The Miramar Airshow

My face hurts. It is quite sunburned because I have been outside in the bright sun all day long. Today we went to the Miramar Airshow. It is held at the Miramar Marine Corp Air Station which is only five miles south of our house. Lisa's Dad has been threatening for years that he's going to come down sometime for the Miramar Air Show and this year he actually followed through on his threat. It is great to have him and I have been looking forward to seeing the show since he announced his intentions. We did come years ago when the kids were little but it's been way too long. The Miramar Marine Corp Air Station used to be called the Miramar Naval Air Station before the Marines took over the place and it was the home of the Top Gun Training school. Top Gun is where the movie "Top Gun" was filmed which was based on this school. The school really existed. In any case, the air show was great. So much so that I took way too many pictures and while I thinned them down a lot I'm afraid I'm testing the limits on how many pictures "Blogger" will let you post. If you don't care to read about all the pictures then just browse through the pictures and enjoy. It was a great day even though I now have a three day blush. I really hate putting on sunscreen so I purposely wore long pants and a long sleeve shirt and a hat so I wouldn't have to. The only problem is that I didn't wear a hat with a brim so my ears and cheeks are burned. Oh well, you don't have many nerve cells in your face so it doesn't really hurt that very much.


We arrived around 8:30 and by the time we got to the grandstands this guy was flying. I think it may be a mustang. In any case, it is a cool looking plane.

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I loved this jet powered truck. He puttered up and down the runway a few times making lots of fire and smoke and about the time I decided that it was all a bit stupid he lit up his engines and took off down the runway. It accelerated very fast. I was very impressed

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This hang glider sort of appeared out of nowhere. Sarah and I finally figured out that he was towed up by a rope. It was pretty cool to watch but when he landed they announced that the guy flying the hang glider is a paraplegic. I decided right then that if I ever lost the use of my legs I'm getting a motorized hang glider and flying all over the city. You do need your arms so if we're going to get Evan a motorized hang glider it's going to need a joy stick. I'll work on that one.

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I'm not sure but I think this might be another mustang.

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This glider was towed up by another plane. Gliders are so graceful to watch. It really does bring a sort of peace to you.

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This is the first time ever that the Canadian Snow Birds have come to the Miramar Air Show. The guys in black are the mechanics for the planes and the guys in red are the pilots.

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First of all the mechanics walked out in front of their parked planes. When they reached a plane the mechanic for that plane stopped in front of his plane. The pilots then did the same thing.

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The pilot and the mechanic then saluted each other.

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And then they shook hands.
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They checked out the plane together
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And then the mechanic stood by while the pilot made himself comfortable in the plane.

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The mechanic put on his ear muffs.

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Marched out to the front of the plane.
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And then one by one the planes all pulled out and left.
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When the mechanics plane left he turned to his left and watched it leave.

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The planes formed up on the runway.
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And flew off into the sunset.
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The Snow Birds are known for how tight their formations are.

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One of the freakiest things that they do is one plane fly's from the right and another from the left and they fly right towards each other. It looks like they barely miss when they meet in the middle but I'm sure they leave themselves a safe distance even if it looks like mere inches.

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They made several very beautiful formations.
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Another one.

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These planes are so close together than when I took the picture I thought it was only one plane. It is actually three very closely stacked up on each other.

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Look how close they are.
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And then they landed and it was over. Near the end of their show they stopped the formations and one of the pilots landed his plane. We were wondering what was up when they announced that the formation leader hit a bird with his plane. Grandpa talked to them after the show and learned that the bird hit just inches from the intake of the engine. If it had gone into the engine it would likely have been the end of the engine.

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At noon a couple of parachutes jumped from a plane. The first one carried the Canadian Flag to honor the Snow Birds.

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Thje second guy had a US flag. We stood for both flags.

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They demonstrated in flight re-fueling techniques for the F-18 hornets.

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The marines demonstrated how they might perform a ground attack.

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Once they're on the ground they blow up their targets
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I love the F-18. It is a beautiful (and powerful) plane.
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And it carries a lot of very destructive weapons.
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Of course the Marines have to show off some of their heavy artillery
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These guys are not military, I think they're a private group.
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The Hercules is Grampa's favorite plane. He was a mechanic for one for years. He can tell you where every one of them (by serial number) is. I guess one of them (or whats left of it) is in some jungle in South America.

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Nana's favorite jet (and perhaps mine) is the Harrier made by the Brits. Here it is coming to a stop right in front of us.

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And then he turned and looked at us.
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After briefly landing he nearly "leaped" off the ground and took off in a real hurry. This plane is VERY loud. Every body were plugging their ears. I loved the sound of the power so much that I wanted to thrill in every decibel. I think I'm paying for it today with the ringing in my ears.

--------------------------------Fat Albert (another of Grandpa's Hurc's) is a support ship for the Blue Angels.

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They say the Canadian Snow Birds are known for their tight formations but the Blue Angles seem to be in a pretty tight formation as well.

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I love the F-18. It is fast (nearly twice the speed of sound), and very powerful.

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The Snow Birds do have more planes in their formations. The Snow Birds have up to nine planes but the Angels only have six.

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Top view.
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Side View
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Here they are once again trying to make you think they're going to hit each other.

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Don't they look like they're nearly sitting on top of each other?

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It looks awfully close to me.
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The picture doesn't do it justice but they looked very cool with the setting sun reflecting off of them.

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Cool
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Oracle had a very agile little stunt plane there.

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The F-18's in the rising moon.
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This is a view of the back of the bleachers. We sat on the very back row right above these porta potties. Sarah of course is on her phone the entire day texting everybody she knows. I forbid her from texting during the Angles and Snowbirds but there was enough down time in between that it didn't make sense for her to just sit and wait. At one time she dropped her phone (she always drops her phone) and barely stopped it from falling down below the stadium. I warned her then that if she dropped her phone it would be replaced with the cheapest thing I could find. Right now she has a Palm Treo. Well guess what? That's right towards the end of the show her treo took this twenty foot drop to the concrete below. With horror on her face she ran down the bleachers to recover the parts. Amazingly enough, she found all of the separate pieces and the screen was uncracked and the phone fully functional. She stuffed the phone in my camera case and it took nearly an hour before she succumbed to the temptation to pull it out and continue texting.

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Here is the Hurc with eight rockets assisting a very quick take off. Or as Grandpa would say, eight "bottles". Grandpa has taken off with two "bottles".

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This is our paraplegic hang glider at night trailing some sparklers.

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You can't see the F-18 but if you notice the diamond shapes in his after burners that is what happens in a gas flow that is super sonic. I work with plasma guns that shoot plasma at super sonic speeds. There is actually a brand name that calls their guns "diamond guns" for that very reason.

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The show ended with another "bombing" run but at night it has a special appeal.

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You can actually feel the heat wave and feel the shock wave when it hits you. It is also a good lesson in physics because you see the explosion and feel the heat a good two seconds before you feel and hear the shock wave. So if the delay is two seconds who can tell me how far away the explosion was?

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The latest thinking is that black holes can't exist. It has been shown that as the gravity gets very large in a "would be" black hole, a quantum force called vacuum polarization grows large enough to prevent the star from collapsing below the event horizon. They are now calling these things "black stars".

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DOE Thermoelectric Conference

Right now I'm in the middle of a thermoelectric conference that is being held here in San Diego. It is always fun to travel to another city (or country) to attend these conferences but you can't beat just staying right here at home. The conference is being held at the Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island and that is one fancy place. The conference is sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and is focusing heavily on putting thermoelectrics on cars to recover energy from their exhaust. Some of the companies that are here that you might know are, General Motors, Ford, JPL, BASF, Bosch, Caterpillar, Kleiner Perkins, UCSD, National Science Foundation, MIT, BMW, Georgetown University, Office of Naval Research, Argonne National Laboratory, Cal Tech, Ohio State University, Boeing, Oak Ridge National Lab, Samsung, Clarkson, DARPA, Hi-Z (of course), Brookhaven, Ford, Corning, US Army Laboratories, Clemson, General Dynamics, BAE, Sandia, Lockheed Martin and a whole lot of other companies and Universities that you probably don't care about. We have worked closely with many of these companies and most of them when they give their little talks mention that they got their modules from us. We're probably the most commonly mentioned company at the conference. I also think that we are way ahead of all of them in our research. I suppose much of what is talked about during the conference is not particularly new but since I've been out of the thermoelectric world for more than ten years it is all facinating to me. I have a lot of catching up to do and I'm glued to every presentation and while there is a lot of new stuff going on it is surprising how some things never change. A lot of the people I used to work with are starting to look very old. After the session today there was a little gathering in the hotel room of the guy from DOE. I was talking to him and I mentioned how Thomas Edison himself wired the electric lights for the hotel. He told me that he could "one up" that one. He told me that Marylin Monroe has stayed in his room and she has even slept in his bed. He said that he had the right bed, he was just forty years too late. The guy had what was probably the best room in the hotel. It was on a corner and his balcony went around two sides of the building. The conference was yesterday and today and tomorrow is the last day. It makes for some very long days but it is great.

--------------------trivia--------------------

If you "sleep" with a person, on the average you are exposing yourself to the sexually transmitted diseases of about 2.8 million people.

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Our New House

With our new baby life was good and we loved living in San Diego. While money was tight we got by and we always had what we needed. After our first year in our second rented house we decided to see if we could afford to buy a house. As it turned out the market was definitely a buyers market and if we didn’t get too greedy we figured we probably could buy one. In 1994 Lisa’s Granny passed away and left her a chunk of money that would go a long way toward a down payment. One day when we were out with our real estate agent looking at houses Lisa saw a house for sale that she really wanted to look at. I rolled my eyes and asked her why she wanted to look at houses that she knew we couldn’t afford to buy? She simply responded with, “What does it hurt to look? I want to see it.” In my head I’m saying, “because it will get your hopes up” but I learned long ago you can’t argue with her when she gets like that so off we went.

We both fell in love with the house. We had decided on some "must haves" for the house we were to buy. Two of them were, it must have a three car garage and it must be in a cul-de-sac. This house was on a fairly busy street and it only had a two car garage. It was, however, on a beautiful canyon and had a beautiful back yard that opened into the canyon. We decided since the kids were older we could do without the cul-de-sac and we would make do with a two car garage. Three car garages are California's answer to having no basement. All the junk that would normally go in a basement goes into the third car garage.

So as I'm sitting there falling in love with a house I can't afford Lisa wanders over to the kitchen counter and picks up some papers that are sitting there. "What does it mean to have an assumable mortgage?" she asked. As it turned out all the seller was asking was that we pay them enough so they could recoup some of the money they'd put into the house and we take over the payments. The beauty of that was that the mortgage was from the early 90's when the interest rates were the lowest they've been in decades. Lisa's inheritance was enough to make the seller happy and we were the proud owners of a new house. We made out nicely by purchasing a house at the bottom of the market and assuming a mortgage from when the interest rates were at the bottom. We ended up with a much nicer house than we could have otherwise afforded. What a wonderful deal. Thank you Granny.

Penasquitos Third Ward and Good Friends

Just as we had done in Rosemary when we first moved there, we decided that the best way to get settled into our new home would be to go out and meet everyone. That is what we did. Pretty much every Sunday for the longest time we would pile the family into a car and go and visit people. It is a good way to get to know everyone. They also had friendship dinners in our ward during that time and that was helpful as well. Couples were all assigned a family to go and visit and four or five couples would meet at someones house and eat a meal and visit and play games. We have made some life long friends in this ward and as much as I would love to name some of them I know I will forget to mention someone and then I would feel terrible. While I have met many people who I feel very close to there is one person that I will mention who I believe understands me better than anyone else. That is Craig McPhie. Besides, he told me once that he was going to leave his six inch mirror to me in his will.

Besides good friends I have had a few memorable callings in the church over the years as well. Some of these are when I worked with Craig McPhie in scouts just before he was called to be Bishop, I worked with Chuck Cotter in the Stake Mission Presidency, I worked with Rex Bosen in the Elders Quorum Presidency, with Ken Stinchfield in the High Priests Group Leadership and then with Marlin Griffin in the another High Priest Group Leadership. I have also been a "special friend" with a young autistic boy in the primary. I also taught the eleven year old boys in primary. I then worked with Curtis McConnel for more than five years in Scouts and even though Curtis has been released I am still enjoying the calling working with Rick Pettit. I hope I can stay here for another five years. I have loved all of those callings and today one of my highlights every week in when I work the Thursday PM shift at the temple.

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Studies have shown that the most important single thing that strengthens a marriage is good cooking.

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The Bachelor

Today has been an interesting day. I got almost nothing done that I wanted to get done but I feel as if I've accomplished a whole lot of things that I hadn't planned on doing. Once again I am home alone and I'm thinking this is going to become much more common. I've always said that once the kids hit their junior year in High School they are pretty much gone since you see them so little. Also, with so many kids now grown, married and out on their own my wife seems to find more and more opportunities to go and visit/help them out. Yesterday she headed up to Malibu to "help" Serene and Brandon out with their new baby. While I know there is much good she can do to help Serene get a little more sleep and Brandon get some more study time I know that she was just dying to see that baby again. They grow so quickly when they are new born and by the time I get to see her at Sydney's birthday party she will already have lost that "new born" look. I must admit I'm quite jealous. So is just Sarah and I but Sarah was at a beach party last night and this afternoon she headed out with another friend at 3:00 so it has still been mostly just me and this big old house. That is OK though, I have a pot roast in the crock pot for my Sunday dinner tomorrow, I ground my own flour and baked a loaf of whole wheat bread and I made myself some low carb taco's last night (I used lettuce leaves for my tortilla) and mowed the lawns getting the yard ready for Grandpa Shaw who arrives this week. We are all going to the Miramar Air Show next Saturday. I'm really looking forward to that.

So Brandon issued me a challenge. He figures his intense study schedule and lack of exercise has made him soft. To motivate himself he is publicly posting pictures of his semi-naked body on a private blog with weekly updates about his weight etc. Since I beat him two years ago in our weight loss contest I too have gradually reaccumulated my lost body mass and so we are now in another show down to see if we can be in shape for Christmas. I have accepted his challenge but due to my shy nature and because I don't want to horrify anyone who may read this unawares I will be posting my updates with my semi-naked photo's on a private blog. If no one reads the postings there will not be much motivation for me to lose weight so I will be inviting my children to view the blog but I won't subject the rest of you to the horror. If anyone really feels the need to share in my humiliation just let me know and I will invite you to my blog but please don't feel oblidged. Just know that in my first week I have lost four pounds already. Let's see if I can do that again.

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Apparently woman soldiers in the Swedish army have been issued bra's that have weak catches. The catches on the more endowed soldiers bra's frequently break during rigorous exercise allowing all sorts of things to come loose. The soldiers are forced to remove all of their equipment and much of their clothing in order to tie everything down again. To make matters worse, the bra's are highly flamable and sometimes burst into flames melting into their skin.

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