Back in 2004, after having owned, flown, and sold both a beautiful 1975 Cessna 172 Skyhawk  and a pristine Grumman American AA5-B Tiger,  I settled on

searching for the perfect Cessna 152.  I had trained

and learned to fly in 152's and based upon my flying

profile (mostly by myself and mostly flying around the

local area); and based on the relatively light handling of the plane when not heavily loaded (such as full fuel but pilot only),  I realized the 152 was going to be it !

 

A friend of mine out in the desert of Lancaster, CA  had this thing about naming his rebuilt aircraft  "the most perfect (insert type of plane)" . . so for example, his ultimate Grumman Tiger project was  "The Most Perfect Tiger"  and his totally rebuilt Citabria,  "The Most Perfect Citabria."    I was on a quest for "the most perfect 152."  And subsequently my friend, Gary, a few years ago, moved to Gold Country to pursue "The Most Perfect Life"  You can check out his website . .it's in the sidebar list of "Flight Enhancements" to the right.

 

Anyways, as I would soon find out, perfection in anything that is a 30 or so year old airplane is hard to find but I had been spoiled by great luck in my finding the nearly perfect Skyhawk and the nearly perfect AA5-B earlier so as I started looking high and low on the internet and in Trade-A-Plane I found out that there were not really that many 152's for sale.  There were lots of 150's but not 152's.

 

Over the months I looked at a few 152s locally here in the Los Angeles / Orange County basin and even flew out on a commercial flight to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport to look at a promising one but they all had loads of corrosion or were just too ratty.

 

I looked at another up north in Oxnard and it was newly painted but had the tell-tale worm-like squiggles showing through on the trailing aileron and flap edges that indicate corrosion.

 

One day I found an ad in Trade-a-Plane for a 152 with total hours on the airframe in the mid 4,000's  and 900 hours since Gold Medallion overhaul by Western Skyways.  I called the owner and asked him to send me some pictures and also asked a few of the right questions.  "Shiny aluminum in the wings and tail" was one of my pre-requisites and was also one of the new questions added on my list.  When I asked him this question, his answer was "of course - we are in the high and dry country of eastern Wyoming.  All the planes up here have bright and shiny aluminum on the inside".

 

So, I booked a flight through Denver, up to Laramie, Wyoming and found a mechanic.  The plane was 2 hours away in Rawlins, Wy.   Keith, the owner flew it over to Laramie and his wife followed him in their Cessna 182.

 

Turns out that Keith had owned the plane for most of its 27 years of life and had kept it hangared.  He ran a small flight club and N714VG had been mostly used as a training plane for the small Wyoming ranching and farming community members that decided they wanted to learn how to fly.

 

The plane's airframe was clean and free of corrosion. There was a some damage to the right rear elevator trim tab where it had been backed into a hangar.  And one of the cylinders was showing lack of compression (in the 60's until warmed up) and one of the control belcranks had worn bearings.

 

I would need to get these items addressed if I was going to buy the plane so I negotiated a reduced price.  Keith accepted and I hired the mechanic that did my pre-purchase to do most of the fixes except for the cylinder and the trim tab.

 

The big problem, however was that I lived in SoCal and needed to get back plus there was a snowstorm passing through.

 

So I gave the mechanic the keys and we agreed he would deliver the plane to me when the weather improved and the work was done.

 

Several weeks later, "FourVictorGolf" landed at Corona Municipal Airport and I then transferred to its hangar at Chino Airport and had Mark at Aircraftsman replace the bent elevator trim tab.

 

She lived at historic Chino, mixing it up with the P-51's, B-25's, 

P-38's, and Sabre and Mig jets for less than a year afterwhich I moved her to a hangar I shared with Dave Palacios, my mechanic back at Corona, "the friendliest airport in the world."