The tangent splash in \PG(6,q)

Let B be a subplane of PG(2,q^3) of order q that is tangent to $\ell_\infty$. Then the tangent splash of B is defined to be the set of q^2+1 points of $\ell_\infty$ that lie on a line of B. In the Bruck-Bose representation of PG(2,q^3) in PG(6,q), we investigate the interaction between the ruled surface corresponding to B and the planes corresponding to the tangent splash of B. We then give a geometric construction of the unique order-$q$-subplane determined by a given tangent splash and a fixed order-$q$-subline.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1303.550

Exterior splashes and linear sets of rank 3

In \PG(2,q^3), let $\pi$ be a subplane of order $q$ that is exterior to \li. The exterior splash of $\pi$ is defined to be the set of $q^2+q+1$ points on \li that lie on a line of $\pi$. This article investigates properties of an exterior \orsp\ and its exterior splash. We show that the following objects are projectively equivalent: exterior splashes, covers of the circle geometry $CG(3,q)$, Sherk surfaces of size $q^2+q+1$, and \GF(q)-linear sets of rank 3 and size $q^2+q+1$. We compare our construction of exterior splashes with the projection construction of a linear set. We give a geometric construction of the two different families of sublines in an exterior splash, and compare them to the known families of sublines in a scattered linear set of rank 3