NEIGHBORS : Flying High : A tiny plane from Ventura County reaches the big time at the world’s largest air show.

Today is the last day of the world’s largest air show, held by the Experimental Aircraft Assn. Museum in Osh Kosh, Wis.--and Ventura County has been represented.

Earlier this year the world’s smallest flyable plane (an honor handed down by the Guinness book folks) was trucked from Newbury Park to the museum. It was on display during the air show and will remain at the museum.

This plane was built from 1980-84 by Don and Lori Stits and their two children. Don is the director of the Aviation Support Division at Point Mugu.

The plane has a wingspan of 6 feet, 3 inches, is five feet tall at its highest point and weighs just 252 pounds.

If you’re not doing anything at 3:42 a.m. Aug. 6, you might want to check out the beginning of the partial eclipse of the moon.

And then again, you might not. Moorpark College astronomy teacher Hal Jandorf said not to expect too much. “I think it’s going to be really tough to see,” he said. “It will be easily observed on a different continent. Asia, I think, but I’m not sure. It’s so early in the morning . . . it’s a useless event.”

Speaking of celestial visibility . . . Jandorf was much more enthusiastic about shields that were put over the parking lot lights near the Moorpark College observatory last week. The shields make the sky darker for stargazers and make the ground brighter for people walking to and from their cars.

“My students and I didn’t even know they had been installed,” he said. “We set up telescopes and normally the light is really annoying; it reflects from the eyepieces and the students can’t find objects easily. Suddenly it was different. It was dark. The Milky Way was just incredible.”

Anyone willing to get up in the wee hours of the morning to look at an eclipse probably also would like to know that at 9:14 a.m. the next day, Aug. 7, summer officially will be half over.

When the National Park Service decided the middle of last month to kill a couple thousand pigs on Santa Rosa Island, not many people spoke out strongly in favor of the pigs or against them.

Well, we discovered that as with most of us, pigs have their good and bad points:

They are smart animals--Harvard behaviorist B.F. Skinner has taught several to play the piano . . . but they are also lazy, sleeping 13 hours a day.

They are relative newcomers, having arrived in North America at the start of European immigration . . . but now that they are here, they are practically taking over the place, to the extent that the pig might have passed the deer as the most populous game animal.

They have a disgusting habit of eating maggots. Then again, who wants maggots?

FYI: An average slice of bacon has about 40 calories.

The Oxnard Convention and Visitors Bureau sent out a press release announcing the promotional appearance of King Kong. You may have noticed him atop Pacific Coast Ford on Tuesday.

“Kong will be in town to promote the Oxnard Air Show,” read the release.

Hey, that’s Mr. Kong to you.