May BoB - Ponch

12. May 2008 by Ponch.

All,

I’m guessing the big news across BoB land is the weather.  For the global warming crowd, it’s sure been kinda cool.  Today was like a February morning with temps in the 30s and the typical blustery winds.  Our renters in Seattle said winter keeps hanging on with one storm after another.  The last one blew down our fences to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars….at least we will have something to write off on taxes next year. 

We are still looking at houses to buy.  The prices are starting to come down from outrages to obscene.  The wife is discouraged and gets angry with the real”looters” who continually chirp that they are so busy and the market is so good.  The folks who are trying to sell their property are still on California drugs as many of them expect to sell their little castles in the desert “hood” for two to three hundred thousand more then they paid.  We have looked at some nice places, however it’s always tempered by the fact that we live in a filthy desert always within a few blocks of the local “Crips, Bloods or MS-13 types.   Lancaster / Palmdale never figured out how to zone or control the growth so many a nice house sits on dirt roads next to the all too ubiquitous desert nut job that collects highway trash and old junk cars. 

When I say “filthy” desert that’s literal.  The wind blows here at 20 to 50 kts for most of the year.  The sand and dust gets everywhere.  When you couple that with about one third of the city streets that are not paved you get dirt and filth everywhere.  

If I didn’t mention it before,  I decided I needed a bigger telescope.  We belong to the Central Coast Astronomical Society (CCAS).  Once a month we meet on a hill top north of San Louise Obispo.   It’s a beautiful place and the folks that belong to the group are all super people.  Many are Cal Tech egg heads and professors from Cal Poly and such.  My old scope is near the smallest on the hill so we got scope envy and now we are knee deep in building a 22 inch dobsonian.  It’s been allot of fun so far with a zillion little engineering task and woodsy craft things to accomplish.  On one of my many hardware store searches for parts, I came across a little hobby store in a crappy little town called Quartz Hill.  Andy would love this place; called War Eagle Hobby – named after War Eagle Field, home of the Polaris Flight Academy.  They have half a zillion model kits of tanks, airplanes ect ect.  Allot of them (from the smell of things) are one of a kind treasures that have gone out of production.  Along with the model kits the owner keeps a really well done museum of Antelope Valley aviation history complete with plenty of crashed airplane parts.

As you can imagine, with Edwards AFB close by there is allot of historical stuff.  I guess this guy is some sort of history buff and has amassed a huge bunch of knowledge about crash sites and odd knowledge about the goings on at Edwards and surrounding area.  Contrary to Chuck Yeager’s story about the Antelope Valley’s remote location, this area has a rich aviation history with tens of thousands of aircraft and pilots who shared the skies during the golden days of flight.  Besides Edwards AFB there were several very large training bases were WWII pilots learned to fly.  These are all within 20-30 miles of Edwards. 

I’m willing to bet he has a website too.  Will need to search for it. War Eagle Field is just up the road from were we live, Maybe a mile.  Its now the site of three prisons, one federal and two county.  It’s the lock-up for all LA county illegal gang members.  Nice…not!!!

Cheers

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