Offshore Airport Idea Resurfaces

Though some see the concept of a floating airport in San Diego as a viable alternative, its presence might not be welcomed by some boaters.

SAN DIEGO - The idea of a floating airport several miles off the San Diego coast resurfaced recently - but power- and sailboaters might be at odds over its existence.

The swell- and wind-shadow cast by such a two-mile-long floating "island" could please powerboaters, but be despised by sailors thirsty for wind.

The concept of moving San Diego's cramped Lindberg Field offshore was first broached by a company called Float Inc. in the early 1990s. The idea recently resurfaced when Encinitas attorney Adam Englund unveiled a plan of his own.

Under Englund's Euphlotea Inc. plan, the airport would float about 10 miles offshore on a series of interconnecting box-like structures that are the brainchild of Oceanside inventor Craig Lang, according to a recent article in the North County Times. Airline passengers and freight would be ferried to and from the platform by a fleet of service boats.

In contrast, the Float Inc. plan would position the airport approximately three miles off the tip of Point Loma. A tunnel would connect the facility to land.

Both designs would likely allow the airport to operate in all but the most extreme wave events. Visibility issues caused by fog may be slightly exacerbated offshore.

But it's possible neither plan would be embraced by San Diego-area sailors. Mission Bay Yacht Club member Cindy Vanderspek believes the structure's potential wind shadows might interfere with sailing.

"We sail from Mission Bay to San Diego Bay quite often, and depending upon where it is sited, it may cause a problem for us," Vanderspek said. "In fact, my husband right now is off Point Loma aboard a race committee boat."

Vanderspek said several races might be affected, including the Baja Ha-Ha Rally and the Newport to Ensenada Race.

Conversely, a floating airport might attract fish, which would seem to be a positive to anglers. But the structure might bring more with it than a resident fish population.

"You'd have to consider that there might be pollution caused by jet fuel and the navigation hazards," said Dan Correll of Fishermen's Landing. "There might be a huge security zone around it, too."

But a floating airport's benefits to the region might outweigh disadvantages anticipated by boaters.

San Diego's Lindberg Field has no more room to expand. Recent projections show that within a few years, the city will completely outgrow the single-runway facility. Nearly two-dozen studies have been completed over the past two decades for an alternate site, and a consensus cannot be reached as to a new location. Virtually every available alternative has been assailed by nearby residents who fear that a change in environment might negatively affect their quality of life and property values.

While a floating airport would obviate the need for a huge tract of prime San Diego real estate, estimates to construct such a facility run as high as $20 billion. But a floating airport could feasibly be built using today's technology.

Lang recently embarked upon a three-year adventure in China where he and a partner intend to build four of his semi-submersible platforms on spec for the oil industry, according to the North County Times.

Several years ago, Float Inc. received $1.5 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency for numeric modeling and a series of wave tank tests for its design. The test results were better than expected and led to cost-saving improvements, according to company literature.

Lawyer hopes idea gets serious look

ENCINITAS – Forget for a moment all the logistical issues associated with building a massive airport in the Pacific Ocean. The biggest hurdle of all might be selling a skeptical public on the idea.

DON KOHLBAUER / Union-Tribune Encinitas lawyer Adam Englund has devised a plan to build a floating airport about 10 miles off Point Loma. Englund's proposal has been met with skepticism.

Would people really be willing to take a 10-mile boat ride on the high seas to catch a plane? Would any politician approve a concept so futuristic that it seems lifted from the script of a bad Kevin Costner movie?

Adam Englund – an Encinitas lawyer and former actor who has been fixated for decades on the idea of a floating airport – might be a dreamer but he isn't a fool. Englund understands the obstacles he faces, the odds he is up against, the fact that others before him have promoted the same idea without success.

But San Diego needs a bigger airport, that much seems clear. And what Englund is wondering is this: Does anybody have a better idea?

More than two months after voters rejected a proposition to build a new airport at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Englund remains hard at work, seeking permits, talking to consultants, fiddling with graphics on his laptop, pitching his idea to anyone willing to listen.

It matters little to him, he insists, that the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority has all but rejected the concept. He is undaunted by the various engineering challenges, such as how to cope with fog, large waves, shifting tides and the corrosive properties of seawater.

It's time, he insists, for San Diego – a community of brilliant scientific minds – to start thinking outside the box. He notes that several well-regarded scientists, including one of the world's leading oceanographers, think a floating airport is every bit as achievable as putting a man on the moon.

Euphlotea Inc. An artist's rendering of what a floating airport could look like off the coast of San Diego. The city appears to have run out of alternatives to Lindbergh Field, which has one runway.

“We are so constrained by the land and yet there's this enormous frontier out there,” Englund said.

In some ways, the idea has a simple appeal to it. An off-shore airport wouldn't encroach on any neighborhoods, wouldn't subject anybody's house to foundation-rattling noises. Pilots could land without being forced to navigate around tall buildings and other obstructions.

And the bottom line, proponents argue, is that San Diego appears to have run out of alternatives to the city's current airport, Lindbergh Field, which has one runway.

Englund – founder and executive director of a company named Euphlotea (pronounced you-flo-tee-uh) – isn't the first person to pitch the concept to San Diego airport officials. A company named Float Inc., led by San Diego architect and engineer Don Innis, proposed an off-shore airport in the mid-1990s. Innis noted that “everything of any worth in this civilization at one point has never been done before.”

Among the experts Innis consulted was Walter Munk, a world-renowned scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. Float Inc. went so far as to patent the design for a giant platform that hovers above the ocean, supported by air. The proposal called for an underwater tunnel that would link the airport to the shore.

Although the group failed to win any converts at the San Diego Regional Airport Authority, Innis and Munk remain convinced their idea was realistic.

“We're not crackpots, and I'm annoyed they didn't take us more seriously,” Munk, an expert in oceanography and geophysics, said in a recent interview.

Airport Authority officials insist they've kept an open mind when considering the off-shore airport proposals from Float Inc. and Euphlotea.

Keith Wilschetz, the authority's director of airport systems planning, thinks such an idea actually might be workable in 20, 30, 40 years. But at the moment, Wilschetz notes, the scientific principles still are untested.

Although Japanese engineers have experimented with a floating runway, the world has never seen a floating commercial airport. Given the potential cost of such a project – perhaps $20 billion – there are simply too many unknowns, Wilschetz said. For this reason, the authority has rejected the idea, at least for now.

“Maybe it would work on a computer,” Wilschetz said. “But do we want to dedicate $20 billion to that risk?”

Englund still harbors hope that someone – if not the Airport Authority then maybe the Federal Aviation Administration – will give his plan a serious look, especially now that the Miramar site has been rejected.

Over the years, Englund has spoken with any number of experts, including Frieder Seible, dean of University of California San Diego's school of engineering. Among Seible's other credentials, he served on a panel advising San Francisco airport on a possible project to extend several of its runways into San Francisco Bay. The project is on hold.

“I certainly applaud his efforts because I do think it's something we should explore and think about,” Seible said about Englund's proposal.

On a recent morning, Englund, 53, sat down with a reporter at Starbucks in Encinitas to discuss his floating airport. He brought along a laptop computer filled with high-resolution graphics illustrating various elements of his proposal.

The plan calls for a number of ports along the coast as far north as Oceanside, where travelers would be whisked by high-speed watercraft to the airport, which would be perhaps 10 miles off shore. The airport could evolve into a mini-city of sorts, with restaurants, a deep-water port for ships, even housing. The massive platform, Englund insists, could be engineered to remain stable even in the stormiest seas.

Englund is an entertainment lawyer by trade and a former Hollywood actor whose film credits include a bit part in the movie “Texasville.” He is not related to actor Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies.

He and his fiancée, Victoria, rent an apartment in Encinitas, where Englund can walk two blocks to the bluffs overlooking the sea. When he looks at the ocean, he sees a new frontier for humanity, which is quickly exhausting its existing resources on land. He has been obsessed with the idea of a giant floating city ever since he worked at an oceanic institute in Hawaii after high school.

“Some people want to be firemen and save people,” Englund said. “This has always been my dream.”

He believes his biggest obstacle is overcoming the natural human instinct to be skeptical of anything that has never been done before. What's more, people have all sorts of phobias that would come into play – fear of getting seasick, fear of landing on the equivalent of a humongous aircraft carrier, fear of drowning.

He also will face resistance from those who believe humans have no business trying to develop the ocean. If we build a floating airport, this thinking goes, can floating strip malls be far behind?

Englund says his airport would be nothing more than a thin strip on the horizon off the San Diego coast. He says the environmental impact would be minimal.

This is a workable idea, he insists – it really is.

“I don't want to be thought of as a dreamer,” he said.

Floating an idea: Oceanside inventor off to China in venture to make next generation of oil platforms

OCEANSIDE ---- San Diego may never have a floating airport off its coast, but the Oceanside inventor behind much of the design concept for the plan may be about to show the world a cheaper, faster and better way of building oil platforms.

Variations of Craig Lang's boxlike concept already can be seen in some of the newest platforms launched by oil companies. His own company, Seaways Engineering, has never built a platform itself, but a joint venture with a Chinese company is about to change that.

Lang and his wife left their Oceanside home Sunday for a three-year venture in China, where he will work for Brian Chang, owner of Yantai-Raffles Shipyard in the Shadong Province of China.

Oceanside inventor Craig Lang admires the model he used to demonstrate how a floating airport could be built off the coast of San Diego. He has since turned the model into a bookcase in his garage. GARY WARTH Staff Photographer

The joint venture between Seaways Engineering and Chang's company will create four semisubmersible platforms that will be built on spec.

Yantai-Raffles/Seaways will build platforms based on a design Lang created about 20 years ago. While earlier attempts at striking deals with oil companies fell through, Lang said he has seen versions of his design used in some recently built platforms.

"They're sailing pretty close to the wind," he said when asked if he thought the platforms infringe on the rights he holds to the design. "What can you do? I don't want to come up against a battery of (oil company) lawyers."

Before his company went bankrupt in the late 1980s, Lang said, he and his partner were on the verge of convincing major oil companies that the Seaway design was the wave of the future. In an industry that is not quick to adopt changes, one of the major obstacles Lang faced was convincing oil executives that his design could, in just 14 months, produce a platform that was stronger and more stable than conventional platforms that take three years to build and cost three times as much.

"The problem I had in 1987 was nobody could believe the cost could be this low," Lang said.

Lang created a similar design for a floating airport proposed for off the coast of San Diego. Working with Encinitas attorney Adam Englund, Lang designed a series of interconnecting boxlike structures to support the runways. Last September, he demonstrated for the press the concept at Escondido's Offshore Model Basin, where he floated a plastic model of the airfield. No decision about where to relocate the airport has been made yet, and Lang now uses his model as a bookcase in his garage.

Conventional deep-sea oil rigs are on platforms attached to two floating pontoons. The platform and pontoons are attached by a series of diagonal supports made of steel reinforced with manganese, an alloy that requires specially trained workers to weld.

The reinforced steel was needed to overcome the multiple stress points found in the many diagonal supports of conventional platforms, Lang explained.

Sitting in his Oceanside home office last week, Lang pulled out a photo of an oil platform built by the shipyard Cammel Laird in England. By the time the platform was completed in 1983, its cost was $1.27 billion and the shipyard, founded in 1819, had gone bankrupt.

"After I got involved in this, I thought there must be a better way to do these things," he said.

Lang came to the United States from his native Scotland in 1965 to work in the nuclear industry. His later work included a submarine project, which led him to jobs in the oil industry, where he helped develop technology that could create steel pipes up to 10 miles long that could be uncoiled and laid underwater to flow oil from drilling platforms.

As an inventor, Lang began studying the design of the platforms and wondering if there were a less-expensive way of building them.

Lang said conventional semisubmersible platforms cost 10 times as much to build as ships their same size because of the specialized workers and costly material used in their construction.

While the industry standard used a series of diagonal supports, Lang envisioned four vertical supports. Below the water surface, the four supports would be connected to one another by steel plates forming a square.

Lang said the design has several advantages over the conventional design. First, the buoyant square below the surface keeps the platform steadier than the two-pontoon design, which made the platform bob like a catamaran when waves rolled through it.

The supports and below-water connections would be made of steel plates, material already used in shipbuilding, which is where much of the cost-savings come in, Lang said.

"It seems almost fundamental to me," he said. "If you're going to do something around the house, you look in the garage to see what materials you have."

The steel plates are re-enforced with box girders ---- vertical and horizontal plates that form internal chambers ---- a design commonly used to strengthen bridges. Because the design uses mild steel rather than high-carbon steel with manganese, Lang said it can be built by regular shipyard welders.

In another advantage he sees, the simple tablelike design means only four large, sturdy supports are in contact with the water's surface, rather than a series of smaller diagonal supports that would be battered by waves.

Englund said he does not know what technology would be used if a floating airport is ever built, but Lang's design has made the idea that much more feasible.

"Nobody had really done any figures to see how much it would cost," Englund said about other technology that had been proposed for a floating airport.

After presenting Lang's model and explaining the design, Englund said National Steel and Shipbuilding Company representatives said the concept made sense and could be built by the shipyard.

"He has a way of cutting through the (B.S.)," Englund said about Lang. "When he gets an idea in his head, he builds a bathtub model. He's a very hands-on practical engineer."

Lang originally formed Seaways in the late 1980s and had some interest from oil companies. In 1989, the same year Lang said he made a successful presentation to Shell Oil, his financial adviser began buying Seaways' debt in an attempt to take control of the company. A dispute in the company ended with Seaways' assets seized.

Lang walked away from the business, but he said he bought the assets back in 1992 for $50 with an obligation to pay back outstanding debts.

So far the debts have gone unpaid because Seaways hasn't made any money, Lang said. They may be about to change with his joint venture with Chang.

During the next three years, Lang said he will return to his Oceanside home every few months, but most of his time will be in China, where he still is struggling with the language.

"I can count and say, 'Pleased to meet you,' 'Hello' and 'Goodbye,' " he said about the extent of his Chinese.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at gwarth@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5410.

Poll says 66% support airport issue but voters unclear on who foots bill

Two-thirds of San Diego County voters are inclined to support an expansion or replacement of their airport, a poll has found, but most are a bit hazy on the idea of who would wind up paying for it.

A year of aggressive public outreach and education efforts may have helped push additional voters to support the idea of a new or expanded airport, according to the survey for the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Some 66 percent of people polled signaled at least some willingness to vote for the regional airport proposal expected on the November 2006 ballot, up from 55 percent a year ago. Twenty-one percent said they would be inclined to vote against an airport measure, the same as last year.

But some members of the airport authority board of directors were troubled that 72 percent of the respondents believe county taxpayers would be among those paying for a new airport. Far fewer correctly identified the federal government, revenues from airlines and government bonds as the actual source of funds.

"Our outreach is not educating people as to how this is going to be paid for," William Lynch, an executive board member, said.

The agency's public relations firm commissioned the poll, by CIC Research, to measure awareness of the airport site-selection program, the rationale behind the effort and next year's ballot measure.

The telephone survey of 814 registered voters was conducted inSeptember. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The survey found 88 percent of respondents were aware of the site-selection project, but only 32 percent - up from 21 percent last year - were aware of the planned ballot measure.

The airport authority has run newspaper inserts, held a continuing series of town meetings and passed out posters and squishy airplanes at street fairs to draw attention to the project, which began under the San Diego Association of Governments in December 2001.

The agency says Lindbergh Field could reach its capacity by 2015, even with new gates in both terminals.

The authority is using a process of gradual elimination of nine prospective sites to arrive at a choice for the ballot, but it currently is focused on just three options: a new airport in Boulevard or in the Imperial County desert or obtaining maximal use from the existing Lindbergh Field.

Up to five military sites could be analyzed later, depending on how the board decides to consider them. The board agreed to await congressional action on a Pentagon base-closure list, but none of the prospective airport sites were included, shifting the likely focus to the possibility of joint use.

A proposed site in Ocotillo Wells is still on the list but not under active review. A second, parallel runway for Lindbergh Field has been ruled out.

The Imperial County site suffered a setback with an airspace analysis that showed huge complications from its proximity to restricted military airspace and the Mexican border. Prospective arrival and departure corridors are so tight, some flights from Northern California would have to maneuver as far east as Phoenix before landing, analysts said, and a "missed approach" could send aircraft circling on a 250-mile loop to get back in line for a second try.

U.S. Rep Bob Filner, who represents Imperial County in Congress, attended the board meeting yesterday to denounce the idea that restricted airspace could render the location unsuitable. Filner said the Federal Aviation Administration should be assigned the task of resolving the issue.

"The FAA's job is to figure out a way to make the airspace work," said Filner, D-San Diego, arguing that the existing Lindbergh Field airport suffers similar airspace constraints.

The poll, meanwhile, did not offer respondents a chance to weigh in on specific sites.

Some 13 percent of those surveyed said they didn't know how they would vote on a ballot measure until a site is picked.

Among the 66 percent who said they would support a regional airport solution if the election were held now, some had clear conditions. Some 11 percent of the overall sample indicated they would support only an expanded Lindbergh Field, said Skip Hall, an economist with CIC Research. Nine percent said they would support only a new site.

Floating airport idea is promoted

ESCONDIDO – What appeared to be the beginning of a public-relations campaign by a group advocating a $5 billion to $10 billion floating airport off the San Diego coast kicked off yesterday with a demonstration at a business here.

A group that calls itself Euphlotea – the middle syllable is pronounced "float" – maintains that a floating airport is the most economical and best option for replacing Lindbergh Field. Such a concept was rejected two years ago by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Yesterday's demonstration featured a small model, made from $173 worth of material, floating in a research pool at Offshore Model Basin, an Escondido company that does research on ship and oil platform designs. The demonstration was intended primarily to increase awareness of the possibility of an offshore airport, Euphlotea spokesman Adam Englund said.

Englund, an attorney from Encinitas, said his group wants to circulate a petition for a ballot initiative to compete against the November 2006 measure the airport board is working on. Euphlotea's plans can be found at www.OffshoreAirport.org.

Model Demonstration for San Diego's International Floating Airport

The floating airport advocates are offering the media an opportunity to ask questions and find answers at a demonstration at the Escondido Offshore Model Basin, 578 Enterprise St, Escondido, 92029, at 10 a.m., Thursday.

Craig Lang, noted Scottish marine engineer and naval architect, designer of semi-submersible structures, will show how it all works by floating a preliminary model.

“This is only a technical exercise to explain the needs and qualifications for the port,” says Lang. “A floating airport would be a structure with ample room for innumerable facilities. It could include a virtual mall below decks.”

Airport options range from a floater to magnetic levitation

Futuristic ideas to solve San Diego's air transportation needs – one in the ocean, another using electromagnetic propulsion – took brief spotlights in an airport board meeting.

The notion of an offshore airport, rejected by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority two years ago, came up again Monday as the founder of a new group exploring a "floating airport" asked the board of directors to consider a collaboration.

Later, the board supported a request for federal funds to study the potential for a maglev transit corridor, a concept one supporter believes could link Lindbergh Field to other Southern California airports.

Adam Englund of Encinitas told the authority board he has founded a nonprofit corporation called Euphlotea – the middle syllable is pronounced "float" – to explore the feasibility of an offshore site.

Englund had just three minutes to make his pitch during a public-comment period, imploring the board to reconsider the concept as part of its search for a site to replace or augment Lindbergh Field.

If the board won't pursue the idea, he said, his group is prepared to circulate petitions for a ballot initiative to compete against the November 2006 measure the board is working toward. The airport agency is planning to present its choice of nine options for the region's long-term air transportation needs to voters next year.

In 2003, staff analysts said a similar proposal by a business called Float Inc. posed too many untested engineering challenges, including constantly changing ocean conditions, high winds and occasional dense fog.

Englund said his group, unrelated to Float Inc., is exploring a different kind of platform, possibly involving a "huge barge" or a semi-submersible oil rig. Current thinking involves a location six to nine miles off Mission Bay, he said, with access by hydrofoil from multiple spots along the county coastline.

All it takes to work on the idea, he said, is $500,000 to $1 million in support from the public agency.

The board remained mum, but later agreed to support the San Diego Association of Governments' request for funds from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study maglev technology. The idea – using magnetic levitation for high-speed transit to distant sites – has surfaced in two contexts at the airport.

One is an idea for a line on an elevated corridor along Interstate 5, linking Lindbergh Field to Los Angeles International Airport with stops in Oceanside, at John Wayne Airport in Orange County and at Long Beach Airport.

The other, championed by U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, would use maglev to whisk passengers to a new regional airport in Imperial County. Filner also is pursuing federal funds for the idea.

Jeff Ristine: (619) 542-4580; jeff.ristine@uniontrib.com

Lawmaker reiterates support for Imperial County airport site

SAN DIEGO ---- A San Diego congressman on Monday reiterated his support for a new regional airport in the Imperial County portion of his district, telling the county's airport agency that it risks credibility if it drops the remote area from consideration.

U.S. Rep. Bob Filner's backing of Imperial County came shortly before the idea of a floating Pacific Ocean airport also resurfaced. A similar idea was considered and then dropped by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority in 2003.

The authority has four civilian locations and five military sites that could replace downtown San Diego's Lindbergh Field, the nation's busiest single-runway airport. Imperial County is currently one of the potential airport sites and its local elected leaders along with Filner are pushing it as a means of economic development for that region.

Lindbergh's limited capacity to expand has led to forecasts that it will be unable to handle increasing passenger and cargo demand within about 15 years. The authority is charged with coming up with a new site or Lindbergh expansion plan in time for a November 2006 ballot issue.

Earlier this spring, Filner didn't pull any punches when he appeared before the authority board to chastise it as it was about to drop the Imperial County site because that's more than a one-hour drive for most San Diego County residents and about a two-hour drive for North County residents. After Filner's tongue-lashing, the board couldn't muster the votes to drop Imperial.

On Monday, Filner took a more conciliatory approach, saying he wanted to address the nine-member panel in a "calmer way."

"I would hope that this board would give fair evaluation of the Imperial County site," said Filner, a Democrat whose district includes that county. "Let's be visionary."

Filner said the Pentagon's exclusion of local military bases in a list of nationwide base closures and realignment recommendations issued May 13 makes it clear that joint use of any of the region's military bases is unrealistic.

"With those recommendations, if you had eliminated Imperial County we would be right back where started 35 years ago," Filner said in reference to the long-standing debate over a new airport location. "For your own credibility, you have to keep Imperial County on your list."

The authority bowed to pressure from area lawmakers earlier this year and has agreed not to study or discuss any of the base sites on its list until after the base closure process is complete in the fall.

Filner also spoke in support of a planned study of a magnetic levitation train system, that latest development in train technology that combines electricity and magnets to create a cushion of air on which the trains "float" or levitate and are propelled. He said he supports such a train as a means of shuttling airline passengers from San Diego and Imperial County airport.

The authority on Monday passed a resolution supporting the San Diego Association of Governments' plan to seek $2 million in federal funds to study magnetic levitation train corridors.

Money for such a study is in the U.S. Senate version of a new federal transportation bill, but is not included in the House of Representatives' version. Filner sits on the committee that will iron out the differences in the bills and vowed to make certain the funds were available.

A new airport is estimated to cost somewhere between $1 billion and $10 billion. It would be paid for through federal grants and airport revenues with no local tax dollars required for construction.

Besides Lindbergh and Imperial County, Borrego Springs and a site in Campo are on the list of civilian sites. Two sites at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar as well as North Island Naval Air Station, Camp Pendleton and March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County are on the military site list.

A North County attorney argued Monday that none of those sites would be necessary if the authority turned to the ocean as its preferred airport location.

Adam Englund of Encinitas told the authority he is leading a group that wants to get 100,000 signatures of registered voters in order to place an ocean airport advisory question on the 2006 ballot.

Englund said the "Euphlotea" idea he is backing would transport passengers by fast-moving, hydrofoil watercraft from stations up and down the county coastline.

"We want people to understand that this is an opportunity for the authority and the people of San Diego County to set a precedent and leave a legacy," Englund said following his brief presentation to the authority board.

Englund contended that he represents a "broad-based, enthusiastic and fast-growing group of supporters." He also said the nonprofit group is forming a political action committee.

Englund said he and his supporters are convinced the technology to build an offhsore airport exists. The authority considered an offshore site proposed by another group in 2003, ultimately rejecting the idea as unfeasible.

For more information on Englund's plans, see the Web site www.OffshoreAirport.org.

Reach staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.

ADAM ENGLUND joins Sandy live in the TravelTalkRADIO studios in Southern California.

Adam is intent on bringing a floating airport somewhere and why not San Diego. He lives there and San Diego is shopping a new airport facility. From a tour and travel point of view it could mean millions if not billions of dollars in revenues. A terminal for cruise ships and a community onto itself. Plus 6 miles off the San Diego coast it is perfectly legal to gamble. Hmm is anybody listening yet? Check it out at http://www.traveltalkradio.com/archives_oct09_05.html (segments: 4 & 5).

• Segment 4 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 5 (MP3 or WMA)

ADAM ENGLUND joins Sandy live in the TravelTalkRADIO studios in Southern California.

Adam is intent on bringing a floating airport somewhere and why not San Diego. He lives there and San Diego is shopping a new airport facility. From a tour and travel point of view it could mean millions if not billions of dollars in revenues. A terminal for cruise ships and a community onto itself. Plus 6 miles off the San Diego coast it is perfectly legal to gamble. Hmm is anybody listening yet? Check it out at http://www.traveltalkradio.com/archives_jul17_05.html (segments: 1,2,3,6,7 & 12).

• Segment 1 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 2 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 3 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 6 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 7 (MP3 or WMA)
• Segment 12 (MP3 or WMA)