Last night I went out to CRQ to do my 90 day 3 night takeoffs and landings ritual.

After the first trip around the pattern I was told that they were not allowing any pattern work.

When I called the tower on the phone I got the following explanation:

The FAA agreed upon minimum staffing level for CRQ is 12 controllers, they only have 8.
The 8 are working 10 hour days, six days a week.
Until they get some relief they ar not going to allow patern work.


For those who don't know CRQ, it is a single runway but it had over 200,000 operations last year.
I've seen weekends when the pattern had more than 12 aircraft in it, with 5 more ready to go.
I've also seen days where the tower just says, "we are full do not enter my airspace come back in 15 minutes."

I don't want the weekend controller to be tired.
We've already had one CRQ midair we don't need another one.

I'm not sure what we should do about this, but wrting some letters to the FAA? or to ?

It's been worse since the ILS died because the Jets used to always use the ILS,
last night on the radio I heard G-IV on left base for 24,

Paul