As I have already completed my participation in the SAN weekend activities (I won't be at tomorrow's events), I wanted to post a public thank you to SanDiego1K and Captain Mike for all their work in putting together the weekend.

Based on today's activities it looks to be a great success.

We were greeted at the SAN Commuter Terminal by FTers holding a banner welcoming us to the weekend, and SanDiego1k passing out pre-printed stickers with our FT handle and real name.

About 30-40 of us gathered first to see a presentation of the airport's noise measurement and abatement software. It was pretty cool to see how they keep a record of the flight path of every flight, and can model it in 3d, and even super-impose it over the location of any noise complainee. Pretty neat.

Next - a demo by one of the Harbor Police K9 "officers" - nicely narrated by his human handler.

And then the highlight - the tower tour. While groups of 5 went upstairs to check out the controllers in action, the rest of the group downstairs had an extensive, interesting Q&A with the chief controller (title?).

The next couple of hours were spent at the Windsock Restaurant patio (we got there in time to see the BA 777 take off) relaxing in the afternoon sun and talking about, well, what do you think?

It was fun renewing old acquaintances and forging new ones.

That's the overview. It's tough to pick a specific highlight - it was just too cool getting to see and learn ALL that behind the scenes stuff. I'll let others fill in the rest.

[This message has been edited by bokich (edited 07-20-2001).]