuys Airport for a week starting next Monday.

Also, I’ve recommended it before, but I’ll recommend again the short documentary “One-Six Right.” It’s a great short film about general aviation, beautifully filmed, and it focuses on the history of VNY and the love of flying shown by those who fly there. A beautiful film.

It might be tough to see due to the contrast, but if you lighten up the image you can look over pilot Tom Travis’s shoulder to see that (from top left) we’re at 220 knots, in a very shallow right bank, at 5,500 feet, (second row) on a heading of 95°, straight and level but a little nose-up, and our manifold pressures on engines Two and Four are at 30 inches.

Those last two gauges aren’t on a Cessna 172, mainly because we don’t have an engine Two, Three, or Four…

Crossing over Van Nuys Airport, looking out to the south, the 405 Freeway crosses Ventura Boulevard and goes up over the Sepulveda Pass into Santa Monica. I worked for a whole lot of years in a couple of those office buildings and did a lot of marathon training at lunch time in those side streets.

Looking out the left side past the Number Four engine, you can see Whiteman Airport, my “home” airport when I’m flying and current. Its single runway is just to the right of the propeller blade. Below that you see the gravel quarry that would be a very bad place to land if you lost an engine on takeoff on Runway 12, the spreading ponds which would be a much better choice in an emergency, and the “Four Stacks”, the red and white striped power station exhaust towers that mark the airspace boundery between Whiteman’s airspace and Burbank’s. Don’t cross without talking to Burbank Tower or the FAA will be asking some pointed questions!

Flying over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, you can see the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus in the hills just to the east of the 210 Freeway.

Up above the Los Angeles Basin on Mount Wilson are a ton of television and radio antennas, as well as the Mount Wilson Observatory and the 100″ Hooker telescope.

Don Thurston was our Flight Engineer, in charge of all of the engines and mechanical systems on the plane. Out of that (still open!) window is the 57 Freeway near Raging Waters.

The Flight Engineer station is a dazzling array of dials, levers, and switches. As someone who got excited at a very early age by flashing lights, flipping switches, and pushing buttons to see what would happen (“Don’t push that big, red button!!”) this was a pretty cool spot. I love to fly, but on “Fifi”, the pilots are only allowed to steer and fly, the real work is done by the Flight Engineer. At least, that’s what Don told us before the pilots got onboard.

Tomorrow, we get company and make it to Palm Springs.

Yesterday I think I said that you would be rid of my constant goings on about “Fifi,” the world’s only flying B-29.

I lied. It’s going to take at least two more days beyond today.

Today I got to actually fly in “Fifi” myself and it’s going to take at least three days to share those pictures. It was WONDERFUL! (And I’m even more exhausted tonight than I was last night, hard as that might be to believe, so I’ll be brief.)

How can you not take a grinning-like-an-idiot selfie on a morning when you get to fly in “Fifi,” the world’s only flying B-29?

I and four other CAF staff and guests got to sit up in the cockpit area, where the best views are. You get there by climbing about eight or ten feet up on that ladder through this hole, and getting your feet up there without falling back down on your ass. Not quite as easy as it sounds, especially with a backpack full of cameras and an ass, legs, and back that don’t do the things they used to do.

Another look at the front of the cockpit, the access route up to the cockpit, and the main landing gear.

One person gets to sit in the bombardier’s seat, way up front where you can see everything. The pilot and co-pilot sit behind the bombardier.

Behind the pilots are the flight engineer, who leans out an open window as needed, and the forward gunner (out of sight at the left). While it looks like there are provisions for putting a window in next to the flight engineer if needed, at 75°F it wasn’t needed. Surprisingly, it’s not that windy at all inside the cockpit with the window open through all phases of flight.

From the cockpit, back over the bomb bay, is a tunnel just big enough to crawl through. In theory. I didn’t try it. Between the tunnel on the back wall and the flight engineer/gunner positions are where the radio operator and navigator’s sat. This is the section I was in.

There’s a small window on the right hand site at the navigator’s table. We warmed up all four engines (geez Louise, OMG it’s loud in there when they’re all running!) to get them warmed up. Then they got shut down, the plane is towed out onto the taxiway, and the crew buttons her up. The two inboard engines start and “Fifi” taxis down to taxiway Bravo (shown here0, one of the only places out on the field that’s big enough to allow the pre-flight warmup. The two outboard engines are fired up, all four engines are tested at flight speed, then we’re ready to go.

Takeoff is every bit as loud and exciting as you would expect. Here we’ve gone out on Runway 26 at Camarillo and turned right to head east toward Palm Springs.

Over Simi Valley, looking out through the bombardier’s position in the nose, we flew over the Reagan Library (the white boxy building in all of that green, just to the right of the center column.

And yes, the nose does look like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, but George Lucas didn’t get ripped off by the guys who rebuilt the bomber. It’s actually the other way around. (C’mon folks, google it! B-29 built in mid-1940’s, George Lucas created Millenium Falcon in 1986. Who came first?)

Tomorrow – Out Over Los Angeles

After weeks of work, the new engine got hung in our P-51 Mustang, and in just a week it was ready to start up. (It started on the first try – we’ve got some great folks working on our planes.) The last week has been spent with more testing of the engine on the ground, waiting for weather, and doing some minor tweaking. Yesterday it was time for the first test flight on the new engine.

Our Executive Officer, former Wing Leader, recent inductee into the CAF Hall Of Fame, and generally great guy Steve Barber got to take the first flight. Here he’s going over some last minute details with P-51 Crew Chief Trace Eubanks (standing).

Thumbs up, ready to start. There was a decent crowd on the ramp to see “Fifi” with most of them coming over to see “Man O’ War” start up. We got them to stand back, not stand behind the plane (the prop wash will rock your world), and put in some hearing protection if you’ve got it.

That is a sweet, sweet sound. Nothing like a P-51 starting up!!

Running smooth, pull the chocks and taxi her out.

The tower’s given the clearance (we’re listening in to the tower of course) and here she comes, airborne again for the first time with her new engine.

Nice and easy for this first flight, nothing fancy.

Climb above the Camarillo Airport traffic pattern and do a couple of laps overhead. Everything’s smooth as butter, but the airport’s still right there nearby, just in case.

After about ten minutes, descend into the pattern and take one high speed run down the runway with a hard break to the right. “Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.” (Actually, the pattern was empty and it was all kosher and routine, but the quote is too good to pass up.)

Follow with an aggressive pull up to the downwind leg of the pattern, preparing for landing.

Way down at the far end of the airport on the base leg, just disappearing behind “Fifi”‘s tail, gear coming down, about to turn base for a perfect landing to end a perfect test flight.

Testing showed the engine to be working flawlessly. A few tweaks to other systems and today’s test flight was forty-five minutes, also successful. A couple more hours of test flights and double checks of the engine’s performance (draining the oil, checking the filters, making sure nothing is grinding) and she’ll be certified to get back on the tour.