LOE 2007

What??? Elippse design propeller.

A Stu McCurdy led group made several passes on Saturday morning

Several of the "usual suspects." Louise Hose, Doug Reeves, Paul Dye, Larry Vetterman and Red Marron

Doug Reeves solicited side trip ideas and Louise Hose tapped into local knowledge to come up with a couple of trips. The Saturday afternoon trip was to the south part of Franklin Mountains State Park. There is a tram here that was built to build and service radio and television transmitter sites. We took a short hike along a fairly rough trail to an overlook where you can see bits of a B-36 wreckage. A propeller blade from this wreckage is displayed at the War Eagles Museum.

Fellow hiker Alex Peterson pointed me to the accident report on this crash. The ceiling was OK but the visibility was only about 2 miles in snow. It appears that the crew may have been confused by the very similar configuration of the El Paso Airport to the very nearby Biggs Army field. That is still a problem today.

We might have hiked down to the wreckage, but the park does not allow off trail hiking.

There were some complaints about gusty winds and dust on Saturday afternoon and I really thought the tram would be closed, especially since it has a single, long, span, but it was open. Those that got the worst of the dust were the ones parked downwind of a recently bladed area. Luckily I arrived late enough to be parked far down on the ramp, out of the dust plume.

Wyler Tram. Some of the engineers in our group found out it uses a 40 HP motor.

The foreground of this picture is El Paso and the background is Juarez. You can see the border (Rio Grande), which is just past the high buildings. The Juarez streets are more freeform. It is really just one large, international, city.

This is what we could see from the overlook. It isn't as easy to see as it looks like. "Eagle Eye Paul" is the one who spotted it. Looks like landing gear parts maybe?

This propeller blade at the War Eagles Museum is from the same wreckage.

B-36 overlook

From the Franklin Mountains trail, if you look east you see runways 8L and 8R at El Paso International

If you look west, you see Santa Teresa Airport and LOE 2007

On the Franklin Mountains trail there were lots of Ocotillo plants and lots of Turbidite rocks. You can see the fine layering. These are the rocks that show underwater slides of a kind of slurry of water and sand and stuff. One thing they can show geologists is the orientation of the rock when it formed.

This is looking across the little draw to two members of our group. Well, yeh, I am behind an eighth of a mile or so, as per usual!

A single, blooming Ocotillo with a broken insulator alongside.

Continental A 40-5 on J3. Note the teardrop inspiration for the RV-4 cheek cowling.

The banquet started at 6:00 PM Saturday afternoon and was a good time. There was the repartee between Larry, Doug and Pamela, the enthusiasm of Red and the running of the Robs (Reeces).

When the big drawing started I was listening to those around me discuss their various strategies of just buying one ticket and hoping for the big score or buying 20 figuring that gives one a good chance of a win. I heard some disgruntlement from some of the 20 ticket buyers when a one ticket buyer won. It doesn't matter anyway as it's just an excuse to donate some money to good charities.

Most people have flying RVs and have limited use for most of the raffle items but they enjoy participating, donating and maybe helping out someone that does need the item, with a price break.

Over the years I have bought just a moderate number of tickets but did win an item this year that should put me about even, overall. I couldn't hope for more than that.

The banquet food line was a little intimidating but it moved fast. The ranch style brisket and beans were very good.

I was chatting with Larry Vetterman while waiting in line for hamburgers Saturday noon. I asked about his Rocket and he revealed an astounding, maybe unprecedented plan to me. He is planning to remove the six cylinder engine from his Rocket and install a smaller, LOWER HP, four cylinder engine. Now that is thinking outside the box!

Doug: "I'm not too smart, but I am good looking."

Pamela Angell (Mesilla Valley Community of Hope): "I was going to complement Doug, but he took care of that himself."

Doug's airplane at sunrise

Paul and Victoria Rosales take off for home

I thought my nicks were bad and this DC-6 has about 3 feet of clearance!

Van's did not bring an airplane this year, but Rob Butt (near) and Joe Blank came in Joe's airplane. Joe wanted to participate in the formation work.

During airport chit-chat I heard someone mention that there is an easily seen impact crater west of Santa Teresa. I doubted this as apparent impact craters are quite rare. The best one is the Flagstaff Meteor Crater. Recently I visited, on the ground and from the air, a large impact crater near Fort Stockton, Texas, Sierra Madera. This crater is difficult to recognize, especially from the air as it is so large (around 8 miles across) and is old enough to have mostly filled in. There is another, easily seen, impact crater near Odessa, Texas, but it is only around 100-200 yards across.

It turns out that the craters near Santa Teresa (Kilbourne Hole and Hunt's Hole) look quite a bit like impact craters but were actually formed by vulcanism. Obviously they are nothing like the classic cone shaped volcanoes. Uunderground water contacted magma (molten rock) which caused steam explosions. Ash and debris got blown out then much of it settled back in the same general area.

Takeoff on runway 28 at Santa Teresa and the craters are just a few miles straight ahead.

Hunt's Hole from the rim

Paul and Louise inspect the layers of ash of the crater rim.

There is a lot of variety in the rim. In places there is sand covered with bomblets. In places, like this, there are layers of ash that fell back after the explosion which were later altered by wind and water.

Other places along the rim have basalt which came after the explosion. There are also limestone beds.

We had a bit of an adventure getting to the craters. The featureless roads are mostly not marked and we didn't have real good instructions. We were trying to go to Kilbourne Hole, and thought we were there. Aerial reconnaissance revealed that we were actually at the smaller Hunt's Hole. Next year I expect better instructions and interpretive information.

Wildlife count, that I can remember was a Northern Harrier, several Cottontail Rabbits, a Roadrunner, two Rattlesnakes and oh, a Turkey Vulture picking at the remains of a dead snake.

Well, most of the roads had no markings at all

Kilbourne Hole (background) and Hunt's Hole. They look a lot like impact craters.