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The Palmdale City Airpark has about 15 planes so far, including this spiffy Lockheed C-140 Jetstar
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The plan is to show every aircraft with ties to Air Force Plant 42 - such as this original Space Shuttle test pod
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The park is about 10 years old, and expects to grow to about 40 planes over time
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There's a huge pool of retired folks who built these and who volunteer to restore them. This is a Northrup F-5 Tiger
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Most of the planes date to the 60's, including this Grumman F14 Tomcat
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They've recently restored this B52 bomber
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This is the only Rutan Triumph ever built - the first all-composite jet ever
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They have a covered area to work on these planes, and there are two in the works
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Next door, at the Blackbird Airpark, is this A-12. It's the very first Blackbird ever built, and first flew in April 1962
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The SR71 (left) was the successor to the original A-12. Some still say the A-12 was the superior aircraft
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This is the F117A Nighthawk - the first stealth aircraft (1981), and this is the 4th one of only 64 ever built
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A Blackbird J58 engine - the SR71 used two to fly at over 2200 mph
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We felt fortunate to be able to tour the Air Force Flight Test Center
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They only give two public tours a month. Security is pretty tight
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Just outside the gate, at the tour parking lot, is a small display of planes
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The first of only two YC-15s built, this was a test bed for development of short runway cargo planes
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Inside the base museum, this impressive wall displays models of every aircraft ever tested at Edwards AFB - more than 80.
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This A37B Dragonfly was extensively modified for various test projects
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The Benson X25 was an attempt to see if a small gyrocopter could be used as an ejection device. Love the hi-tech seat
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The F-16 "Fighting Falcon" is currently the most popular fighter in the world. This one's painted in air show colors.
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It's not a big museum, but there's a lot of stuff in there
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Full-scale replica of the Bell X1 rocket plane - first supersonic flight by Chuck Yeager in 1947
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This mural shows several test planes flying over the dry lake bed that is Edwards
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This mural shows some of the notable individuals and planes
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Pretty sure that's a Thor missile. They tested the motors here
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The dry lake bed is why the base is here. The longest runway is over 30,000 ft
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This was probably the high spot of our tour. NASA always has lots of neat toys
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This TF-8A used by NASA to develop the supercritical wing for trans-sonic flight (saves fuel, goes faster) last flew in 1973
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One of NASA's now-retired SR71 Blackbirds
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An impressive lineup of retired NASA test planes
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One of the original "lifting body" wingless planes used to test concepts for the Space Shuttle
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One of the shuttle transport 747s was landing as we toured. We weren't supposed to point our cameras that way
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The X15 rocket plane was the first manned aircraft into space - Joe Walker topped 100km in 1963
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A replica of one of the Bell X-1 rocket planes
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Inside one of the NASA hangers, with a couple of T-38s used mostly as chase planes for other aircraft
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These planes were having some new instruments installed
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These are Global Hawk unmanned jet observation platforms - they stay up for 31 hours, fly to 65,000 ft.
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NASA's planes will be used for weather research. Military versions are used for surveillance
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The "Flying Bedstead" - test vehicle that preceeded the original Lunar Lander
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Some models of NASA test planes. Some were also used in movies
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That's the rig used to mount the space shuttle to the top of a 747 for transport
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All those antennas are atop the test center's control room
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There are a lot of planes on display stands around the base
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Now to Los Angeles, and the La Brea Tar Pits
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The museum is devoted to fossils found in the tar pits
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In true show-biz fashion, concrete mastodons create a tableau in the tar
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A tar seep was starting to emerge in the lawn outside the museum
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Bubbles bring natural gas to the surface along with the tar
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Inside the museum, fossils abound. This is an ancient camel
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Because it's California, this wooly mammoth is animatronic, and moves
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This mastodon skeleton is the largest fossil in the museum
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Claw sheaths on the fossil foot of a saber-tooth cat.
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The museum has a great way to display bird fossils - bones in front, same scale painting behind
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We thought it was a great way to show the relationship of the skeleton to the bird
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Wolves are among the most common fossils found in the tar pits, so they can get creative with displays
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One whole wall filled with wolf skulls. They've found over 1,000 so far
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That's the Paleontology Bubble - where all the fossils are prepared. Great way to see what they do
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Most of these folks are volunteers. Not sure about the guy with the purple hair
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She's sorting "microfossils" - really small things like the toe bones of mice
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Saber-tooth cats were not tigers or lions, but a whole separate species
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Pit 91 has been a productive fossil dig for nearly 100 years
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This pit is worked by college kids in the summer. It's also been featured on "Dirty Jobs"
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Picture of a picture of what they found in pit 91 around 1915
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A collection of boxed pits removed from a parking garage site. Most have not yet been excavated
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Sometimes they build a fence around tar seepages to keep people and pets away
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Tar bubbles are formed when natural gas rises through the goo
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It's kind of cool to watch them form and burst
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The park also houses the beautiful Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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Having the motorhome worked on at the Rexhall Factory - spendy!
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We'll end with this shot of an old '50s-style McDonalds we lunched at in Palmdale.