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KGOO to San Diego

Keldog

Member
Flying down to see our son in Carlsbad in a couple weeks. Wondering about Palomar KCRQ vs. Bob Maxwell Memorial KOKB.

Any recommendations, thoughts, gotchas?
 
Flying down to see our son in Carlsbad in a couple weeks. Wondering about Palomar KCRQ vs. Bob Maxwell Memorial KOKB.

Any recommendations, thoughts, gotchas?

KCRQ is pretty corporate centric, but there’s a lot of piston traffic there as well. It’s quite busy with a mix of traffic. There are some transient parking spaces near the base of the tower. Otherwise, you’ll be parked at an FBO. 100LL will probably be $1+ more per gallon than Oceanside/KOKB.

KOKB is much less busy than KCRQ. Fair amount of traffic, but I wouldn’t classify it as overly busy. There’s a skydiving operation out of the airport that keeps pretty busy. Almost exclusively light piston traffic. Easy in and out, but noise sensitive, so be sure to review the noise abatement procedure prior to arriving and departing. Also there’s some restricted airspace and Class D from Camp Pendleton that causes you to have to maintain a pattern that may be tighter than you’re used to. The restricted airspace along the coast is usually inactive above 2000’ but active below 2000’. Check with SoCal approach on restricted area status.
 
OKB jump traffic & pattern

Beware of two things at OKB:

VERY noise sensitive. You are expected to fly to the I5/coast before turning crosswind when departing 25. Similarly base for 07 is way out there.

right downwind for 25 goes over the water tower, then turns in closer to a normal downwind (to avoid Pendleton airspace).

LOTS of p. jumpers. They are supposed to stay north of the runway, so the pattern actually goes around them :eek:

Jump planes make space shuttle like landings. Go search Blancolerio on YouTube for the two recent accidents.

Be sure the gust locks are in place as the jump planes have 1 throttle setting, and the marines have been known to come in with an Osprey.

I was based there for several years.

But, I agree, fuel is much cheaper the CRQ. And CRQ has its own challenges (lots of bizjets, sometimes 4-5 planes queued for departure, etc.).
 
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