Here's a decent poor daylight shot showing all the primed crap. No more green...woohoo.
Jen was in LA for the afternoon doing actress stuff, so she was nice enough to pick me up at the office and drop me back off at SMO. The guy who picked me up this morning was having bad allergy problems and was all stuffed up, so he didn't want to fly and risk having ear problems. Anyway, Jen and I had an early dinner together at the Spitfire Cafe. By 5pm, it cleared up nicely, so I got out VFR no problem. It was a bit hazy, but that's the norm in LA in the summer. It was relatively cool (64F at 2000' MSL), and I set up for just shy of 23/2400 leaned to 45 LOP (lean of peak). The oil temp was stable in the 170s. That's about as low as it gets...the vernatherm definitely works. Lean of peak, everything runs nice and cool. Check out the CHTs in the high 200s. Burning 7 gallons per hour, I was still doing 155 knots over the ground -- can't complain. Here's a shot of the ACS2002...I was getting bounced around a bit, so sorry for the fuzzy focus and crummy composition...
The VFR flight home is almost as easy as going IFR. Head straight for downtown LA at about 2000' MSL, staying beneath the class B... (love the LA smog)
...and over LA turn "right" toward the east to follow the 10 freeway.
You can either follow the 60 and stay south of El Monte's airspace, or you can do what I did today and usually do, which is contact EMT tower for the transition. I prefer that, because there's a lot of traffic in the 10/605 area, and tower calls it out for you. From there I head south of Brackett's airspace and down over Chino Hills...if Jen's home I fly over the house and do a little wiggle waggle thing, then head straight toward Chino to enter right downwind for 26R. Today I figured a few of the guys might be at the field, so I requested a low approach prior to landing...hehehe...
When I got back to the hangar, I spent some more time getting ready for the trip. I went through the AirChart west and east atlases and marked each page in order according to the route. I just used little post-it notes that show the numerical order, and the waypoints I'm using on each respective page. It's marked all the way to Taunton, MA...I'll have 21 page flips to do enroute.
