Thanks Jeff. It was a very calm day. The Banning Pass was flat in the morning and at about 3:00 on the return there were maybe a total of 4 secs of light bumps.

Going NW and a little before the 5 fwy, we were asked to descend from 8,500 feet to 3,000 or lower - we were about 7 miles from the 5 and needed to hit the mark crossing the five. Steep dive and airspeed increased into the yellow. We leveled for 30 secs, in order to lower flaps, when control chimed in, wondering why we were leveling at 5,000 feet. He was very friendly and concerned after we dumped it again and went into the yellow again with the flaps down - not good. Brief level and gear down. We made it on the mark. at one point we were descending at about 1500 feet a minute. Weeeee!

Funny you mention Joshua Tree. I've been in San Diego since last Wednesday for business. Had the weekend and today (Monday) off. So on Saturday, I participated in San Diego PCA's Autocross in a rented Spec944 car, and today, I drove the 6 hours round trip to Joshua Tree National Park. Took some pics -- I'll try to download them and post them up here. Awesome place to be! Why would anyone go to Disney World or Universal when there's such beauty at so many national parks in CA?

-Z-man.

Cool! Glad you enjoyed the park. Maybe we passed each other. I was at the visitors center around 1:00, having lunch with three others at the picnic table in the back. I was wearing desert digi camo pants with a light brown shirt and desert digi camo boonie hat.

Great shots....LA is looking pretty green this year.


Can you explain to me the details of this screen?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1205242612.jpg


What airport is this & what direction is your final from?


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1205242783.jpg

Looks like VNY to me.

Did you make it to Cap Rock and pay your respects to Gram?

I think you're a couple states off...

Joshua Tree NATIONAL MONUMENT is not in NM.

But I understand, I'm from NM and was wonderining where Joshua Tree was before I saw the pics which are all taken in California.

Dave,

You are a wizard with that camera! I have seen a lot of your bird/nature pics on OT and they are all excellent.

The first image, is part of the GPS/Nav system. That particular screen, is showing a few things. Terrain - the green and light brown areas and is acting as a "sectional" map. IT's zoomed in, but would look like the old paper maps that pilots used (and still do) for plotting their flight paths. The purple line, is our course setup between waypoints. Upper left corner shows the current waypoint we are going to - Pomona and below, is a warning the shows that there are multiple aircraft close to us that could be come a factor. Those aircraft are also displayed on the main screen as black diamonds, showing the direction of travel and if they are at our altitude or above/below and by how many hundreds of feet. The upper right, shows our current heading. Bottom row shows (from lt to rt), the scale of the map, current GPS altitude, barometer, current course (always differs from the upper right :rolleyes:), current GPS ground speed and miles to the waypoint. The unit ties into a smaller display (look at crowded instrument panel). The smaller unit is where waypoints and courses are programmed and also acts as a nav/comm device and much more. The units also let us tap into XM satellite radio.

Second picture. Jeff is right, that is Van Nuys airport (KVNY) and we are coming in for a landing on the famous 16R runway.

Dave

Nope, we really did not make it into J.T. There really aren't any wildflowers once you actually get to the "trees".

Thank you Markus!

Is that a privately owned A4 Skyhawk?? [the USMC aircraft]??

Must be nice >> sweet

I have no idea. I have not seen that plane before. I did not see an obvious N#... I am guessing it is private.

The military has been known to stop over on occasion, but why they would park at our FBO...