MOVING: Think the freeway’s crowded? Look up....

MOVING: Think the freeway’s crowded? Look up. Nearly three-quarters of a million airplanes took off or landed in Orange County last year, and such volume is taxing local air traffic controllers. . . . So they’re being moved from El Toro to the nation’s first mega-regional air traffic control facility, which will manage all middle-altitude traffic between Burbank and San Diego. It will open at Miramar Naval Air Station in December.

FLIGHT PLAN: Jeff Baker of Fullerton made his name coaching “uncoachable” California Youth Authority offenders into the 1977 high school football championship playoffs. Now Baker wants to coach ghetto and barrio kids into the ranks of airline pilots. . . . Baker, a teacher at CYA’s Youth Training Center in Chino, is also a flight instructor and is busy drumming up corporate underwriting. “The airlines are looking for qualified minority pilots, but these kids never think of it or don’t think they can do it,” Baker says. “Lots of them don’t know anyone who’s ever been on an airliner.”

SLOW MOTION: The autobiography of Eddie Martin, the 1920s barnstormer who founded what is now John Wayne Airport, is nearing publication, and among his yarns is a stunt not likely to be re-enacted nowadays. . . . Martin wrote that he could take off into a strong Santa Ana wind and never leave the airport. In a bi-wing Jenny, “I could throttle back and float backward clear across the field. . . . It sure drew a crowd.” As a finale, he would land so slowly he’d stop dead as soon as he touched the runway.

MODEL HOMES: Sure, we can go to the moon, but how are the accommodations? Might be pretty good, eventually, if the Orange Coast College Research Club’s Space Shuttle experiment works out. . . . Using cargo space reserved 11 years ago by the local American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the club will send a canister into space that will melt simulated lunar soil to see whether it will make bricks. And if bricks can be made on the moon, can Crater Village Estates be far behind?