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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Visiting Delaware for Christmas

It's Christmastime and we're leaving Los Angeles to head to Delaware to visit my brother's family and my parents.  Just a short 5 hour 45 minute flight straight to Baltimore.

Mom and Dad met us at the airport and gave us a car to drive up to see Jon and Jess.  Before we left though, we had a tasty dinner at an Indian restaurant.

Everyone was asleep when we got in, but the next morning everyone was excited to see us.  Well, almost everyone.  Emma was a little wary but after a few hours she warmed up to me.

It's always fun to play with the nephews and niece.



Do you think it's on purpose how messy they eat suckers?

Told you she warmed up to me.

One of the really cool things Jon lined up while we were visiting was a trip to the C5 simulator.





This particular one was built without projection screens.  Instead you're looking through mirrors and lenses at a model airplane that moves on a boom as you control the plane.  Pretty cool! 

Hopping in the cockpit in the pilot's seat.



Jon set everything up and showed us how to do a mid-air refuel.

Here's how it looks when a real pilot does it.  Jon flies in from 150 feet, connects up to the boom, stays connected and gets fuel.  Once connected there's little lights on the bottom of the tanker showing you if you're too high/low and left/right.  You're normally connected for over 10 minutes getting fuel.
    
Then he turned over the controls and let me give it a try.  Awesome!

He started me off 150 feet away and had me try to fly in.  Ha, I was all over the sky.  It was crazy.

Alright, how about a little closer.  50 feet maybe?  It starts off okay, but a few seconds later, I'm all over the sky with no chance to recover.

Well how about just trying to stay connected.  Jon set it up so I was already hooked up and only had to stay in one place.  15 seconds later and I was disconnected.  It's amazing how difficult this is and Jon makes it all look so easy.

All the nights we were there before Christmas before the kids went to bed, we would gather in the living room and sing Christmas songs.  It was a great time of hanging out together and enjoying being together as a family.

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