Los Angeles area recommendations?

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HouTxPilot82

Pre-takeoff checklist
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HouTxPilot82
Find myself staying in El Segundo area, just south of LAX for the next 4 days. I will have some free time and would love to go up for a local (60-90) minute scenic flight. I've done this in other locations ... grab a CFI from a local school who knows the airspace and works the radios, while I fly the plane and enjoy the scenery. (My time is almost all in C172s).

Any recommendations on flight schools here I should check out for this? And recommendations for a fun flight?

Thanks!
 
luvflyin said:
Calling @eman1200. He did this out of VNY awhile back
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yo. yeah I grabbed a cfi and a warrior out of Corsair @VNY and went to Catalina. freakin awesome. we did the mini route southbound and special flight rules northbound. fun times.
 
Have lunch at the Waypoint Cafe at Camarillo. Great food and good plane watching on the patio. Flight up the coast of Malibu is always nice scenery.
 
KFUL is a bit further away from El Segundo, but call Garret at http://funoutside.net/ and he'll take care of you. Since it will be all dual you might even get him to do it in his SR-20.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone - I'll definitely check them out and see if I can make one of these work! Cheers.
 
El Segundo? Go right next door to Hawthorne. Beach Cities Aviation. Great folks.
 
Off topic - but why can't I think of El Segundo without thinking of it's most famous "residents."
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http://southbayaviation.com/

Went up with a CFI from this place based out of Torrance airport late this morning for about an hour long flight. Flew out to Catalina island for a landing, walk around the gift shop/take pics, take off and fly over Avalon, then back to Torrance. Easy scheduling when I called 2 days ago to make the appointment, and they matched me up with a CFI who is a member of the conservancy and doesn't have to pay the $25 landing fee.

Very cool experience on the approach - strange sight picture, as it appears you are already well below pattern altitude when you are setting up to join right downwind for 22.

Thanks for the suggestions!
 
HouTxPilot82 said:
http://southbayaviation.com/

Went up with a CFI from this place based out of Torrance airport late this morning for about an hour long flight. Flew out to Catalina island for a landing, walk around the gift shop/take pics, take off and fly over Avalon, then back to Torrance. Easy scheduling when I called 2 days ago to make the appointment, and they matched me up with a CFI who is a member of the conservancy and doesn't have to pay the $25 landing fee.

Very cool experience on the approach - strange sight picture, as it appears you are already well below pattern altitude when you are setting up to join right downwind for 22.

Thanks for the suggestions!
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Glad you enjoyed it. It was my favorite destination when I was flying out of TOA. You can also occasionally spot whales in the channel. While I only occasionally used South Bay Aviation, I recall them being good people.

If you are still in the area, I'd also recommend touring the Robinson Helicopter factory at TOA.
 
As you approach the building after parking the plane:
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Wife has some on her phone of the approach into Catalina that I'll try to grab so I can post.
 
It was nice for a couple of days to just be in 'ignorance is bliss' mode and doing a fun flight while escaping from the hurricane back in my home town... dreading the news of damage to my home that inevitably came in a bunch of pictures/videos from fellow residents/neighbors posting on a Whatsapp group.
IMG-20170830-WA0074.jpg
My house is one of the ones on the right ... it's been like this for a couple of days with no end in sight. Don't know how much higher the water level got or how much it WILL get as the Brazos continues to rise. The current predicament is not even overspilling from Brazos. It seems all other upstream neighborhoods drain into a creek that runs parallel to a major road here and empties into the Brazos. At some point on Monday when indications were that the rain was going to subside earlier than expected, and we had NOT YET had any significant flooding, residents were hopeful. It turns out at that point, some gates from this creek were shut off and all the draining from 'upstream' neighborhoods kept draining into the creek which overflowed and backed up into the 3-4 neighborhoods closest - mine being one of them.

Flights back to town that I had moved to Friday this week anticipating reopening of Hobby have been cancelled anyway and I won't get to return until late Sunday to even see and review the damage. Lots of people have confirmed water in the garage, so I expect that at the LEAST. Many have water inside their house as well, which I also fear.

By the way - this is in the 'Riverstone' development that is just a couple miles from Sienna.
 
One street away from me, very similar to how my own street looks:
IMG-20170829-WA0094.jpg
 
Thanks. Almost all of us in this neighborhood did NOT have any flood insurance, so I suspect it will be a long/expensive road to recovery. Add to that - it seems the upstream districts (which are dry, with no water accumulation) are still sending runoff downstream through our area and the system can't handle all that water. Here's a drone video somebody uploaded to youtube showing the scale of water:


I'm on the street that can be seen at about the 8/9 second mark and then again around the 1:05 - 1:10 mark.
 
Damn dude. Hopefully it's just 'stuff' that can be replaced.
 
Luckily I'm not one that collects a lot of 'stuff' - i have a bunch of things in garage including a motorcycle I never ride, and wife's daily driver car - all the other crap I'm ok with losing even though its painful. The biggest pain is wondering how much damage there might be INSIDE the house that requires ripping sheetrock out, cabinets in kitchen, carpets, etc. I'm not one that likes doing 'handy home projects' even in good times, so it'll be a pain to deal with this. I know I'm not alone in this - TONS of other people have similar damage in their homes and some likely a lot worse than mine. I'm grateful I left early before the mandatory evac order while there was still time to get out.
 
Thanks - if anyone has contacts in Houston area in cleanup/rebuilding/construction/general contractor type stuff who is trustworthy they can share, I would be grateful - I can post that to the group of homeowners that will all be needing such work in the coming weeks and months.
 
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