Osprey

For those of you who may not know my work is located on Miramar Road. For those who have seen the movie "Top Gun", Miramar road is the road that runs in front of the Miramar Naval Air Station otherwise known as "Top Gun". For those of you who have not seen the movie "Top Gun", Top Gun is the name of the fighter pilot school where they take the best and brightest of all the Navy Fighter pilots and give them special training to make them even better. Well the "Top Gun" school is a thing of the past and the Miramar Naval Air Station has been taken over by the Marines but the base is still a thriving air station and one of the coolest things they have there is the new Osprey. I don't know if the Osprey should be described as an airplane or a helicopter because it can take off like a helicopter with it's props pointed up but then the props rotate forward and it flies like an airplane. I share all this with you because the other day an Osprey flew over my work and we all stood out back and watched it. It was pretty cool. Back in the Top Gun days I used to climb onto the roof and watch the F-14's practice their "touch and go's". That was pretty cool. The I-15 goes right past the end of the runways and every time I'd go past the base I would slow way down and let the jets fly right over the car. They had signs posted all along the highways forbidding you to stop the car but they couldn't stop me from driving slow. The jets were very close to the ground as they flew over and since they'd have four or five jets all doing "touch and go's" there was a plane about every minute.

In October they have the Miramar Air Show and the Blue Angels come every year. In fact last year the Canadian Snow Birds even came. The day or two before the air show they practice their routine and the jets fly very low over our laboratory. As always we'd climb on the roof and watch them. A couple of their routines would take the jets right over our lab. One time the plane was so low I could see the pilot in his cock pit. Very cool.

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"The piano scene and the final bar/jukebox scene were shot in a San Diego restaurant called Kansas City BBQ, at the corner of Kettner Blvd and W. Harbor Drive. The restaurant housed many props and memorabilia from the film, including the jukebox and Maverick's flight helmet sits behind the bar in a locked display case. However, on June 26, 2008 Kansas City BBQ suffered a grease fire that destroyed the establishment, including all of the Top Gun(1986) memorabilia on display.

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