Evening Flight to French Valley (F70) / Lake Elsinor...
... another night flight on the books!!
(link to the remaining pictures is at the bottom of this post)
so many months ago i told steve i would take him on a flight when he moved here, and since he has been here for a few days we decided this evening would be the time... originally i had planned on just doing a sunset flight (like i did with my cousin last time he was in town) down the coast of LA, starting downtown heading west out over malibu and then heading south over LAX and down to newport and back. however, after arriving at the airport and preflighting the plane we decided (with a little proding from my flight instructor) to fly east over lake elsinor and land a little uncontrolled airport in french valley...
we took off from hawthorne about 1 hour before sunset, the flight would take us around 35 minutes to go the 70 or so nautical miles to french valley. departing hawthorne we flew south and picked up radar service shortly thereafter, which pointed us south-east towards the mountains. steve was in the back taking some photos.
this would be steves first flight in a single engine private plane. he seemed a little quiet but everytime i would glance over my shoulder he was just grinning and taking it all in. what a great evening for flight, next to no wind, clear skies, and not a lot of air traffic!
arriving in french valley i made a very impressive (to myself, hehe) landing... after an hours worth of tuna melts and chat about upcoming flight, relationships, life in general, we decided to head back. we left french valley and again picked up radar service, while en route back off to the north we could see the fireworks from disney, which was very cool from 4500 ft!
another smooth landing in hawthorne and 1.9 hours of flight time added to my log book. what a great evening!!!
a whole slew of pictures can be seen: here
map showing hawthorne (red star) and french valley (blue star):
Comments
Yay! That was an awesome flight! I can't wait to go again :)
Posted by: Steve | July 21, 2006 10:15 PM
i agree... :) catalina next time perhaps!!
Posted by: Jason | July 21, 2006 10:29 PM
hi jason:
looks like you had a fun time, what a view. now i remember steve..(hi steve, you lucky dog, moving to california)cant wait to fly with you jason, i think! LOL
Posted by: fran ditri | July 23, 2006 04:28 PM