Lunch Flight - Camarillo

Some of my coworkers are avid pilots, and roughly once a month a bunch of us will go out for an extended lunch break and fly to one of the airports in the area.  This week we chose to fly to Camarillo Airport, and had 5 aircraft participating. I sat in the right seat of the Mooney shown above. 


For this flight, we departed Whiteman Airport and flew via Burbank, Santa Monica, Malibu, and then to Camarillo. As we transitioned through the Burbank airspace, a Southwest 737 took off and climbed out just next to us. On the return leg, we stayed inland and flew over Simi Valley and through the Santa Susana Pass (Rocky Peak).

Track of the day's flight path

The air was surprisingly clear, with no cloud cover and a smog layer pushed more southeast toward downtown. We crossed over the Hollywood Hills, tried to spot some movie stars at their pools (none today sadly), and crossed the 405 at the Getty Center. 

I am still trying to figure out how to get the aerial photographs to look nice, and am having some trouble with both window and air clarity... I think it just comes down to doing some post-processing of the image to remove the hazy washed-out look. The pictures I loaded here are all "fixed" in that way already, so if they still look like shit, well then go find some other blog to read :) 

The Getty Center

Though it was clear out, we were in some pretty bumpy air for the whole trip. Personally, I like the turbulence. Unless you are out to get some flight test points done or performance data gathered, it is fun to feel the air bouncing the plane around. Sometimes it is easy to forget the amount of energy being carried as wind and turbulence in our atmosphere, but you feel it pretty tangibly when riding in a small-ish aircraft.


As we flew over the Santa Monica coastline and headed up towards Malibu, I took over the controls of the Mooney. For the most part we were between 2500 and 3500 feet high. Turning inland after Point Dume, we hit some pretty big turbulence from east winds rolling around some hills, both the guy in the back seat and I hit our heads on the roof with the worst of it.

Looking out the nose over the Pacific Palisades / Malibu

Lots of traffic around Camarillo as we called for landing, winds were shifting also and right after we landed, they changed active runways. Lunch was tasty, we had people trickling in because of the variety of starting airports and travel times. We had hoped to do a little formation flying on the way out after lunch, but with all the traffic it became too difficult to coordinate takeoffs. We left first in the Mooney, and we are way faster than the Piper Warrior and Cessnas, so we just booked it back to Whiteman.

Today's payload

In past outings like this, we have gotten the airplanes together, and can usually get some cool pictures like the one below. 

The Warrior and Pitts forming up on a flight from earlier this year

As we flew back, we saw mostly agricultural fields until getting over Simi Valley, and when we crossed Rocky Peak I got a good look at some of the mountain biking trails I've been riding recently (Rocky Peak Road and Hummingbird).  Overall, the trip cost about $28 in the Mooney (plus lunch), and took us four and a half hours. We are thinking about making Mojave the next destination, or possibly an overnight camping flight.  

PS, take a look at this cool experimental we saw at Camarillo, turbine powered and looking pretty.