Some Mojave Photos at "Light in our Lens"

While my day-job employment has taken me from Mojave to Palmdale and Edwards - leaving this blog essentially dormant - I still occasionally get to shoot there (I'm usually around during the monthly Plane Crazy Saturday open house, shooting when not driving the flightline tour tram), and recently had the opportunity to write about PCS for AirShowStuff Magazine (you can read it online here).

I have also started writing a more generalized photography-related blog, Light in our Lens, and the most recent post there is about, you guessed it, Mojave and PCS...so y'all are invited over to take a look at a few photos that didn't make the magazine article, but are worthy of mention anyway. Cheers!

August Plane Crazy Saturday Honors Racers

The August edition of the Mojave Transportation Museum's Plane Crazy Saturday highlighted our local race teams, Nemesis NXT and Wasabi Racing, both of which are getting ready to head for the competition at Reno next month. For the first time at one of these monthly events, museum supporter and world-record-holding pilot Dick Rutan offered to give rides in his Cessna 150, with all proceeds going to the museum...and there were plenty of takers! Dick has indicated that he'll do this again next month, so if you've ever wanted to fly with Dick, put September 19th on your calendar!

On any given Saturday, you never know what's going to show up for our fly-in. Pilots chasing the $100 hamburger sometimes will show up to eat at the Voyager not even realizing that an event is going on. Below is a Scottish Aviation Model 120/121 Bulldog, a trainer built for the Royal Air Force, and registered to an owner in South Carolina...in either case, Mojave being a long way from home!

A rarity indeed is this gorgeous Polish PZL M26-01 Iskierka, or Airwolf. Only 14 of these trainers were built, and of those, only four are in the U.S. This beauty, here being flown by local warbird restorer Dean Soast, sports some unique air-brushed nose art, as well.

Meet on of the most unusual canard homebuilts around: the Avery JA-5 Walrus. Powered by a turbocharged Rotax engine, this one certainly got everyone's attention.

One of the neat things about Plane Crazy Saturday is that, except for the F-16s parked nearby, the planes here are not roped off. It's old-school airporting - you can get up close and personal with the planes and their owners, whether it's Dick Rutan's Berkut being inspected by a pair of future pilots (below left) or the XCOR Rocket Racer (right).

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Plane Crazy Saturday Celebrates Space

With the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing just a couple of days away, the theme for the July Plane Crazy Saturday was rocketry, with lots of nice hardware on display. XCOR Aerospace pulled out, for the first time, their Rocket Racer and parked it nose-to-nose with the pioneering EZ-Rocket. The Racer was XCOR's early prototype for the Rocket Racing League, and debuted at last year's Oshkosh AirVenture air show, but this is the first time that it has been shown publically at Mojave. (Curiously, the RRL folks have been oddly silent, at least as far as media releases goes, since late last year...it makes one wonder if the recession hasn't affected them as well - we'll see if they show up at Reno this year, as was promised.)

XCOR's Aleta Jackson braved the 110 degree heat and patiently explained the rocketplane's workings to a steady stream of curious visitors (below).

Masten Space Systems had their Zombie rocket test vehicle on hand as well. It now has over a dozen flights to its credit, with the program continuing to move forward. The Mojave Desert Advanced Rocket Society (MDARS) had a number of large rockets on display in the AVGAS hangar (a tip of the hat to Rob for providing the space!) which intrigued the kids as well as the adults.

Matt Stinemetze was up in his Long-EZ, with a nice low pass down runway 8 - Matt's plane holds the distinction of being the oldest Long-EZ around, Burt himself having initiated construction.

WhiteKnightTwo Steals Show at Plane Crazy Saturday

For the June edition of Plane Crazy Saturday, the theme was "Wings and Wheels", and besides the usual warbirds and homebuilts that show off for the public, this time a couple of local car clubs came by to show off their gorgeous machines. Planes and cars...it was a great combination that drew lots of folks in to visit.

Steve Ericson showed up with his gorgeous Great Lakes 2T-1A-2.

I know there's got to be a story behind the F-22 "Raptor 17" sticker on this MiG-15...I've asked around, but no luck so far. If you know, please comment!

But, stealing the show, was Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve. It wasn't, of course, a planned event. WK2 was supposed to do a fly-by yesterday, Friday, at the groundbreaking ceremony of SpacePort America in New Mexico. A funny thing happened on the way to Truth or Consequences, NM, however. A problem with a spoiler caused WK2's crew to have to divert to Phoenix's Williams-Gateway airport, where it spent last night. That put the return, by way of a substitute fly-by of Las Cruces, NM, right in the middle of Plane Crazy. It was almost too good to be true, and the combined hopes of the crowd that had gathered along the edge of the taxiway was realized as Pete Siebold piloted WK2 through a fly-by down Runway 26, right in front of us. Another fly-by down Runway 30, and a taxi past us, and it was instantly a day to remember...WK2's first airshow appearance. Mojave trumps Oshkosh (where the debut had been planned to take place).

There's nothing like flying one of the coolest planes ever made around the southwestern U.S. then coming home to a joyful daughter! Behind all the gee-whiz technology are real families . . . the heart of small-town Mojave is what gives Plane Crazy Saturdays its joyfulness.

Kids, F-16s, and WhiteKnightTwo high overhead...what better way to sum up the Mojave experience?