No Flying....4 days in a row

This week was going to be the one where I got to fly every single day. That is, until the weather had its say. Every morning, starting with Monday, I was planning to go somewhere early with my flying buddy Ron. And every morning the fog kept us on the ground.

Finally today it looked like we would be able to get out of El Monte and go somewhere. But the fog lingered until around 11. So Ron spent the morning redoing the gold stripes on the blue and white Piper Cherokee 140. It looked great when done and when I arrived at around 11 Ron had just noticed that the front strut was sagging again. Again! We've had it fixed, resealed, jimmied and more at least three times in the past three years. In between we were constantly having it filled with nitrogen.

Enough is enough. Ron took the airplane down to Dick at FAST Aviation at the KEMT airport and Dick is going to completely rebuild the strut. It might be ready Friday around 11...about the same time the fog is supposed to be burned off....let's hope!

El Monte Takeoff

Taking off from an airport is a unique experience. Here, the little airplane that could (Piper Cherokee 140) takes off from El Monte Airport (KEMT) early in the morning and turns left crosswind.

Too Hot

I was going to head up the coast to Santa Barbara for lunch today but it's so friggin' hot I don't want to get into the airplane! I'm going to wait until the sun is going down and then make a run up the coast, that should be a lot more comfortable.

Santa Barbara turns into Santa Paula

Ron and I headed out to Santa Barbara for lunch but when we picked up the ATIS information from about 30 miles to the east, we didn't want to attempt to land there. Broken clouds at 700 feet is not our cup of tea. So we diverted over to Santa Paula and saw all kinds of cool airplanes. Seems like we weren't the only ones with the need to find a good meal that wasn't along the coast.