Russell Johnson

I met Sue, my wife, on Waikiki Beach during vacation trip to Maui with Doug Sharpe back in 1983. We married about a year later and flew a plane around Hawaii for our Honeymoon. Eric was born in '88 and Matt in '91. We've lived in Half Moon Bay for the past 23 years. I enjoy kite surfing, snow skiing, water skiing, tennis, and bike riding when not at work.

Some of my favorite memories include skiing at Squaw Valley and Heavenly Valley nearly every weekend with my brothers Dave and Rick, and sisters Karen and Cindy. We had passes at both Squaw and Heavenly. We often met up with Deming Wuthmann (Paly '72), Doug Sharpe (Paly '72), Pete Latham (Paly '72), and others -- great fun. I also earned a Private, Commercial and Instrument pilots license during this time. I flew all over California and Arizona. I remember flying with Rick Konrady down to Disneyland and then on to San Diego. At that time of that flight I hadn't yet earned my instrument rating. Visibility exceeded 100 miles all over California that day, but when we arrived in the LA area the visibility was less than 1-mile due to smog in the LA basin, which is too low for a private pilot without an instrument rating to land. I had to get a special clearance from air traffic control (ATC) and get radar vectored to the airport. I asked Rick to help spot the airport. He always gave me grief about that, apparently the pilot should not ask a passenger to help out (lesson learned). Although, a fellow Lockheed Martin employee, astronaut and former space shuttle commander/pilot Steve Frick informed me that I did exactly the right thing. It's all about teamwork he assured me.

My favorite stunt in the airplane was parabolic dives. You take out a pencil, hold it directly in front of you and drop it. At exactly the same time you dive the airplane, the pencil (and you) float weightless for quite a while. The airspeed builds super fast, and soon your heading straight for the ground, but still weightless. It's awesome; I showed this stunt to nearly everyone who flew with me -- many didn't return for another flight. Especially one college roommate who totally freaked out.

Larry Brittain reminded me about a flight we made together to Sacramento Municipal Airport back in high school. There were large updrafts and downdrafts over the Eastbay foothills. I looked at Larry said, "don't get sick it's not my plane." Larry claims I said, "If you do feel sick let me know, I'll make a sharp banked turn so the vomit goes out the window." I don't exactly remember saying that, but if Larry says it's so -- it must be true. I must not have heard of barf bags.

My sister Karen tells a story about me flying her to Half Moon Bay Airport and eating at the '3-Zero Cafe' there (3-Zero is the magnetic heading of the main runway at Half Moon Bay). Karen claims that as we ate, a huge marine surge (fog layer) came in and the airport visibility dropped to near zero. Karen claims that, despite my not having an instrument rating at the time, we taxied out, took-off, and climbed through the clouds until we reached clear conditions on-top of the marine layer. I take the fifth on this one, I have absolutely no memory of this. But, if Karen says it's so ...

The airplane was such fun, i probably have 10,000 stories, but enough already...

It seems strange to me that I took zero physics or electricity in high school -- today I spend 100% of my time at work doing physics or electrical engineer / space communications type things.

I also remember driving people to school senior year (myself, Bente Stangenes, Rick Konrady, my brother Dave). One day a very strong storm had just subsided and the streets were flooded with water. We had all the windows open in the car and drove through the underpass below Alma street on the way to school. We didn't notice in time that the underpass was completely flooded. We drove into the watery mess pretty fast. Other cars were coming the other way and a huge wall of water entered the car through the open windows -- we all got soaked and had to return home to change. Even today I always think of that when a travel through the underpass at Alma.

During Junior High at Jordan we had great times in the Sierra hiking and camping. Our Boy Scout troop (Troop 48) had a two week camping trip in the High Sierra, we hiked in from Bridgeport into the back country of Yosemite. These were great times with super people like the Frykmans (Dave and Walt), the Zwakenbergs, and others.

Lunch in the old Paly amphitheater was always fun also.