Scheduling my first annual inspection

Ariel's last annual was performed on June 11 of last year. As I understand it, I have until the end of June this year to have the next annual performed and signed off. After June 30, if I haven't had this done yet, I can't fly the plane until I do.

I'm still waiting for the shop at Harvey to have an opening to do the work that has been scheduled since I first purchased the plane. None of this work is required for airworthiness, so I've still been able to fly the plane while waiting. Well, there are a couple of things that are required if I want to fly at night, specifically replacing the landing light bulb and fixing the red cabin light (hopefully also just a bulb replacement). But I can fly during the day and I've been doing so about as often as I can.

I spoke with the shop today and my annual is now scheduled. Unfortunately, the earliest they can get me in is the first full week of July, so there will be a few days where the plane will be out of annual and I won't be able to fly it... including the first weekend in July. But that's the reality of the situation and it won't be long before I'll be able to fly it again, provided nothing major is found during the annual.

I did add another item to the list of work needing to be done: The last time I went flying my primer was really stiff. It's always been pretty stiff, but it seems to have worsened over the last couple of flights. I haven't researched this much yet, but it appears to be a relatively easy and inexpensive issue to address.

I'm hopeful that it will come through with little or no maintenance required beyond what we already know about. It was pretty thoroughly inspected last year, and I also had the pre-buy inspection performed back in January, so it's unlikely anything big has cropped up since then. But anything's possible, and I have to be prepared to spend some bucks if necessary. That's the reality of owning an airplane that's almost 50 years old.