[Chino Tom]

Flew up to San Luis Obispo (SBP) from Chino on Saturday to have lunch with my newly employed son Mike (He graduated in December from Cal Poly SLO) and give a buddy of his a ride in the -8heh. It was a beautiful day but there was a ton of wind at altitude. On the way up, the wind at 8500 was 335 @ 35. Lots of bumps until passing the San Marcos VOR then pretty smooth on into SBP. Not many bumps on the way home, but north of Santa Barbara the winds at 9500 were between 50 - 53 kts. Unfortunately is was more crosswind than tail wind. The highest ground speed I saw was 205 kts. After the turn at RZS, I had a 15 deg crab to stay on course to Chino with a crosswind component of 46 kts. As a note, the ramp around the tower at SBP is all tore up and there is a 2 hour max parking limit at the resturant. As usual lunch at the airport cafe was great. Lots of airline traffic too. All in all, still a nice day to fly.

 

[Mark Russell]

Tom,

I had a similar experience flying from KPSP back to home base at e16 a few days after thanksgiving last year. Had to go up the coast via point magu as all the passes to the valley were blocked by wx. Had 61kt headwind at one point between Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo. Landed at E16 with a 30kt headwind right down the runway. Was a bit nervous, but turned out to be one of the greatest landings I've had.

All in all, learned from it (had lots of fuel), but in the future, would choose another day to fly if I had it to do over again.

best,

Mark