On Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:28:54 -0600, "Jake Donovan"
wrote:

I was in and out of Edwards so fast that I never got time to give you a
ring.

I figured as much. You should have been coming down here to Palm
Desert, though. It was so cold in Lancaster at Christmas that we came
back a day early just to warm up. Not that there's much action here
except for the Blues at El Centro, though.

We're under the departure path for Bermuda Dunes and there's a
bugsmasher droning overhear right now. We've got the windows open,
it's so nice. I think it's going to be in the low 80s, with a very
slight breeze. Perfectly clear and good flying weather, I suppose.
When I hear them overhead in the summer I start thinking about density
altitude. Those 118-degF days kind of lift the airport up from sea
level.

I almost misread your comment bout A37's. I am either getting lazy eye or
just old. I thought it said T-37s. Yikes!

We had a T-37 at Dryden (I wrote my first paper about it, in fact) and
I thought for years that so did AFFTC. It must have taken me two or
three years to discover that their pretty white A-37s weren't Tweety
Birds.

Our Tweet was spun in, in about 1983, I think. I saw the crash site
photos and the wreckage was just classic, really characteristic of an
airplane that came down flat, in planform.

Did you run into Gallager at TPS? He use to get a real hard time from
students when they found out who his bother was.

I've met him and we've chatted a few times. His brother joined him at
the Friday luncheon one year and all the rest of us got to listen to
everyone in the area laughing continuously. His brother didn't bring
a watermelon or anything, though.

Going to SETP can be kind of discouraging when I see all these pilots
and FTEs that I met as captains or lieutenants when they were students
at the TPSs wearing eagles and stars. Then a couple years later and
they're all with contractors or airlines, it seems. Time keeps
marching on, I guess.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer