Sunday, October 17

It looks as if we are in for another good fall day here at the Avion Travelcade Club rendezvous in Chattanooga, TN. Past few days have been chilly but nice and the only rainstorms we have had were in the evening hours which interfered very little with the activities here. We are Assistant Directors but most of our duties were involved on getting people on to the grounds and parked. Parking was not in our department, but I did assist there also.

Loretta's knee is still giving her a hard time, so we haven't engaged in visits to local attractions that would require a lot of walking. On Friday, I did accompany about 45 others on a carpool to Arnold Engineering Center about 70 miles from here. This was another one of General Roy Manor's excellent tours of Air Force facilities. Arnold is not an air base, but a research and development site. We had a briefing and video on what they do there followed by a bus tour of the facility. We stopped and went into several of the test facilities. One of these was a 16' supersonic wind tunnel which we were able to walk into. That sure makes one feel small. If i recall corectly, they can generate a wind of almost 8 times the speed of sound there. I think they have another even larger there. We also went into the building where they have a test facility to test solid fuel rocket engines and inspect the test chamber. They test for all military branches, so the 200 military personel are not all Air Force. They also have aobut 2500 civilian contractors working on base. A very interesting tour and an excellent lunch to finish off.

In addition to shopping (Camping World has just opened a new store a couple of blocks from here)and driving around the local area we have tried out many of the excellent eating places in the area. Yesterday the Men's and Ladies luncheons were served and I think they were the best we have ever attended. The evening programs have included excellent local entertainment and as usual, we have enjoyed visiting with old friends and making new ones.