A few months ago, the local chapter of the EAA in Santa Monica was going to organize a Young Eagles day. For the uninitiated — that’s when pilots give rides to a bunch of kids for free to get them introduced to aviation and the like. Wanting to give back, I signed up and went to the pre-flight briefing etc, only to have us cancel on the day of the flight due to crummy weather. No need to teach kids that aviation is all about staying at 1,200 ft and almost violating cloud clearance and minimum altitude regs, right?

So a few months passed, and the chapter started organizing another flight. I eagerly signed up, and went to the briefing. The plane is full of fuel, the weather for the weekend looked to be grand, I’m VFR and IFR current, so… all is good, right?

Nope. Not to be outdone by the WX, the other devil of aviation reared its head — the dreaded MX.

See the beautiful picture intersected by a rather funny looking stick? Yup, that’s my propeller, with a strange looking problem at its tip. Instead of a leisurely pre-flight the day before carting young kids around, I ended up having to ground the airplane and begin the process of spending untold amounts of money to fix the spinny thing that keeps my airplane going. So now I’m two maintenance items in arrears — a fix for this prop issue, and ADS-B installation. And on its heels will be my annual inspection. So there’s clearly not a lot of flying that I’ll be doing in my airplane in the next couple of weeks for sure, and possibly longer than that.

Argh. Doesn’t everyone love the joys of airplane ownership?