Mike 'Flyin'8' wrote:
You could go into Palomar (KCRQ) which is only a few miles up the
road. It is Class D and not a big deal... Where are you flying in
from?

The drive will take longer than the drive with traffic in San
Angeles (ie, all of SoCal) especially
between Sunday at 3am and Saturday night at 11:30pm.
I'm actually serious depending on where you are going. On
thanksgiving it could end up taking you an hour and a half to go 20
miles.


I would plan to fly into the San Diego area over Thanksgiving. First of
all, is this a good idea for this time of year or should I mentally
prepare myself to "fight" against tons of heavy iron with my little 182?

class B will take care of it all. They'll separate any iron (and
aluminum). Just be prepared that you don't hear the magic "cleared
through/into Class Bravo" if you try to go directly through the Bravo.
I have never tried going through it but both times coming out of
Montgomery (MYF ?) on climb out I called up SoCal for flight following
and they cleared me to climb to 8000 through bravo without even
asking almost immediately. Going into Montgomery can be a little
confusing as you have to fly through a tunnel to get there....
SAN bravo has down low and Miramar Class B has up higher or vice
versa...something like that. Just stay at your altitude when flying
in from north of there and know where you are. Hopefully you
know what the area looks like so you can spot Mount Soledad in
La Jolla. Once reaching there turn in land and look for the
airport to the right....not the huge one to the left which is Miramar.
I've never come up from the south which will be trickier with the VFR
transitions through bravo.

Plan of the visit would be SeaWorld and the Zoo. What would be a good
airport for this purpose (Montgomery?).

Montgomery would be perfect for both. Brown is more south and much
smaller.

On a final note, I am Class Bravo challenged and VFR only (I do know
about the fog at night and in the morning at this time of year).

do you have a GPS? If so, pick up the VP waypoints.

Overall, it should be as easy as any other day.

Call the field manager about the weather. Most likely, if you arrive
after noon time, you'll miss all of the marine layer.

One other note about Carlsbad, they have TONS of corp jets going into
and out of it. it also has commercial operations. I used to fly
on UA Express as a 1K for a few years so landing there myself
was a treat. Note, the airports refer to this as CLD rather than KCRQ.
Internationally CLD is somewhere in south america or central america.

Gerald