Local very VFR Sightseeing Route Practice!

Yesterday I was scheduled to fly a friend's teenaged son around (he'd taxied with me last year with his younger sibs), but the teenager had a (typical, so I don't feel slighted!) last minute change of plans. 

But I went ahead and flew with my most regular CFI (and current flying club Prez) Rick on the route we'd planned on the ground (Rick was going with me with the kid, to make me feel safer - the dad is mellow).  Rick and I both knew this'd be good VFR/visual flight rules practice for me, as I remain such an IFR girl (after the blood, sweat and tears of getting that instrument rating back in 2005!)

Yesterday, though hot, was super-clear, so a great day to do this fun route, that was not as hard VFR as I feared!

We departed Hawthorne Airport/KHHR left downwind, flew to the 105/710 freeways interchange, then flew up the 710, but stayed with the LA River when the freeway branched off.  Started out at 1,500' , up near the Garvey Reservoir area we could climb to 2,000' MSL/mean sea level (these altitudes are all to stay clear of the "floors" of LAX's Class Bravo airspace). We were going to circle around El Monte Airport/KEMT, but ended up going a bit further north, pointed at downtown Pasadena, and then got on the north/mountain side of the 210 Foothills freeway, then turned east.  We were also, per our GPS, outside of KEMT's airspace, but we called their tower and got approval to transition anyway - always good to talk to a nearby tower!

It was kinda busy around KEMT, but we were just outside the area, and parallel to planes in the pattern.  Then we turned south down the 605, and flew over it directly to Long Beach Airport/KLGB.  We wanted to fly right over KLGB to get to the harbor, and that tower easily cleared us (I thought it might be more of a hassle).  So then we flew around the good ol' "Long Beach Practice Area" at 2,000', flying around the Palos Verde Peninsula.

Then when we turned around the north/west side of the PV, we called Torrance Airport/KTOA tower, and got cleared to fly over the edge of their airspace, direct to Alondra Park (classic KHHR inbound visual reporting point) and thence home to Hawthorne!

While the point to climb before KEMT and calling KEMT were in kind of quick succession (especially in the C182 we were flying; flying kind of low power though, 21 "squared," meaning 21" of manifold pressure and 2100 RPMs), and one dare not get too close to KLGB, really all the visual flying and peeking at Class C smaller airports airspaces on the GPS, but mostly looking out at landmarks and for planes, and the necessary altitude changes to not "bust Bravo" were surprisingly easy! 

One could easily fly this route without talking to KEMT or KTOA.  A bit more maneuvering to not talk to KLGB, but doable.  I am so used to talking to ATC on an IFR flight plan (which I do even on nice days) and being automatically cleared through various airports' airspaces, but with a bit of planning it ain't that hard VFR!

This "I Fly Roads" version of IFR IS fun in the lovely LA Basin area!  We got a good look at downtown LA, the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood sign, the Rosebowl where that other school's team plays (!), Pasadena, the San Gabriel mountains, the complicated water drainage areas, the awesome Queen Mary, the gorgeous channel islands (Catalina, of course, but we could see all the way up to Santa Barbara area yesterday!) and more.

Looking forward to taking the teen, and other friends and visiting family, on this route!

Terms in Sayers' Lord Peter Later Books: Gaudy Night

All references are to the Harper and Row Perennial Library Editor of Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night (pbk., c. 1986)

As mentioned earlier, this may be my favorite Lord Peter book, for several reasons:  the still-fairly-realistic, both fond and critical, picture of academics (!), the intellectual level of the discourse, including Harriet Vane's inner musings, the feminist subtext, and of course that Wimsey and Vane finally get together!

"Strawberry leaves" (p. 167), Lord St. George, detective Lord Peter Wimsey's nephew mentions:  I knew this was something re being a duke, and 'tis, per Edwardian Promenade's Titles and Orders of Precedence page: "The coronet of a duke is a circlet, heightened with eight conventional strawberry leaves, and encloses a velvet cap."

"dsp" (p. 167), also St. George: means died without children, Latin "decessit sine prole", per the British Encyclo online encyclopedia.

"Like playing 'Staggie'" (p. 189): A group running around chaotically.  All I can find is an Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (USC Libraries' online subscription) short entry that says a staggie is a colt?  May or may not fit context.  Sources re "staggy" are not illuminating either.

"Pot of Gloy" (p. 195): Fits the Urban Dictionary definition - a cheap type of glue

"Issue a ukase" (p. 234): Knew it was some kind of decanal proclamation; per OED, it is specifically an old Russian kingdom edict: "A decree or edict, having the force of law, issued by the Russian emperor or government." Sayers uses it a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Terms in Sayers' Lord Peter Later Books: Busman's Honeymoon

So finally I did what I've been meaning to do with Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries -- note terms with which I am not totally familiar, even if I figure them out in context (which I've been doing since I learned to read!).


Busman's Honeymoon terms noted
(all from the 1986 Perennial Library paperback edition)

"Parva" as a add-on to a town name, e.g. "Pagford Parva," ( p. 31).
Kev had told me he thought this was similar to a market town, from his in-context figuring out from Wodehouse.  It is NOT in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online!
Here is what UK Yahoo Answers' Best Answer says: "English villages frequently come in pairs, distinguished by Great, Much, or Magna for the more populous, Little, Lesser, or Parva for the less populous, or less extensive."

 "Deal Dresser" (p. 111) --  I think it is something like a sideboard.
 Once again not in the OED!  I'd imagined I'd get all sorts of etymological definitions for this post from the OED! 
Here's a blog post from the wife of a woodworker who tried her own hand at building a "deal dresser," though she and he don't really explain the word.

"Caitiff" (p. 185) -- actually in the epigraph to Chapter XI, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: "What is you worship's pleasure I shal do with this wicked caitiff?"
FINALLY USC's subscription to the online version of the OED does not fail me! --
"Forms:  α. ME caitef, caiteff, caityf, caityue, kaitif, kaytefe, ME caytef, caytif, ...

Etymology:  < Old Northern French caitif, caitive, captive, weak, miserable (= Provençal ...
†1. Originally: A captive, a prisoner. Obs."
Prisoner is the best meaning in context here.

And Now for Something Completely Different....Live Music!

Last week I availed myself of one of USC's Thornton School of Music's free concerts, for the first time in too long!  Since I can no longer really afford LA Opera since I no longer have a hefty administrative stipend (worthwhile tradeoff!  I'm happier and healthier now!), I decided I must get myself to more local campus concerts.

So I went to the Baroque Sinfonia last week - very intriguing and entertaining!

I naturally totally loved the wooden recorders!  (Years ago right after Kev and I got married I played with a recorder group that some of his friends had started.  I have to dig out my ol' recorder!  I miss it!)

I was amazed by the excellent musician who played a large kind of timpani-precursor thing, AND the wild theorbo, like a lute body with a crazy long neck!  I've just learned more about it from this theorbo site!  It can be 2 meters in length and has 14 strings.  I have to ask Kev's best friend and great guitarist Bob if he's ever heard of one!

The Sinfonia played a Purcell piece and a Handel piece.  I thought I'd prefer the Purcell (having played some Henry Purcell arrangements in high school concert band), but I actually liked the Handel better, because I was not too fond of the baroque oboes in the Purcell piece -- the tuning of them seemed weird to me.  

Now, we all know I am hard pressed to sing in tune.  :-) However I could play my clarinets and recorders in tune, and usually can tell if a wind instrument at least is out of tune.  I am certain this quaveriness of the baroque oboes (a bit longer and looked slightly different than contemporary oboes) is intended.  I just don't love it.  

Apparently, per this YouTube video, Hanel loved oboes; and some of them at the time were called "hautboys"! (Inserted below).  AND, interestingly, the fingering is quite similar on these to a recorder's fingering.  Okay, I am liking these things more than I did!

Nothing like live music!  Just this one concert has gotten me back in to singing in the car (like doing brass imitations to the "Overture to Tommy" on the way to the airport this morning!)   I aim to go to more Thornton concerts at my local research university and employer, so stay tuned!

Cowl Mounts - Had to Replace Again!

Well, dang!  The cowl mounts on N21643 that Eric and Ray and I put on last month under Dave's (our crew chief is also a mechanic!) supervision did not all cut it!  Two of 'em cracked.

So today we painstakingly carefully lined up the pop rivets holders that hook up part of the bottom and top parts of the cowling together, out in the open space (the mounts are on the firewall of the airframe), because we decided that there was too much tugging on the cowl mounts.

So today I got a pic of the cowl mount things!  Here it is below.

C172 N21643's Locallizer and a Bit More on the Instrument

Finally got a reasonable photo of an airplane localizer in a plane I fly!  A&E Flying Club's best Cessna 172, N21643.  I'm on the 643 crew now, and really enjoy Dave A's leadership as crew chief!  He is positive and pretty unflappable.  I told him so today!

Anyway, as I own at least 1/50th of this airplane (club members own the planes collectively and the maximum # of active members is 50; right today we have 47) I thought this would be a good localizer for the blog.

The "OBS" knob is the "Omni-Bearing Selector."  Back a few decades, a fair number of pilots called what we now shorthand call "the VOR" -- "the Omni."

You see here the 360 degree "clock" we use in many areas of aviation.  Right now the VOR is set to a southeasterly heading (120 degrees).

As explained previously, this piece of avionics equipment is key to instrument flying.
If one's airport has a "localizer* [pic from a training blog]," as does my home airport Hawthorne, CA (KHHR), there is a radio signal down the center line of the runway, and to line up with it you center it on the vertical line in the VOR receiver (VHF Omni Range), the more accurate name for the instrument.

If one's airport has an "ILS," "instrument landing system," HORIZONTAL control is also provided, you line up on BOTH the vertical and horizontal lines on the VOR -- the horizontal is the "glideslope," so you come down at a nice angle.

* (Side note:  ~ 2 years ago the FAA was "tuning" the localizer at KHRR and my car (the Audi, not the new Beetle) was parked there.  And, the tuning messed up the car's GPS!  Had to reset it!  Too many strong radio signals!)

Work vs/and Family: Womens' Dilemma in Cross/Heilbrun and Sayers

Here below is the literature foundational post!  Soon I will post about USC's Women in Management, the only group for which I serve on the board that does not have a national or international affiliate!
  * * * *

Work vs/and Family: Womens' Dilemma in Cross/Heilbrun and Sayers
(c) Sara R. Tompson

I've been, finally, reading Amanda Cross' [pen name of the, sadly, late Columbia Univ. feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun] later Professor Kate Fansler mysteries (some of which were published posthumously).  The first later one I read a few years back was Honest Doubt and I did not love it that much.  But I recently re-read it, and really enjoyed it.  That got me to download a few more to my Kindle [I have the old/first one; still love it!].

I just recently finished The Puzzled Heart, and despite the perhaps a bit less polished, angrier, writing style in this and most of her later mysteries, I've re-realized I still love Cross' feminist mysteries, just as I have loved for years Dorothy Sayers' mysteries, especially her most feminist Gaudy Night, which I re-read almost annually (and will be doing again shortly!)

Puzzled Heart starts not with a murder, but with the kidnapping of Kate's husband Reed (now a law professor, formerly a district attorney).  It turns out this was intended to get to Kate more than Reed.

In Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane, now a successful mystery writer and somewhat involved with Sayers' main detective Lord Peter Wimsey,  returns to her university college to work on a book, and gets embroiled in a poison pen letters escapade that escalates.  The poison pen is attacking university educated women who have less focus on family than the hate writer believes proper.

Naturally there've been vaguish links in my mind between Cross and Fansler and Sayers and Harriet Vane, but in  Honest Doubt there was one passage so clearly resonant of a key theme in Gaudy Night, I just had to "highlight" and "bookmark" it!  [Thanks to my colleague Ivan for getting me in to using these Kindle mark up features!]  Here it is (from location 1577 in the Kindle edition); a character is speaking, hence the embedded quotation marks):

" 'The whole think smacks to me of an envious woman, one who's known you a long time, and is furious at your success, relative to her self-perceived failure, or lack of success.' "

You can see from the brief summaries above the similar themes.  Here is a statement of the theme from Gaudy Night from the clearly irrational poison pen; who is in part Cross' "envious woman":

" ' ...but it's you, it's women like you who take the work away from the men and break their hearts and lives.  No wonder you can't get men for yourselves and hate the women who can.  Good keep the men out of your hands, that's what I say.  You'd destroy your own husbands, if you had any, for an old book or bit of writing...' " (Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. New York: Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1986, p. 443).


I did a bit of research, and no one seems to have done much explicitly comparing these two mystery novels.  I did find Johanna Smith's 1991 article "Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction: Gendering the Canon" where she makes a brief mention worth citing here:

"Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night, Valerie Miner's Murder in the English Department, and many of Amanda Cross's books dramatize the external and internalized problems of women who choose the intellectual or academic life over the domestic," 

(Smith, Johanna M. 1991. "Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction: Gendering the Canon" Pacific Coast Philology 26(1/2), p. 80).

[Clearly I need to find and Miner's book!]

 I intend to do some more writing about these two authors, some of my favorite genre writers ever and always.

Can you tell my undergrad degree is in English?!