N951CC Flying to North Las Vegas KVGT

Michelle and I flew to North Las Vegas today for breakfast. It was a good flight and I wanted a quick flight there to get acquainted with the airspace. With the mountains immediately to the west and the McCarren class B airspace, I wasn't sure how much room there was for my descent to land. I flew through a saddle in the mountains that was further north than the last time I flew since this was in line with North Las Vegs, last time we flew into Henderson.

It turns out that the class B extends closer to the mountains than it seemed on the map so I had to descend close to the mountains just on the east side. This was incredibly scenic since we were flying right over their Red Rock hiking area. We were kind of pinched between the mountains, Nellis restricted airspace, and Vegas class B airspace that I was not cleared into. After a few passes north and south I lost enough altitude to fly under the class B shelf into KVGT. There are a lot of taxiways under maintenance and closed down so I asked ground control for taxi instructions, instead a "follow me" van was already right in front of me waiting. I followed him just a short ways to the transient parking.

There was supposed to be a 24 hour Bar and Grill across the street, but we didn't see it so we walked down the street to the Fiesta Casino and ate at their restaurant. Incredible breakfast specials and the food was good, but it was breakfast at a casino.

The flight back was pretty much the same but in reverse. I wanted to climb to be able to get over the mountains, but I had to stay low until I cleared the class B shelf. This put me right at the mountains so I had to circle to climb to get over them. I was hoping this trip would have been faster than it was since I figured I've got more performance in this 182 than I did in the 172 and I should be able to climb straight over the mountains. I didn't realize that I was going to be still limited, but by the airspace. Total round trip time was 2.6 hours, which is 2 hours and 36 minutes, so it still wasn't too bad.

The trip to Vegas was very smooth and was a great flight. The flight back was hot and bumpy, but we the bumps eventually went away as we cleared the mountains near Vegas. The air was cool at 10,500 feet so I never turned on the air conditioning. I did turn it on as we descended into Inyokern. The AC is nice because I waited until my downwind landing check to turn it off and from there, its only a few minutes until we were on the ground. I put the AC back on as soon as we were rolling out and it was way cooler than opening the windows. Too expensive of a toy to buy, but a heck of a nice one to come with the airplane!

North Las Vegas airport provides a free courtesy shuttle bus to the strip so it's a great airport to use when coming in to gamble on the strip. You do have to get your own taxi back, but that is the only service that isn't provided by the airport. Michelle has plans for next weekend so I'm smelling a poker trip with the guys...

Sorry no pictures, but we did find the camera now for next time. Here is a Google Earth look at the moutains flying into KVGT.