Although this blog is "dormant", there's still lots of readership out there, so I thought I'd dust it off for a moment and post an announcement: The April 2013 Plane Crazy Saturday will be a very special event: the First (hopefully annual!) Mojave Experimental Fly-In! It will be taking place April 20 from 10am to 2pm.

This event is so big and so special, it has its own blog...so jump over to http://www.mojaveflyin.com/ and check out all the planes that are planning on attending!

Introducing Vintage Air

A few weeks back, I mentioned my non-aviation blog, but I've also started a new aviation-related one called Vintage Air, a place that tells the stories behind vintage aviation photographs, many of which have never been published. Today's post is the first one on the blog that involves photos taken at Mojave (they were shown here in 2008, but they bear showing again), hence the mention here. There will be more Mojave photos for the next couple of Tuesdays over at Vintage Air.

Plane Crazy, October 2011: Boomerang and Guest

The featured aircraft for the October 2011 PCS was none other than the recently resurrected Rutan Model 202 Boomerang. Once Burt's personal airplane, it's now in the care of Scaled's Mike Melvill. Along with Catbird, Boomerang recently made the trek to Oshkosh for the Rutan tribute. Here's an up-close-and-personal look at this most amazing aircraft.

During PCS, this rather striking DeHavilland Dash 8, configured for an undisclosed flight test program, showed up and parked down the ramp.

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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WhiteKnightTwo Departs for Oshkosh

WhiteKnightTwo lifted off for its first cross-continent flight this morning, departing Mojave at 7:16 am local for its public (re)debut at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

With plenty of gas onboard, pilot Pete Siebold and co-pilot Clint Nichols brought Eve around for a low pass down runway 26, in front of a small crowd of Scaled Composites employees before climbing up to 52,900 feet for the 4:36 flight.

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.