FALL is HERE · · PAGE 381.

September 28, 2014:  It is Sunday and I have a few photos to publish about this past week when I went to Denver on company business to an industry trade show.  My flight from Melbourne to Atlanta, and the flight to Denver were both delayed.  The arrival in Denver was only about 30 minutes late.   The departure from Melbourne went across the Orlando Class B air space between cloud layers.

The trade show was the SCTE Expo where we introduced a new outdoor fiber optic node for CATV systems.  This is the RF amplifier section that connects to the coaxial cables that go down the streets for customers.

The other side of the housing can have TWO power supplies and four forward path receivers, plus two dual return path fiber optic transmitters to provide forward and return path segments.  The open module contains two return-path transmitters.

Our largest distributor provided some table top space to show this new product to users of our previous product.

The other side of their back drop has a photo of one of our most popular products.  It is a forward path CATV fiber optic transmitter seen just above and to the right of the lady seen here.

The show had a good customer from a few years ago ready to buy 30 of the new fiber optic nodes.  Here is my sample unit seen on the back of the table in the first photo of the backdrop above.

The trip home started with a flight that left just before local sunrise at Denver International Airport.

The weather was clear below when we crossed near Hutchinson, Kansas cruising at 31,000 MSL.

Harrison, Arkansas is one of the places I visited when I flew my airplane from Denver to Chattanooga back in 2006 right after the last SCTE trade show in Denver.   The color shading in this photo is created by the reaction between the Plexiglas window and the polarizing filter on my camera.

The course from Denver to Atlanta also crossed just south of Batesville, Arkansas.

Memphis, Tennessee was next along the route to Atlanta.  I stopped using the polarizing filter on the camera to rely on post-processing of the photos on this computer to give contrast to my photos taken while cruising at 31,000 feet MSL.

The course changed slightly after Memphis on a track across northern Mississippi toward Huntsville, Alabama.  I have flown this route in my airplane several times returning from Texas in 2005 and 2010 plus the Colorado trip mentioned above in 2006.  I usually cruise between 10,500 and 13,500 feet on long trips in my airplane.

It is just a few miles further EAST where Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee meet as the Tennessee River changes course to flow North after coming across Northern Alabama.  Just south of that last curve in the river before it departs the photo is the boundary between Mississippi and Alabama.  North of that point is all Tennessee running west to Memphis and the Mississippi River.  The water seen in the river below will flow north across Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River, then downstream to join the Mississippi River near Cairo, Illinois before beginning the trip south past Memphis, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans before reaching the Gulf of Mexico.  Any water diverted into the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway has a more direct route via the some of the Eastern counties of Mississippi  then over into Alabama southeast of Columbus, Mississippi over to Demopolis, Alabama and then south to Mobile, Alabama and into the Gulf of Mexico.  This photo was taken from 31,000 feet from the left side of a Delta Airlines flight from Denver to Atlanta with the camera pointed northeast..

Here is another look about 40 miles down from the photo above from a photo I took back on October 17, 2005 while flying at around 10,500 feet MSL in my airplane.   This is the Rankin lock and dam holding back Beaver Lake along the Tombigbee Waterway.  It is located about 20 miles EAST of Tupelo, Mississippi and a few miles north of Fulton, Mississippi.

Let's get back on the Delta flight heading for Atlanta with this photo showing Huntsville International Airport just north of our flight path now on a direct route toward Atlanta.  The Tennessee River is barely seen at the bottom right half of this photo.  The airport is about 12 miles southwest of downtown Huntsville,

About 12 miles further east from the airport, US 231 crosses the Tennessee River due south of Huntsville.  The river has come about 90 miles from Chattanooga down a southwestward path to Guntersville, Alabama before it begins the 22-mile path northwest to this point near Huntsville.

At jet speeds, it does not take long until I see Rome, Georgia pass below the airplane as we are descending to the DALAS intersection near Dallas, Georgia.  I looked north to see the airport at Cartersville, Georgia as the flight approached a weather front that put a solid cloud cover over the Atlanta metro area.  The flight went down the west side of the city and turned east before descending to runway NINE RIGHT (9R) at the Atlanta Airport.  It is one of two parallel runways just south of the terminal buildings at the center of the airport.  There are two more parallel runways on the north side of the terminals, 8L and 8R.  There is a single runway at the south side of the airport property designated as runway 10.  The shortest runways are 9,000 feet long.  The biggest runway is 12,300 feet long.

That is a Korean Air Cargo Boeing 747 on the taxiway.  This is the last photo I took on today's trip from Denver.

I had lunch here and caught my flight to Melbourne, Florida which was on time.   When I got to the parking lot at Melbourne, the battery in my car was completely dead.  My wife came to get me and the dead battery which charged overnight before I came back to get my car the next day.  I had to replace my alternator the next day.