Flying into Santa Rosa

General

If you’re taking a flight to go visit lovely Santa Rosa, California, you will likely be going to the former Santa Rosa Army Airfield, which has long since been rebranded the Charles M. Schulz -Sonoma County Airport. My brother (recently retired as Congress’s expert on military aviation – yes, I come from an interesting family) shared with me the image that you see here: a Federal Aviation Administration approach plate for the airport. It contains a wide variety of information that could be useful in flight navigation, including reporting points used to identify when an aircraft is getting close to the field. While you may be familiar with the unique three-letter code that each airport has, you may be less familiar with the five-digit codes assigned to these reporting points.

Let’s take a look at these points:

There’s PIGPN!

Looks like you can go into a holding pattern around LUSEE.

And there’s an intersection at WDSTC! (I’m not sure that I’d rely on WDSTC when one is seeking a stable flight path.)

Someone, obviously, was having a bit of fun.

General
Peanuts publisher buyout

Sources are reporting that KKR is buying Simon and Schuster, probably currently the biggest publisher of Peanuts thanks to their Little Simon-published storybooks, from the current owner, Paramount. Sometimes, when one company buys another, it makes no real difference, just a slight change in letterhead. However, KKR isn’t a media …

General
Correct the record

While searching for something else, I stumbled across this announcement of the Kaye Ballard Peanuts album in the Chicago Sunday Times Magazine for January 15, 1961. Now, let’s take a zoom in on that drawing… and its caption. Magazine sections are generally created with a long lead time, allowing them to …

General
Spot the Dog

I publish things. I also research things. And really, the two efforts are often one and the same: I research stuff and find that it’s worth publishing; I publish stuff and in the process I’m doing research. That all just happened for me with a syndicated comics panel called “Spot” …