Today was a very busy day. First I flew to San Diego to help setup a new office for San Diego. My partner Jeff and I took off under a cloudy sky in Arizona, heading towards San Diego in a Piper Arrow II. The flight took much longer than anticipated, with head winds averaging around 20 knots. Jeff flew until we reached the Laguna Mountains. At this point the clouds where above and below us. I took control of the plane, as ATC instructed us to descend in to the clouds.

 

We descended until the windows were full of white clouds, and readied the plane to land as we were give clearance to start out approach in to Montgomery Field (KMYF) in San Diego. Right as I was in intercept the localizer, my approach clearance was revoked, so a faster King Air could fly the approach first. At this moment I was out of the clouds, and the vector that ATC gave us turned us right back in to the clouds. In a few minutes we were cleared for approach again, and descended down out of the clouds again to land for another beautiful in San Diego.

 

A few hours later, on another IFR flight plan, we took off back for Chandler (KCHD). After a short climb through the clouds we were above the clouds, and continued climbing to 9,000 feet. At this altitude we had a 40 knot tailwind, and needed to have 15 degrees of correction to keep straight on course. As we passed by Imperial airport (KIPL) I noticed six plumes of smoke streaking from our altitude down towards the ground. As the plumes fanned out in different directions I realized that the Blue Angles were practicing to the left of us. As a kid my dad would take my brother and I to the El Toro marine base to see the Blue Angles. If you think it is incredible to see them perform from the ground, you should see them from the sky! One of them was rocketing towards us, when all the sudden he made an outside loop back towards the base in El Centro.

 

We landed back in Chandler under the same cloudy skies that we started with. I headed home, as Stefanie was picking up cakes for the Blue and Gold Cub Scout meeting. At the meeting Jakob received his Bear award in Cub Scouts. At the meeting Joshua, Jakob, and Emily made some interesting structures using marshmallows and toothpicks.