August 26, 2019 · 21:48

EMHE Build – Day Three

The desert may be hotter than a freaking griddle during the day and freezing cold at night and be filled with dust & tumbleweeds & rattlesnakes & fire ants & lots of other things that suck. But it’s tough to beat their sunrises and sunsets.

I’ve been seeing way, WAY too many of the former recently

But this doesn’t suck.

It was tough finding a spot that didn’t have construction equipment or light towers or a crane in it.

As it got lighter the incredibly vivid colors finally faded. But not before another favorite dusk/dawn visitor swung by:

Click on the image to expand it to full size – I’m giving you the full resolution version. Right in the middle, right about in the middle of one of those small, thin, clouds, is a bright dot. That would be the ISS, traveling around at 25,000 mph and captured on a freakin’ iPhone! (For the moment I’ll ignore the “meh” responses by co-workers.)

Tomorrow we switch sleep cycles. I’ve been working the 05:00 to 13:00 shifts (which mean getting up at 03:00 and actually working until 15:00, 16:00, or later) but tomorrow I’m on the 18:00 to midnight shift. That means I’m desperately trying to stay up tonight until at least 23:00 so that my poor, beaten up body doesn’t revolt and wake me up in the middle of the night tonight and leave me completely high and dry tomorrow afternoon.

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August 25, 2019 · 20:58

EMHE Build – Day Two

Let’s start with the tiny little nugget of good to be found today:

It was quite lovely to see dawn approaching with a 3/4 moon up there. Not lovely enough to justify getting out of bed at 03:00, but that goes without saying.

It was already in the mid 80’s at that time of the morning, which was a foreshadowing of this:

(Image from WeatherUnderground)

One thing here is a lie – there is now way that was a 0|2 wind situation. Try 25 gusting to 40+.

So, after way, WAY more than eight hours of that for the second day in a row (five more to go!) my 60 minute ride home turned into a 95 minute ride home due to:

(Image from Google Maps)

The southern (left) side of that red section was where two of the three lanes were blocked with several dozen fire trucks fighting a brush fire.

Let’s do it again tomorrow!

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August 24, 2019 · 20:40

EMHE Build – Day One

Up at 3:00, onsite at 5:00, out in 102° heat for nine and a half hours, an hour-plus drive home, then a couple hours of dealing from home with other emergencies on the site. And tomorrow I get to do it again.

But the bus was there for the big kickoff…

Lest you believe that I’m a hard core, card carrying curmudgeon with no soul who’s incapable of finding any good in a tough situation (which BTW has a very high probability of being 100% correct) I would note that there are very early morning ISS passes this week. I was able to easily spot this morning’s pass in the dawn’s early light and showed a handful of co-workers and volunteers who had arrived early. And tomorrow I get to do THAT again as well.

These may be the first morning ISS passes I’ve ever seen!

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Filed under Homes4Families, Photography, Space

August 23, 2019 · 21:05

Sunset – August 23rd

Out of the frying pan (weeks of preparing for this reality TV shoot at our property in Palmdale, doing in three or four weeks what normally would have taken as much as a year)…

…and into the fire (the seven days of actually having them on site building two homes in less than seven days.)

I start with the 5AM shift for the first few days, tomorrow morning.

I have been happier…

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August 22, 2019 · 23:12

No Context For You – August 22nd

It’s one thing to have a picture on the Camera Roll of my phone that just looks like a button got pushed by accident – the photographic equivalent of  a butt dial.

It’s another thing to have the metadata say that it was taken at home at a time when I’m pretty sure everyone was asleep and the phone was sitting on my nightstand, minding its own business.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography

August 21, 2019 · 23:59

Wings Over Camarillo – Panorama Three

Once the airshow’s over things get back to normal. The airspace is released from its FAA waiver and regular flights resume. The warbirds are still lined up, but the crowds take off quickly to try to beat the traffic out. So it’s easy to get right up to the flight line and take a big, wide picture.

(Click on it, make it big, so you can see what I’m talking about.)

From left to right:

  • the Beech Staggerwing I’ve been gushing about
  • a tiny bit of the red nose of the CAF F-24
  • a tiny bit of the blue and yellow nose of one of our PT-19s
  • across the runway, our yellow SNJ
  • our blue F6F Bearcat
  • our blue F8F Hellcat
  • a P-51, checkered nose, not ours, not sure which one
  • a T-6, I believe it’s War Bird
  • the oddity of it all, a Cessna 172 that was taxiing to the left while I was scanning to the right (!!)
  • our P-51
  • our blue PBJ bomber
  • above, a helicopter giving rides now that the airspace is open
  • a green & yellow B-25 owned by the AAF
  • our Zero
  • the MIG-17 owned by one of our pilots
  • a lot of other warbirds off in the distance

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Filed under Airshows, CAF, Panorama, Photography

August 20, 2019 · 22:49

Wings Over Camarillo – Panorama Two

If you get there right after the gates open you can stake out your claim to a spot right up on the flight line.

Of course, what most people don’t realize is that some of those planes in front of you might have to get in back of you after flying some time during the day, and some of the planes in back of you might have to get out in front of you to go fly some time during the day. We work hard to set things up so that’s kept to a minimum, but when it happens, you’ve got to get out of the way.

But it’s a great set to have if you can hold onto it all day!

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August 19, 2019 · 22:31

Wings Over Camarillo – Panorama One

Yep, out of the frying pan… So few hours for sleep…

Think of good thoughts, happy memories. Like last Saturday, on the ramp before the crowds got too big…

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Filed under Airshows, CAF, Panorama, Photography

August 18, 2019 · 23:03

Wings Over Camarillo – Sunday

It was a really good airshow. No one got hurt. No metal got bent. The crowds were good and they went home happy.

I tried several times to do a FaceBook Live, but that pretty much was a bust. I got one video posted on a delayed basis on Saturday and a brief one live this morning, but the really great one from late this afternoon that the little indicator said was live apparently went straight into the Twilight Zone instead. (Standing about ten feet away from an F-18 as it does its engine start… REALLY FREAKIN’ LOUD!!) The good news is that I had my good video camera rolling at the same time, so we’ll see how that comes out.

Then, as everyone was packing up and bugging out and those of us hosting the show were cleaning up and wrapping up loose ends we got a cotton candy sunset.

And now, out of the frying fan, into the fire. Take care of yourselves this week, friends!

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August 17, 2019 · 23:23

Wings Over Camarillo – Saturday

Well, that was fun!

Nothing bad happening here, by the way.

In the many years I’ve been going to our local airshow we’ve never had any pyrotechnics. In an area where we have brush fires on a regular basis, things that go “BOOM!!” can freak out the locals.

They’ve been warning folks for weeks:

It will be interesting to hear how many calls there were to 9-1-1 anyway.

But it was a fun show. And I like the booms.

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