Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder

Dateline: John Wayne Airport (Orange County), CA, October 1, 2004.
Today I took Mark Weiss from Leisure World Channel Six TV for a long anticipated helicopter ride. Several months ago when it was proposed to land the R22 in the parking lot of Clubhouse Five for the LW 40th Anniversary event, I had promised Mark that he could go along. Well, the super-cautious Risk Assessment folks killed that idea, so I offered Mark another flight ... Today was that day. Mark brought along his beautiful Canon GL-1 pro video camera and captured some great footage. We looked over the Leisure World real estate, the Irvine Auto Center, the Irvine Spectrum and the old El Toro MCAS. From there we took a eye-popping low-level (100'-500') trip up the shore from Laguna Beach to Long Beach. Along the way we encountered a group of kite-surfers. We flew alongside a couple of the surfers for a spectacular overhead view of the action.