Out of the Pattern: En Route to the Big Show

I love Florida?s springtime weather?mild mornings with wisps of mist clinging to the bottomlands, and afternoons just sunny enough to crank up some good thermals without pushing the cumulus too tall and creating thunderstorms. It is the best time of year to be flying a light aircraft. And, if you ask me, flying in a light aircraft is the only way to arrive at the airshows that begin to crop up around the country this time of year.

My local airshow, the Sun ?n Fun EAA Fly-In, is held in Lakeland, Florida, each April. From our home, it?s an easy one-hour flight in our kitbuilt SkyStar?a Kitfox Model IV?as opposed to a more challenging three-hour drive.

The airplane trip is a simple one. My husband and I follow Highway 31 until it meets Highway 27 and then take the published Lake Parker arrival route. Things typically get interesting around Bartow, about 13 nautical miles south of Lakeland Linder Airport along Highway 27. That?s when we begin to see more, and then more, and then even more airborne traffic, all headed, as we are, for the Lake Parker approach into Lakeland. This sort of heavy traffic is typical along airshow arrival routes. The arrival procedures for the shows are usually described in notices to airmen issued well in advance of the events.

We tune in the automatic terminal information service (ATIS) for arrivals, then switch over to approach control. This control frequency is a little different than what most pilots are used to?it?s a ?don?t call us, we?ll call you? arrangement, also typical for busy air shows. Fortunately, most of the pilots converging on Lake Parker have done their homework, and the frequency reverberates only with the voices of controllers posted on the ground with binoculars, looking skyward and sorting traffic by type and speed. Don?t listen for your ?N? number here. We routinely find ourselves called ?yellow Cub? or ?little high-wing taildragger.? We listen up, and try to get behind the airplane we?re supposed to be behind and stay there.

It?s not as easy as it looks. Nothing will get your adrenaline flowing faster than merging into the converging traffic while those anonymous controllers calmly sort you out.

My husband and I have never even considered trying to negotiate this trip solo, and the crowds are the reason why. It takes four eyes?heck, eight if you?ve got them?to keep your airplane from having an untimely encounter with any of the other aircraft in your little patch of airspace. I?ll never forget one year when I got a close-up look at the underside of a Cessna 185 as it banked steeply away from my right wingtip.

Once we?ve been put in line, the long straightaway heading west from Lake Parker gives us time to recover from the shock of merging into all that traffic. By the time we make the southbound turn into the airport, things are mostly rearranged, and we are all listening to the tower for landing instructions.

The tower controllers work just like the guys out by Lake Parker. They call you by aircraft type and sequence you based on what they think your landing performance will be. (We aren?t talking pilot skills here; we?re talking aircraft capabilities.) These guys are landing two to three aircraft at a time on parallel runways?that?s up to six simultaneous landings. To pull it off, the controllers need pilots to land with accuracy. Myself, I practice before I come to the show, just to be sure.

Every airplane is assigned a touchdown spot on one of the runways, which have been painted with big numbers?1, 2, 3. We almost always get spot 3 because we require little more than 300 feet of roll out. To get to spot 3, however, we have to keep our speed up for the faster aircraft behind us and fly down some 6,000 feet of runway before we can touch down. Then we have to scoot up to the ground controllers who are frantically waving us off.

Most years, taxiing to the parking area takes nearly as long as the flight. For that reason, last year I arrived the night before the show. Wow, was that easy. I?d recommend it to anyone who wants to fly to a large air show but is intimidated by flying in crowds.

Today, my office window frames a square of perfect blue sky. I?m going to put away this yellow legal pad and go practice those spot landings. This year?s challenge is but a few weeks away.

The fly-in procedure for the Sun ?n Fun EAA Fly-In is available on the AOPA Web site (www.aopa.org).