Hi all,

Well, I am on my first RV trip alone!  This will be a fairly short one with the Ramblin' Recs (the RV club from our Escondido church) for a few days in the desert.  Of course we picked the first real hot spell of the season to do it.

Our wagonmaster, Floyd has done his usual superb job of lining up activities.  While here at Edwards Air Force Base we will be taking tours of NASA, the AF base, and the windmill farms in Tehachapi.

It looks like this will be a fun trip.

Sunday, May 22, 2005
I pulled out of my driveway at about 7:45 headed for the Barstow/Boron area.  I had pretty much decided to drive all the way to Boron to stay at a small RV park where I will have full hookups (aka.  Air Conditioning!).  Flying J in Barstow would be less expensive, but as hot as it is, it should be well worth it to have power without running my generator all night.

I pulled into the Arabian RV Oasis right at 2:30 and found a spot.  There was a note on the office door asking us to put $15 in an envelope, fill out the outside and drop it into the mailbox.  The managers are obviously away.  The name of this park makes it sound better than it really is!  I won't say it is dumpy - yes I will.  It is dumpy!  There are several spots out front that have trees and some grass, and are really quite nice.  Then there are a number of permanent park model mobile homes, most in need of repair, or at least paint, then there are several additional spaces in the back along a fence that was in need of paint many years ago.  At the end of this fence is a pole with several electrical boxes and an empty meter mount.  These are all very rusty, and I certainly hope disconnected from anything electrical.  It is a fine park for stopping for the night, and we have done so quite a few times over the years.

The park is also less than a mile from the restaurant where we are all meeting tomorrow.  I walked over for dinner tonight. 

Monday, May 23
I woke quite early after a very good night's sleep and puttered around the motorhome until about 11:00.  I then secured everything for travel and made the long several block trek to the restaurant.  As I pulled out and turned right from the park, I saw a motorhome heading my way from the freeway.  It was Shirley and Ron, another couple along on this trip.  Before long a couple more rigs pulled up and parked, then shortly another group.  We headed in to eat, just a couple minutes ahead of our 12:00 reservation.  The final 2 couples arrived shortly after we were seated.

In all, we have 17 people in 9 rigs, and will be staying at the Famcamp on Edwards AFB. 

After lunch, we all caravanned the few miles to the base.  Floyd had phoned and faxed all our names, license numbers, etc. and had been assured they were all typed up with a copy at each gate to simplify our registration to enter the base.  The sentry at the gate did not know anything about this sheet, so we each filled out a form, had our registration, insurance coverage, and driver's license checked.  About half an hour later we were all legal and drove over to the Famcamp.  Floyd said it looked like there were spaces available (it is on a strictly first-come, first-served basis.)  As we drove around the camp we realized that there was not a single empty space!  We all proceeded back out to the overflow area, which is a blacktop parking lot with no hookups 

The campground hostess came over and said that today is the first day it has been full!  There are 6 rigs expected to pull out tomorrow, and we have first priority.  By Wednesday, I suspect we all will be in the full hook-up area (with grass and trees).

A number of us went over to a very nice base restaurant tonight and had one of their "7 meals for under $7"  I had blackened Red Snapper.  It was very good.  We are all scheduled to eat there Thursday night, so this was a preview.

Tomorrow we start the tours, going to NASA in the morning, and getting a base tour in the afternoon.

Tuesday, May 24
The campground hostess came over this morning and let most of our group take newly vacated spots in the Famcamp.  Everyone except the Lambs and I were given spaces.

We headed over to the air museum to meet our bus this morning.  The museum is located about 1/2 mile from our camp, and has a relatively small display of planes.  The most prominently displayed of these is an SR-71 Blackbird.  There were only 32 of these planes built, with 12 of them lost for one reason or another.  This is the fourth Blackbird I have seen.
 

This is the SR-71 Blackbird at the Edwards Air Museum.  The museum is within sight and easy walking distance of our camp sites.

Promptly at 9:30 our bus arrived and we headed over to the Dryden Flight Research Center, the NASA facility located on Edwards Air Force Base.  There were several planes displayed outside as we pulled up to the facility.  The first one of these was mounted on a pedestal at the entrance, and was one of their lifting body designs which evaluated using the body of a vehicle to provide the lift needed to safely glide in from a space shot.  There were several military jets which had each been modified in one way or another to research a specific aerodynamic characteristic.  One of these was an F-8 Fighter which had the wings replaced with a "supercritical wing".  This was a wing altered from the normal shape to have a flatter top, a rounder bottom, and a slight drop in the trailing edge.  The changes moved the formation of the shock wave back when near the speed of sound, and reduce drag.  This wing performed so well, even at subsonic speeds that most modern transport planes use this design.  The estimated fuel savings due to this wing is about 2.5%.
 

As the bus approached the NASA center, the first plane we saw was one of the early lifting-body experimental planes.  These helped in the design of the Space Shuttle.
	This is the NASA SR-71 Blackbird.

As we proceeded there was a replica of the X-15 rocket plane, and across a wrought iron fence, yet another SR-71 Blackbird!  This is #5 of the remaining 20 which I have seen.

Shortly after entering the building we were met by our tour guide, a knowledgeable young lady who carried a portable PA system.  She led us over to a huge air conditioned hangar with a number of planes and a number of workers in it.  One by one she took us to the various planes and told us what modifications had been made or were being made, and what the test objectives of that plane were. 
 

This is our guide talking to us in front of the replica X-15.

We then entered a much smaller hangar where three planes were being modified or fitted with flight experiments.  One F-15B had canards added.  These are small wings attached to the front of the fuselage.  Another was being fitted with a test bed for some flight experiments.  The bottom of the plane had a fixture that accommodated a standard set of rails to which were attached whatever experiment they were conducting.  This plane had been used to evaluate various heat absorbing tiles for the refurbished Space Shuttle.
 

	Our guide is telling us about the various planes in the massive hangar.
This F-15B has had canards added forward of the wings.

Our guide told us that each NASA facility has a focus.  The focus of Dryden Center is the first A of NASA (National AERONAUTICS and Space Administration).  Virtually all the work done here is on aircraft and their flight characteristics with very little work on space activities. 

That said, they have had 49 landings of the Space Shuttle here.  Originally, the shuttle was not designed to land on concrete, so the 7 1/2 mile long runway (the longest in the world!) on the Edwards dry lake bed was ideal for landing it.  After the shuttle design was changed to land on concrete, most of the landings have been at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.  They are always ready here to accept a landing if the weather or other factors should dictate it.

The other space item we saw was the trainer for the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV).  This was an assembly of welded pipe with a jet engine and a number of rocket engines around it.  There was a cockpit duplicating that of the lander.  The astronaut would fly this monstrosity up about 200 feet using the jet engine for a vertical takeoff.  Once up, the jet thrust was reduced to simulate the weight of the lander on the moon, and the rockets were used to effect a soft and safe landing.  This awkward looking machine was nicknamed "the flying bed frame".
 

This assembly allowed astronauts to practice maneuvering landers on the moon. There is a jet engine just behind the pilot along with a number of small rocket engines to allow it to hover realistically and land as though it were in the reduced gravity of the moon.

Upon completing our NASA tour we were taken to the gift shop.  Of course there were all sorts of NASA memorabilia available here.

The bus picked us up exactly on schedule and took us to the BX (base exchange) where the food court gave us a number of choices for lunch.

After lunch, the bus picked us up and took us back to the air museum.  Here we were met by a young man who claimed to be the only ex-professional bull fighter on the base.  He was also our base tour guide.  He took us into a small theater at the museum and gave us a short talk about the operations of the base and showed us a number of the aircraft which are operational on the base.  We then saw a short video of the base operations.

We again boarded the bus, along with our tour guide this time.  As on the NASA tour, we were advised that no pictures were allowed while on the flight line.  We proceeded to the flight line where our guide showed us many of the planes he had discussed at the museum.  We saw the hangar where the Ospreys were housed, but did not see any of the aircraft.  The Osprey is a vertical take off and landing aircraft where the wing section holding the two engines and huge propellers rotate.  The propellers are pointing up like a helicopter for take off and landing, then they rotate to straight ahead for flight like a normal airplane.  The Ospreys have been in the news the last couple of years as they were grounded following accidents.

As we drove up and down the flight line our guide pointed out plane after plane.  As Edwards is primarily a flight test facility there are not many operational units based here, however when El Toro closed a few years ago, two Marine units were moved here.  We saw a number of their huge helicopters both in hangars and on the flight line. 

He pointed out that over 60% of the employees on the base are civilian.  A major reason is that with civilians, their presence is pretty much assured, while if military personnel are used they are frequently deployed and are therefore not dependably available for on-base tasks.

The bus again took us back to the air museum for the final time.  We thanked the bus driver and our tour guide and headed back to camp.

About an hour after returning, the campground hostess came over and said that space 5 was available now, and the space 7 would be open in a few minutes.    We are all now in the camp with full hookups.  I can now run my air conditioning without the generator running!

The campground is quite pretty.  It is a circle, with rigs parked around about 2/3 of it.  There are a number of trees and a couple areas of lush green grass in the center around two picnic shelters.  We are spread around most of the area with spaces, but no one is very far from anyone else.
 

Four of our member rigs got adjacent spaces here, another 3 are every other rig a ways to the left, and the last two are several rigs to the right.  One of those rigs leaves in the morning.

There was a coupon in a flyer we were given which was good for a one scoop ice cream cone or cup at 31 Flavors on Tuesday after 4:00 PM.  As it is Tuesday, a number of us went back to the BX and had our ice cream.  I chose a flavor called Splish Splash.  It was a bright blue and white.  It contained blueberrys, sour blackberrys, and lemon sorbet.  It was delicious, but it made my tongue bright blue.

At 6:00 we all met at a covered area in the center of the campground circle where Shirley and Ron told us about their 17 day trip to China.  They returned just a couple of days before coming to this campout.  They were surprised at how modern China is.  There were many more automobiles than they expected and the roads were excellent.  There were many new high rise buildings in the cities.  All the new development has taken place since the reign of Mao.  They only saw one person dressed in the traditional outfit we all think of, and he was selling opportunities for people to photograph him.  They described the food they ate, although they often had no idea of what they were eating.  They had a wonderful and educational trip.

It was a most interesting talk.

Wednesday, May 25
Today is mostly a "free" day with the only scheduled event being tonight's pot luck dinner.  I have taken advantage of the time this morning to bring this report up to date and I think I will post it tonight.

I have placed this report along with a number of my photographs at:

http://myweb.cableone.net/rsmason

Till next time,

Dick