I get email from local pilots wondering why I never visit airports in the LA basin. I don't know other than I really don't like flying under the Los Angeles class B, traffic, visibility and turbulence! My new mission is to visit some local airports and add them to160knots.com. I've always heard El Monte has a good restaurant right on the field and I've never been there before. I spent about 10 minutes reviewing the Los Angeles terminal chart looking for a route to avoid Class D, C and B and picked up some landmarks along my route. The flight was so short I didn't feel the need to call SoCal approach. I heard the El Monte Airport is hard to see. The GPS was reporting 3 miles right on the nose and I still couldn't find it. Finally I saw a Cessna climbing though my altitude and followed his path back to the airport. I know a local pilot examiner who takes Private Pilot applicants to El Monte on their check rides just to see if they can find it. After landing taxi to transit parking which is the first row north of the fuel island. I found Annia's Kitchen a nice place with a large patio set 6 feet above the ramp and a good view of the runway. The patio will easily sit 50 people as will the inside dinning room. The menu looked good for both breakfast and lunch. After eating I sat nursing an iced tea for about an hour while watching airport operations. In the terminal there is a pilot shop and on the terminal walls you'll find old pictures of the airport when they were trying to pick out the land to use. The airport has a friendly feel with more students in the control tower than in the pattern.
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