For everything that I can list about General Aviation that I love, I can find something about Commercial Aviation that falls somewhere between annoying and detestable. This isn’t a knock against those of you that make a living flying the aluminum cattle cars through the sky, I appreciate what you do, and every one of you that I have met are great. It is the whole travel experience that I find less than appealing.
I had a great run, going somewhere around 4+ years without flying the airlines, making all my trips in either our Mooney or by car. However, new responsibilities at work require travel four times a year and the locations for the most part just don’t work for the Mooney. Yes, I could get to the locations in Canada, the east coast, and parts of the Caribbean where meetings take place in the Mooney, but the travel time just doesn’t make it work. The two recent commercial flights have just made me love General Aviation (and our Mooney) even more, if that was even possible.
One of the things I love about General Aviation is the unexpected adventures and people that you meet along the way. If you’ve made more than a few trips in your own plane, you know that because of any number of reasons you often end up stopping someplace unplanned. These stops lead to seeing things you didn’t know existed, and meeting great people on your journey.
I have a really good friend with a beautiful Mooney, and we have been trying to get together for months. It seems that life has been getting in the way, but I thought the stars would finally align. He had been having some intermittent starting issues with his plane. His mechanic had just replaced the battery cables, and they were meeting at the airport Saturday morning. He sent me a text that the starting issue was still there, and he wouldn’t be flying. I relayed the bad news to my wife and asked her where she wanted to fly.
After a little back and forth she asked, “Is there an airport near the poppy preserve?”
“Fox Field is up there, let me see if they have a restaurant,” I replied.
A quick search showed that Foxy’s Landing & Restaurant located on the field at General William J. Fox Airfield is open on Saturday’s until 2pm. The reviews were good, but I’ll be honest, I’ve gone to some airport restaurants with bad reviews that had good food and ones with good reviews that have bad food. I don’t put a lot of weight in the reviews and as long as I can park the plane and walk into the restaurant that’s good enough for me to give it a try.
“What if we fly over the poppy preserve and then get lunch?” she asked.
I asked, “Sure, are the poppies blooming?”
“I don’t know, the website doesn’t show them blooming yet but there should be other flowers,” was her response.
That was good enough for me, so I filed a flight plan, got a weather briefing, and we headed to the airport.
We departed to the north, leveling off below the 4,000’ shelf of the LAX Bravo and then began the climb again once out from under the north edge of the airspace. Up over Mt Wilson and the Observatory we cruised, hitting a few bumps (typical) as we crossed over the San Gabriel Mountain Range and began a descent into the Antelope Valley. The late winter rains had added some green to the mountains but that faded to various shades of brown in the valley.
From a distance we could see the parking lot at the poppy preserve was almost empty, a bad sign. When it is in full bloom the parking lot is packed and there are cars along the road leading to the lot. We made one turn over the preserve and there was a hint of green and a little color from some small flowers but no golden orange from the poppies. Not surprised, but a little disappointed we made a turn to the east for Fox Field.
I picked up the ATIS, winds were from 270 at 20 knots and runway 24 was in use. A call up to tower gave us instructions to enter a right downwind for 24 and report midfield. A few minutes later we were in the pattern.
Me: “Fox Field Tower, Mooney 1-0-1-5 Echo is midfield right downwind 2-4.”
Tower: “Mooney 1-5 Echo, runway 2-4 cleared to land, winds 2-7-0 at 1-6.”
Abeam the numbers I dropped the gear and pulled power back to 13” to begin the descent from pattern to the runway. On short final I wasn’t a believer in the 16knot wind Tower was reporting. It took almost all the rudder to be lined up and I was working the yoke to stay on the centerline. The right main touched down and I put in a little more aileron to the right before the left main touched followed by the nose.
A short taxi later we shutdown in Transient Parking and I had to grab my ball cap to keep it from blowing off my head when I got out of the plane. I pushed it back into parking, chocked, the wheels, and we headed to the restaurant. The wind was whistling through the doors when we stepped inside. After stopping by the restroom to wash my hands We walked from the lobby into the restaurant.
The last thing I was expecting was to run into someone I knew at Fox Field in “lovely” Lancaster, CA, but there he was at a table just inside the door. If you have been at Fullerton or around the SoCal area for very long you have probably met or heard of “Captain” (yes, he is an airline Captain) Mike Jesch. He’s very active in the GA community, does presentations at the Fullerton Airport Pilot Association Meetings, online presentations, is one of the aforementioned commercial pilots, a CFII, and an all-around great guy!
He was deep in conversation with the others at the table and I didn’t want to interrupt, so we stood there a moment before he looked up. I met him once at a FAPA meeting a long time ago and didn’t expect him to remember. When he looked up, I said “Hi Mike,” and put out my hand. He stood up and shook it saying, ‘You’re Richard right, from Into the Sky?”
I said “Yes,” I’m sure my ball cap helped.
He said he would love to chat once they finished up. I told him we would be having lunch and to come join us when he was done.
The food was excellent, one of the best omelets I have had in a long time, and the French fries were perfect. Yes, you read that right, an omelet with French fries. I’m not a fan of hash browns so instead of getting those which I won’t eat, I got fries, which I will eat.
We were almost done with our meal when Mike came over and asked, “Is this seat taken?”
“Nope, pull up a chair,” I said sliding over to make room in the booth. He sat down and his friend, also a CFII, slid into the other side next to my wife. That was the beginning of a great conversation about flight training, flying to Alaska, and just flight in general. It was a wonderful visit with two exceptional people.
The waitress stopped by the table to apologize that she needed to start vacuuming. We thanked her for taking good care of us and decided it was probably time to leave and let her close the place down.
Outside the 16-20 knot winds when we landed (I still don’ t believe those numbers) were blowing harder and the ATIS was calling them 260 at 20. The plane beating up the pattern called for a wind check and tower said they were 260 at 28 which sounded a lot closer to what I was thinking.
Starting with almost 30mph over the wings we were off the ground in no time. Tower initially gave us a left crosswind turn to the south but had a plane call up inbound on a conflicting course so turned us back to the runway heading until we were clear and then turned us on our way. The flight back was smooth, and we were soon landing back at Fullerton. I never would have guessed that a flight to Fox Field would result in some great “hangar flying.”
