Only in Mojave: Anyone Seen the Garage Door Remote?

Only in Mojave . . . do you need a garage door remote to get into a 747!

This ex-Continental 747-200 is now gone, but for years it sat at Mojave complete with a rollup garage door on its nose, leading to many questions from puzzled passers-by. The 747, and an ex-Korean A-300 sitting next to it, were owned by Telair International, a German company that specializes in developing cargo loading systems for large aircraft. For any such system to become approved (the approval is called a "Supplementary Type Certificate", or STC) for use in commercial aircraft, it first has to be tested, and Telair used the two retired Mojave-bound airliners as testing and development setups for their systems.

Only in Mojave: "But Officer...

...was I really going that fast?" Every few years, the Classic Jet Aircraft Association holds one of their Jetblast gatherings of jet warbirds at Mojave. A few years back, this L-29 attracted the attentions of California's finest, a few of whom themselves are warbird fans.

Only in Mojave: Snow day

For all you readers to whom snow is "ho-hum", feel free to skip today's post. When you live in a desert long enough, precipitation becomes, well, a little special. And when the white stuff falling from the sky keeps falling, and accumulates more than has been seen in 16 years, it's kinda cool. This part of the world doesn't have many snowplows, so the ability of employees to get to work was somewhat hampered, leaving most of the flightline businesses shut down, and since all the area schools were also closed, it basically amounted to an early Christmas present for a lot of local families who had an extra day to spend together. And, as can be seen above, it left one medevac crew with a bit of extra time on their hands....

Only in Mojave: Ford vs Chevy, NASA vs XCOR

Only in Mojave . . . do Ford and Chevy trucks go head-to-head in their towing duties, as big dollar NASA/Boeing/DARPA meets innovative XCOR Aerospace.

The Boeing X-37 is being prepped for a flight under White Knight as XCOR's EZRocket is towed to the runway for it's record-setting cross country flight to California City in December, 2005.

Only in Mojave: Handicap Parking for a C-130

Only in Mojave . . . can a C-130 get a handicap parking sticker!

Actually, what happened was this: Because of a series of fatal crashes involving older C-130A being used as fire fighting airtankers, the U.S. Forest Service grounded the entire civilian C-130 tanker fleet, a highly politicized decision, including TBM's Tanker 64. The plane has now found a job as a flight test aircraft for Mojave's ASB Avionics, and while this might be nothing more than a prank, I suspect that this is actually a savvy commentary on the crippling of the U.S. aerial firefighting fleet, most of which (including this plane), are perfectly good, safe aircraft.

Only in Mojave: Parallel Parking a MiG

Mojave is known for its strange-and-unusual, so once a month we'll be featuring a less serious photo which you'd expect to find no where else but here.

Only in Mojave . . . can you be driving down one of the main streets in town (in this case, K Street), and find an ex-East German MiG-21 parallel parked in a residential neighborhood!

Actually, here's what happened: every year, the town holds its "Gold Rush Days" celebration, complete with parade (this was a big gold and silver mining center in the early 1900s). In 2005, the honorary Grand Marshal for the parade was Mojave Airport legend Dan Sabovich, who rode on the tug pulling the MiG, which at the time belonged to Mojave warbird collector Al Hansen.