Experimental Aircraft Association

It wasn't the usual takeoff from Torrance Municipal Airport. When the cream-and-maroon Citabria Adventure broke its bond with Earth, George Butts pulled back hard on the stick. The little aerobatic plane shot skyward at a near vertical angle, like a roller coaster making its first ascent. In back, G-forces shoved 12-year-old Jon Miller of Los Angeles into his seat. Then he was momentarily weightless as Butts quickly leveled off at the top of his climb.

It wasn't the usual takeoff from Torrance Municipal Airport. When the cream-and-maroon Citabria Adventure broke its bond with Earth, George Butts pulled back hard on the stick. The little aerobatic plane shot skyward at a near vertical angle, like a roller coaster making its first ascent. In back, G-forces shoved 12-year-old Jon Miller of Los Angeles into his seat. Then he was momentarily weightless as Butts quickly leveled off at the top of his climb.

As Dan Checkoway felt the wheels of his airplane lift off the runway, all he could do was laugh. It wasn't that something was so funny, it was a laugh of joy, knowing that after spending 30 months building his RV-7 plane himself, he was 1,000 feet in the air. "Every night and long day sweating in the garage and hangar, this one minute made it all worth it," said the 30-year-old Chino Hills computer programmer.

As Dan Checkoway felt the wheels of his airplane lift off the runway, all he could do was laugh. It wasn't that something was so funny, it was a laugh of joy, knowing that after spending 30 months building his RV-7 plane himself, he was 1,000 feet in the air. "Every night and long day sweating in the garage and hangar, this one minute made it all worth it," said the 30-year-old Chino Hills computer programmer.

To take over his father's job as a high school basketball coach meant a lot of sacrifices for Lance Randall. A cut in pay from his job as a promising assistant at Saint Louis University. A move back into his mother's house. A search for a second job. But for Randall, who made the decision at his father's funeral five months ago, it was an easy choice. "This has been the toughest year of my life, but also a true blessing.

Bill Melly spent Friday searching his mind for a reason why his friend Howard Culbertson's plane might have crashed during a landing at an Albuquerque airport, killing the 73-year-old Newbury Park man and his wife, Marilyn. But try as he might, there were no obvious answers. Culbertson was an experienced pilot. Around the Camarillo airport, where he kept his home-built Thorpe T-18 in the hangar of the Ventura County Experimental Aircraft Assn.

High-tech aviation ran headlong into old-guard aluminum, rivets and spit polish Saturday during the 14th annual Fly-in/Air Show staged by the Ventura County chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Assn. at Camarillo Airport. An estimated 5,000 people braved early morning low clouds and cool temperatures to walk among experimental airplanes boasting radical new designs and old war birds that enjoyed fame more than 50 years ago when the country was embroiled in war.

The uncle of former NBA player Lorenzen Wright said Wednesday that police have told the family the athlete who had been missing for 10 days has been found dead in Memphis, Tenn. Curtis Wright told the Associated Press that police called the player's father, Herb Wright , with the news he had died. There was no immediate word on the cause. Police declined to comment publicly. The Commercial Appeal cited a police source as identifying a body found in a field in southeast Memphis as Wright's.