John & Anne Wiley

2010/05/13

SBA Work

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Has Photos,Random,SB Region — John @ 07:00

The massive project at the airport has made not just commercial airline passenger service more difficult, but has reduced the amount of parking available for General Aviation planes like ours. Still, it’s interesting to watch the progress. Today I snapped this as we were on a downwind departure from 15L climbing through 1,700 feet or so.

KSBA Airline Terminal project

KSBA Airline Terminal Expansion (click to enlarge)

2010/05/01

here & there – airport, university, ocean, islands

Filed under: Aviation,by Anne,Flying,Random,SB Region — Anne @ 05:00

The air was crystal clear today after so many days of intense wind blew away the recent haze.  This makes more of a chance that my little point&shoot will take acceptable photos. I snapped this of Santa Barbara airport with UCSB campus straight ahead, and at the top lay the two largest in the Channel Islands National Park, Santa Cruz (l) & Santa Rosa (r) islands.  ~Anne

SBA, UCSB & Channel Islands

Aloft At Last!

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 04:06

It’s been a while since we’ve flown, and my “feathers” were getting itchy! Since our last flight, we waited a few days in order not to seem addicted, then the fog rolled in, then the winds came. Today we decided even with the wind reporting 16 gusting to 21kt, we’d at least go to the airport for a look. On the Hwy.217 toward UCSB we could see a 172 in the pattern, and we cheered loudly.

I got some great shots of UCSB and other sights around town, but one of the more unusual was this banner tow traildragger. Not just the massive radial engine on such a tiny old plane, but the way seals (sea lions? sea elephants?) were watching it.

6106 Banner Tow

6106 Banner Tow

6103 Volleyball Viewers

6103 Volleyball Viewers

These are the volleyball courts on East Beach, and today there was a massive tournament on West Beach that probably attracted the banner advertiser. While flying around, I guess the pilot decided to entertain all of the volleyball players and the pinnipeds offshore.

Today I finished importing our Big Adventure blog from blogspot.com onto this WordPress.com blog where I find it easier to write, and to insert photos. Hopefully this ease will encourage me to start blogging more frequently. We’ll see… 🙂

2009/12/03

Around Home

Filed under: Flying,Has Photos,SB Region — John @ 10:28

We’ve been home for almost a month today, and still seem to be resting around home a lot. Gradually though, we’re putting the house back together and getting out more. For a variety of reasons, before our Big Adventure we’d made quite a mess of our place. When we returned and added a plane-load of stuff, it was almost overwhelming.

Happily, we’ve not only put it all back together but done some cleaning and organizing chores we’d been putting off for years – and we seem to still be going. We’ve hosted several visitors and more are headed our way. In between, we’ve been taking drives including one along El Camino Cielo from Montecito to Hwy. 154 – one of our favorite perspectives on home because you get spectacular views in every direction.
We even took a short local flight just before Thanksgiving, landing at Santa Ynez and Santa Paula. It felt like “home” in a strange way, to climb into Flash and take off with only a general idea of where we’d go. We saw familiar territory with fresh eyes, and discovered things like this barn that’s obviously many years old.
How then had neither of us ever noticed it after descending low over it for hundreds of landings at the Santa Ynez airport perhaps a quarter-mile away?
Taking off again we noticed a bridge or dam across the river flying from this familiar airport past the familiar Lake Cachuma.
Continuing up the valley, at Gibraltar Lake we noticed for the first time that there are small trees growing from that dam’s concrete shoulder.
By the time we approached SBA at sunset, it felt as though we’d been gone several weeks again. Familiar places within a mile or two of home looked different, like peaceful Laguna Blanca in Hope Ranch where the shadows of night settled beneath us.
As the start of 2010 approaches, we have refreshed yet again our sense that “there’s no place like home.”

2009/10/04

Fun Thursday = Late Friday

Filed under: Aviation,Big Adventure,Flying,SB Region — John @ 02:11

We played hooky from packing Thursday to partake of SB treats. We had SB Zoo passes about to expire, so in one sweet hour we saw a diverse array of animals with a relaxed stroll in that took just an hour (details & pix in my EdHat post). Then we rambled an especially lively First Thursday on upper State, where we had several friends involved. We paid the price on Friday by leaving late, but it was worth it. We saw a few more SB treats from the air leaving town (words & pix in the above-mentioned EdHat post). We managed to get a route into San Diego that gave us a distant view of the Miramar Air Show, with two aerobatic jet teams parked amid acres of other fun flying stuff.

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