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| Original Grand Budapest Hotel Model |
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| Walt Disney Concert Hall |
After a relaxing day off on Thursday, when I checked out a famous double-dipped sandwich at Philippe's, the architecturally-stunning Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the beautiful old Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, I had a reasonably early start on Friday, to go down the coast to San Diego's Montgomery Field.
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| Confusingly this is not Seal Beach - it's just a beach with a lot of seals on! |
This airport is just to the north of the city, and allows for easy access to the La Jolla part of the city. We visited La Jolla last year when we were in this area and I was keen to go back for lunch whilst I was here. During 2008 La Jolla had the highest average house prices in the entire US, so there are plenty of vast, sprawling mansions to be seen as you come over the coastline towards the field. There is also a huge Marine Corps base just to the north, which is restricted airspace, meaning a transition to the south over the ocean or to the north over the mountains. Due to low cloud, I was forced to take the ocean route, to stay away from the hard-centred clouds!
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| Vast Mansions at La Jolla |
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| "San Diego Temple" near La Jolla |
After landing at Montgomery Field, I grabbed the crew car and drove the 15 minutes to the coast, enjoying a walk along the beach, watching the seals resting on the rocks and sand, and a quick lunch and coffee as well as a huge Oreo-covered Caramel Dipped Apple, before flying back to Long Beach.
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| Everything covered Apples |
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| Balboa Island and Beach |
On Saturday the aircraft was booked out for most of the day, so it wasn't until 4pm that I was able to taxy down to Runway 25L for my departure. I took a similar route to yesterday as my destination was McClellan-Palomar airport about 20 miles north of Montgomery Field. I had planned and requested to take the northern route past Camp Pendleton this time for a slight variation, however, despite a reported cloud base of 4500ft, shortly after take off as I transitioned the fantastically named John Wayne Airport's airspace at 3000 ft, I could see I wasn't going to get any higher, so requested a route change to the south over the ocean, and told them I would need to descend to 2500ft. They granted this request without question, even though I was in busy commercial airspace, which was helpful as the only other options were:
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| John Wayne Airport |
a) go into cloud and try and reach "VFR on top", (i.e clear skies above the clouds), something which my IMC rating has trained me for, but is illegal for me to do outside of the UK, or
b) divert to the nearest airfield
As I got over the coast, I had to drop down to 2000ft, as the cloud base was still lower than reported where I was, despite my destination (just 20miles away) reporting clear skies. I had a brief moment of entering cloud, but was through it in seconds and out into clearer skies the other side. At this time, I dropped off of the SoCal Radar, and they asked me to transfer to the Camp Pendleton military controller, who kindly allowed me to skirt just inside the edge of their restricted airspace without shooting me down! There was an aircraft carrier just off of the coast, which I thought could make for an interesting landing spot, but decided against it!
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| Carlsbad |
Palomar Airfield is on a plateau which makes it a bit gusty, but fortunately a combination of the wind being straight down the runway and me having got a few more landings in since my attempt at Banning last week, meant that I had no problem landing gently.
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| Carlsbad |
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| Surfers on the beach at Carlsbad |
I took the crew car down along the coast road in Carlsbad and sat on the beach watching the surfers brave the very cold ocean waves, as the sun set over the ocean, before stopping in at a fantastic sushi restaurant for some dinner. A guy who was sitting next to me, struck up a conversation and mentioned that his brother owns a full-motion Citation Simulator and that next time I was in town I should get in touch with him, and he'd let me have a session in it.
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| Night Flight |
By the time I got back to Palomar, and paid for my fuel, it was official night (30mins after sunset), so I got my red lensed torch at the ready and prepared for my first US night flight back to Long Beach. Another minor drama (but all good practice) on the way back as I had a radio problem and could not reach the controller who I had been with since leaving Palomar. As I was getting close to John Wayne airport, I transmitted blind to them (in case they could still hear me) and told them I would change frequency to the John Wayne Tower, who fortunately could hear me loud and clear and told me that SoCal Approach had been in touch with them and told them they'd lost contact with me. I was approved to transition overhead their airfield, and 10 minutes later, I could see the lights of Long Beach airport, and a few minutes later was lined up for Runway 25L.
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