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Dawn Patrol

rightrudder

Well Known Member
Had a great flight this morning. Made the 1-hour drive to the airport in 45 minutes (the benefit of a 6 a.m. start to beat the bulk of commuters), scarfed down McDonald's finest Sausage McMuffin combo and was airborne over the Inland Empire by about 7:45. This was my third flight after finishing Phase 1, and I picked a great day...velvet smooth air, high cirrus clouds and only a hint of L.A. haze.

It's always fun the first time you fly over (or at least near) your house! I never knew that Laguna Hills High School had two big baseball diamonds, but there they are.



Laguna Beach and the Pacific are right over that hill, with Catalina Island in the distance (future destination!).



Then I headed south over the water, just outside Camp Pendleton's restricted airspace, then inland at Oceanside. This pic shows I-15, with the town of Rainbow at the base of the right hill and Murrieta/French Valley beyond the peaks.



Lake Elsinore. Lots of skydiving activity here, southeast of the lake.



For the first time coming back to Cable, my home airport, I approached it from the south. Without talking to ATC, this requires staying under Ontario's Class C shelf (2700 ft) and threading the needle between Brackett Field Class D, Chino Class D and the "To surface" portion of Ontario. Oh yeah, and way up high is a shelf of LAX's Class B, so it looks crazy on the TAC. A rat maze? It sounds a lot worse than it is. And very conveniently, there's a canal you can follow to prevent busting any airspace, so I was using that plus my GPS for no-worries navigation.

Better yet, the terrain rises in this direction, so it's very easy to get a nice stabilized airspeed and altitude early on, with plenty of AGL clearance. From the north, with descending terrain, you're always diving down to pattern altitude pretty close to the airport, making for a higher workload.
 
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Great write up and pictures Doug.

Looks like some good WX and visibility there. I bet the RV-9 is an awesome plane. Never flown in one.

Catalina is on my list.

Last weekend, the high wind advisories, LLWS and PIREPS kept me from visiting Redlands.
 
Very nice in-flight photos.

My son, Doug, and I visited Cable when he was looking at colleges and visiting nearby Harvey Mudd. It's nice to have "proximity to an airport" on the list of needs when you are considering schools with your son. What a great little airport that is, though I agree that the airspace does look complex on the LA sectional.

He ended up at Cal Poly SLO, but so far hasn't found a hangar to lease to try to steal our RV7 away from Oregon, which is his ultimate plan.
 
Thanks, guys!

Charlie, I hope to see you at a future fly-in somewhere. The L.A./OC/San Diego area is great...so many landmarks for easy pilotage, such as the coast, piers, mountains, freeways reservoirs, etc.

Steve, yes, being near an airport is great. I'm an hour's drive from Cable, but other (slightly) closer airports like John Wayne, Fullerton and Chino either didn't have hangars available, or had some shared hangar situations that were less than optimal (e.g., being in the back and having to move another plane out of the way every time I wanted to fly).

Cable is amazing in its laid-back '50s feel and friendly vibe, and I'm loving the nontowered freedom. Last time I flew into Chino, the tower frequency was so busy I could barely get a word in edgewise...and that was on a Monday. Another time, the controller told me to circle outside the airspace for five minutes, then call back. The controllers there are very good, but the workload can be brutal. With Cable I listen and report on the CTAF, and there's maybe one other plane in the pattern; two on a very busy day.

Airspace looks crazy to the south, but once memorized/flown a couple of times it's easy. And access departing to the west or east is totally straightforward, but it can be bumpy along the base of the San Gabriels. The airport is positioned near a very prominent kink on the 210 freeway, so on days that are really hazy, it's none too difficult to spot.
 
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We used to live down the block from you between Alicia Pkwy and LaPaz. All three of our kids attended Laguna Hills High School.

Btw...have you checked Oceanside for hangar space?

Regards,
 
Hey Charlie,

Thanks for the link. I would go there in a heartbeat if I didn't have a golf tournament tomorrow. Maybe next year. If my plane is not in the paint shop by then, I want to go to Flabob on May 28 (a very short hop for me). They've got a poker run, car show, etc. It's similar to Cable in feel, and the home of EAA Chapter 1. It was Ray Stitts' home airport until he passed away.

Yeah, that corridor is not impossibly tight. You can actually see a line that depicts the canal on the TAC. It's kind of a dotted line from the air. I looked at it on Google Earth a lot before I flew the southern route, which helped immensely.

Tom, nice to hear from a former South OC-er. I ruled out Oceanside just because it's too close to the water and I was worried about long-term corrosion. But it's definitely closer than Cable!
 
A couple more pics from that flight.

Here's Lake Mathews, a very popular practice area over which I did most of my BFR/currency training in a Piper Cherokee.



And over The Retreat golf course in Corona...a tough course for my very average skills. This was the coolest part of the flight...2500 feet MSL, burbling along at 2100 rpm and still doing 135 mph over the ground. Serene and peaceful, especially after all those trips in Phase 1 down the Cajon Pass, fighting turbulence!

 
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Very nice, my old stomping grounds flying out of MCAS El Toro aero club back in the 80s
 
Great run Doug! Thanks for pictures and your time telling the story. Many of us travelers are getting too lazy to post a picture or two. Beautiful sights!
 
Thanks, guys! Taking the pics really adds to the fun. Lots of brown hills and brown-ish golf courses...El Nino was really a bust, as we keep getting high pressure systems that push all the storms into northern CA.
 
Thanks for sharing

I got my private ticket at Cable and my instrument rating at Chino when we lived in SoCal. Did a lot of flying around the area. Landing for the first time at Catalina will be very memorable. ;)
 
I got my private ticket at Cable and my instrument rating at Chino when we lived in SoCal. Did a lot of flying around the area. Landing for the first time at Catalina will be very memorable. ;)

Yeah, I did the ground school prep for Catalina at my flight school but never went with a rental plane. I guess lots of folks lock up the brakes at the 2/3rds crest on the runway where it looks like it ends, but in reality there's 1000 more feet of usable runway beyond. Too bad about that recent overshoot...I heard the injuries weren't too severe.

I'll post pics when I go. :)
 
Landing at Catalina is no biggie. I think most of the local flight schools just want to get some $$ doing instruction. The RV-9A has no problem getting slowed down enough to only use half the runway. Just beware if the wind is blowing hard over the island, you will get some good down drafts near the threshold. Stay high and land just a bit long.
 
Wilco, Mark!

Bruce, thanks for the advice on Catalina. Folks say the sight picture is quite different that your typical land-based GA strip, what with the cliffs at either end. Gotta trust the altimeter a little more, I guess. I'll give you a call tomorrow to talk about my experience at Century Aircraft Paint so far.
 
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