Coming home......

This photo may not seem like much but to all of us pilots who fly our of Fullerton Airport, this is coming home. The 24 stands for 240, a compass heading that means I am flying the direction of 240 to land on the runway. In the early morning I would fly out the reciprocal of 24 which is 6 (meaning a heading of 060) and by the late morning or early afternoon the winds have changed and now I would fly in 24. This is our everyday wind pattern here in the LA basin. We have land breezes in the early morning and then they change to sea breezes (the winds are named for the direction they are coming from). In Southern California we have prevailing westerly winds, and as pilots we always want to fly into the wind for landing as well as taking off.

An awful lot of thought about wind direction is done before airports are built. LAX's runways are laid out about the same 7-25, so are Santa Monica, Camarillo, Catalina, Ontario, Chino and so on. However, Torrance is behind hills and runs more north and south, similar to Orange County Airport. So notice next time you fly into or out of an airport which direction the runway is positioned and which way you are headed, and you will see that it has to do with prevailing winds. This does change in our area when we get Santa Ana Winds, these are strong winds that flow the opposite direction and only a few times each year.

Whenever I am flying back from a flight whether it is a longer cross country or just a trip around the pattern, it is a comforting feeling to be lined up on final approach into Fullerton on 24.