Blue skies

I went off to French Valley for lunch today, after a long day working yesterday. It was an absolutely gorgeous day; I heard several airports reporting greater than 50 miles visibility. The trip to French Valley is about an hour of things to see over LA itself and then into the drier parts between LA and San Diego.

I don’t know what it was today, but on the way out no one, but no one heard my callsign correctly. After the first couple controllers had trouble, I was working on saying it slowly and distinctly, but still had to correct it. It’s kind of funny, because no one asked me to say it again, but no one got it right either.

The trip out was gorgeous, but there was lots of traffic. I think I saw planes at every airport I passed, including Compton, which is often a ghost airport. I got to watch a couple transport jets go through the pattern at John Wayne, but had two traffic alerts called for me nearer French Valley. I was seeing a fair number of planes, but obviously not all of them. Always nice to get help from controllers.
French Valley was about as busy as usual on a weekend, which means there was plenty going on. The restaurant seemed a little overstaffed, which is to be expected at 1:00 on Super Bowl Sunday, I suppose. Always a good airport to hang out and watch the traffic, though it was hot and dry today (most airports were in the high 20’s (Celsius) and had dewpoints below zero).

The trip back was much less eventful, though I did see a pilot land on the grass next to the runway at Corona. I would guess this was an instructor exposing a student to a real grass strip landing, but there’s no way to tell. The pilot certainly didn’t seem to be in distress.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. I did see a Super Bowl party (I assume a Super Bowl party, definitely a party) in a hangar at SMO.

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