Thursdays we usually have tech team lunch meetings in the office in Westwood, and typically I manage to get out of it. The last time I was in the office was mid-June. This week I was all set to fly in. I even decided that I wasn't going to distract any of my coworkers with bribes a la, "Come pick me up at the airport and we can go flying after the meeting." I've been feeling kinda funny about doing that. It's one thing if I'm blowing off work, because I work weird hours and just get it done. But encouraging the people who work office hours to blow off an afternoon might not be the best thing for everybody. So I came up with a mode of transportation to and from the office from Santa Monica Airport that would only cost me 70 cents each way and would take about 15 minutes each way...they call it..."THE BUS." Public transportation, what a concept. Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus runs right by SMO, and with one quick transfer I can be at the office in about 15-20 minutes. A buck forty round trip. That was the plan, at least. Ironically, I remembered to bring my security badge with me (they've tightened up security at the office), I had bus fare in my pocket, and I even had a printout of the bus route schedule. It's only when I'm prepared that stuff falls through...I got the word at the last minute that the meeting had been cancelled because the big-wigs were doing their thing today. Oh, well. Figures...the day I want to go to the office is the day I don't have to.
The plane had already been preflighted, and the sky was blue...may as well go flying. I bopped over to Cable Airport to see if Larry Hackney was there. He's finishing up his RV-7A, and I assume he'll be flying before too long. He wasn't around...in fact nobody was there at the EAA hangar. So I got out of there and just flew around a bit. Somebody recently made a joke about an old flight school where instructors would tell their students in the summertime, "You are cleared to climb and maintain seven zero Fahrenheit." It's been smokin' on the ground around here (not literally, although we did have a nasty median strip fire at Chino the other day between the departure ends of 26L and 26R), so I climbed up to about 10,500', where the temp was a nice, comfy 67F.
Interestingly, now that I've sealed the canopy sides (with McMaster-Carr 1120A712 rubber seal trim), the noise level has dropped considerably, and the sides are well sealed. One slight downside in hot weather is that you no longer get that rush of air from the vents zooming out through the gaps in the sides. It's a good thing overall, especially when it's cold, but for hot weather the "flow-through" gappiness was kinda cool! Whatever, I'll take the better seal.
Anyway, I putzed around up at 10,500' for a while burning 7.5 gph or so. I flew around the corner at Cajon Pass, turned northwest, then scooted back southeast. Here you can see Silverwood Lake in the center and Lake Arrowhead on the left.
From here I descended over Rialto, Ontario, and came screamin' into Chino. Just another typical hour in the RV-7. It never gets old.