Flying to San Luis Obispo












Flying into San Luis Obispo from the East,  Santa Barbara approach will provide flight following on 127.725, the tower had us do a straight in approach to runway 29, and report 4 miles out.   Transient parking is right in front of the Spirit of San Luis resturant.  You can walk right in to the resturant through the gate from the ramp, great food, and a nice view of the airport from their patio.  For airport security the waitress will open the gate for you to get back to your plane.  If you buy gas from the Jet Center FBO, they will treat you great.  We had called the night before to reserve a rental car (all the major rental companies are available at this airport).  The Jet Center will have the car pulled up to your plane for you and handle the rental car paperwork for you as well, they will park the plane for you as well, if you stay overnight, (we stayed 2 nights), very convienient!   We stayed in the town of San Luis Obisbo and everywhere we ate was wonderful including McClintocks BBQ, The Apple Farm for breakfast, and thin pizza slices from Woodstock's.   We took a drive up to Hearst Castle for the "Upper Floors Tour", it's about a 40 min. drive from SLO.   We tried to do a quick run to fly over Hearst Castle in the plane, but the marine layer was really being really stubborn along the coastline, so I turned around, oh well, maybe next time.   BTW, you can call Oakland Center on 128.7 to verify if the Hunter MOA is hot before doing this, I was able to reach them on the radio from over Morro Bay.  Going home we did a stop for lunch at the wonderful picnic area at Santa Ynez airport. 

Flying the Skylane to Santa Ynez. June, 2011




We landed here for lunch on the way back from our San Luis Obisbo trip.











Inside the Whiteman Airport Tower



Whiteman Airport, Pacoima, Ca. A quick tower tour, with a banner tow pickups. This tower is sandwiched between Burbank the and towers Van Nuys airspace and the mountains to the north. These guys can get extremely busy in here, more and more piston aircraft in the San Fernando Valley fly out of here every year as VNY turns into a jet port. All controllers at WHP are retired FAA controllers, so they have alot of experience. I Didn't have my good camera with me, dang. Thanks to Brian and Peter for the stills.