Plane ownership, year one

The Cardinal is in for the annual inspection. It hasn’t quite been a year yet, but the plane is in the shop and I’m busy, so I likely won’t have time to do much flying before then. This year has had a lot of good times, and one really long, really not so good time. We’ll start with the good.

The best part of ownership so far is getting to take it out on a whim and actually go places without having to worry about scheduling the rental weeks in advance and being limited to one or two hours with the plane. I’m still very much learning my own capabilities and was hoping to get mountain flying training this winter (California “winter”), but wasn’t able to unfortunately. More on that later.

All told, I flew 49 flights and accrued 60 hours of flight time. I hit both my 150th and 200th flight hour.

Airports visited

I visited several airports this year

• Byron
• Columbia
• Corning
• Half Moon Bay
• Livermore
• New Jerusalem
• Oceano
• Rio Vista
• Tracy
• Watsonville
• Willows

And here’s a write-up on a selection of them.

KHAF: Half Moon Bay

Half Moon Bay is a short flight from Palo Alto, but is always beautiful to visit. I did a fair bit of training from Half Moon Bay before the pandemic and actually solo’d there in N5322P, but never really got to stop. This year, I changed that. There’s a short walk from transient parking into town where you can walk along the bay and grab a cup of clam chowder.

Worth a visit.

O22: Columbia

Columbia is a small gold-rush town nestled in the foothills of the Sierra-Nevada mountains. The state park has buildings from the 1800’s, and there is a lot of history to see. The airport serves as a base for the fire service during California fire season, so you might get to see some cool planes taking off too.

The town is lovely, the views are stellar, and the alpine crispiness of the air is delectable. 10/10, highly recommend.

L52: Oceano

Oceano has the classic “California” beach vibe. There airport isn’t huge, but the pilot lounge is comfortable to sit down and get your bearings for the day.

The departure from runway 29 is mind-blowing though. One second, you’re getting up to speed, and the next you’re blasting out over the beach and the ocean.

I’ve heard good things about the Rock & Roll Diner, but only after I flew there, so I didn’t actually stop in to see it.

The flight from the bay is also quite pretty. I mostly flew along the 101, which gave me some nice views of the mountains.

I would highly recommend, especially if you like beaches.

0O4: Corning

Corning is a tiny airport in a tiny town. I know Corning for the Olive Pit, which has pickled garlic. My family would usually stop there for pickled garlic and a milkshake when we were driving from northern Oregon to southern California for spring break while I was growing up, so there are fond memories.

It’s safe to skip it unless you really like pickled garlic.

I stopped in Willows on the way home to get gas. Willows is also a small California town, but they have gas and a restaurant near by, but I was just there for the gas.

O88: Rio Vista

This was a gas stop. I don’t know if there is anything to do in Rio Vista. It looks like a suburb missing the ‘urb, at least from above.

Gas was cheap that day, otherwise it didn’t look very exciting. Safe to skip.

WVI: Watsonville

I’ve been to Watsonville several times. That’s where I bought the plane and where I did my flight review. There are some restaurants nearby and beaches.

The Bad

2025 had several very enjoyable flights. January 2nd, 2026 decided to put that to bed. I was heading out for a practice flight to practice my normal maneuvers, slow flight, stalls, steep turns, and emergency procedures. The run-up was mostly normal. The #2 cylinder left-magneto spark plug fouled up, but eventually cleared up with the normal procedures. The magneto-check was successful after that. While taking off, I noticed that the plane took a fraction of second longer to get up to the RPM than normal. It was still well before my abort point, but was enough that I noticed. It still hit the 2650 RPM that it normally reaches at takeoff power, but I was taking a mental notes to watch it.

Over Sunol, I started hearing a hearing a bit of sputtering from the exhaust, and the engine was running ever-so-slightly rough, so I decided to turn around and start heading back to Palo Alto. I have a carburettor-temp probe, which said my carb temp was above freezing, but I still put in carburettor heat. Mixture was already full-rich. Neither of those helped. By the time I was back to the side of the bay, my number 2 cylinder had completely died on me and I was getting kind of worried that I might be swimming shortly. I got cleared to land and got it in, but it was not running well at all. I got back to parking and decided to cycle the mag. In the left-mag position, the engine turned off entirely. So my left mag had completely died, and the right spark plug in the #2 cylinder had also died.

I took it to one of the shops on the field, and they found that while it was mostly bench-testing correctly, the magneto didn’t seem to be working correctly. These mags are supposed to be inspected every 500 hours, and it had been 460 hours since the last inspection in 2021, so it was within tolerance. Now, these are the D3000 dual mags, which houses two magnetos in one housing with one input shaft. The manufacturer (Continental) hasn’t made parts for them since 2010, and shops generally don’t like touching them, so that’s created some challenges. We pulled my magneto and set it out to a shop for inspection. They got back and said that it was in really bad condition internally and required a full overhaul.

After 3 months and $4500, we got it back, just in time to take the plane in for its annual inspection.

In early April, I got a call from the shop doing the annual inspection. Overall, the plane was in good condition, but guess what failed the inspection? The magneto! It literally had 0.4 hours of operation on it since the overhaul, so we sent it back. Hopefully it works this time.

In the end

This is my busy season at work, so luckily I haven’t really missed out on much flying, and we still have a bit of time to get the magneto situation figured out before then.

When it’s flying, it’s a lot of fun and really cool being able to take the plane whenever I want. The cabin space is also nice. There is actually space in the back seats, unlike the 172. Hopefully we’re out of the weeds here soon and can get back up in the sky.