Conditions were about 600 overcast, visibility four miles in haze as I prepared to depart the Santa Maria Public Airport/Capt G. Allan Hancock Field (KSMX) in Santa Maria, Calif. I was flying a well-equipped Beechcraft A36 Bonanza sporting a Garmin 530/430 stack and a Honeywell KFC225 autopilot/flight director—the airplane and configuration with which I’m most familiar and current.
I was repositioning the aircraft to nearby San Luis Obispo, Calif. (KSPB), a mere 22 nm to the northwest of KSMX, where the ceiling was a little higher and surface visibility a whole lot better. Conditions a little further inland were clear and warm as an alternate, Central California in the early spring. It should have been an easy IFR flight. But, owing to the surrounding terrain and airspace, published departure procedures were going to make it challenging.
