Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines learned to fly more than 25 years ago, and still enjoys early morning solo flights.
The early morning's subtle breeze carries with it the haunting cry of a distant killdeer. The windsock on this summer Saturday snoozes, ignoring the gentle zephyr. Overhead, the drone of an airplane tells me I'm not quite the first one up this morning. Still, the airport surface is a ghost town in the soft light. I feel almost guilty interrupting the tranquility as I twist the hangar door switch. The door's grinding assaults the silence.
As the big door lifts, sunlight sneaks underneath and soon illuminates my ride. Everything from the chrome spinner to the new tail strobe glistens under the effects of a recent detailing. "And how was your day at the spa?" I wonder. "We'll have our work cut out for us when we get back; you'll be covered with bugs." The price of summer flying.
I'm early, so there's no need to hurry — a delicious change of pace. Today's mission is simple. I fly northwest for an hour and 15 minutes to pick up my youngest daughter, Jenna, who has spent the week with her aunt and uncle, cousins, and grandparents. A big high-pressure system has finally brought summer weather to the mid-Atlantic region. The spectacularly clear skies mean I can make the trip VFR. A call to flight service confirms that the airspace around the president's retreat at Camp David, just up the ridgeline from my home base in Frederick, Maryland, is back down to just three nautical miles. It's been a constant effort since the 2001 terrorist attacks to keep track of when the president is coming to and going from there. The temporary flight restriction extends to 10 miles when he is there. Prior to the attacks, it stayed at three miles even when he was visiting. At times since then it's been at five miles and sometimes eight miles. And they wonder why hapless pilots sometimes stumble into it.
I move easily through the preflight. I try not to be complacent as I check this or that. I focus on things that I have seen go wrong and sometimes wonder what I'm missing that will go wrong. Preflighting works, though. A couple of weeks ago during my inspection of the engine compartment, I found that the pneumatic system filter had slipped off of its attachment to the baffling. Loose, it flopped down and vibrated some grooves onto the top of the cylinder cooling fins. You can be sure it now gets a little tug on every preflight. Still tight today.
This is the first flight after the much-deserved detailing. I look the airplane over especially careful, since strangers have been crawling around inside and out. Surprisingly, no switches or controls are out of place. A year's worth of oily grime is gone off the belly. That ought to be worth a couple of knots.
I normally leave two of the Beechcraft A36 Bonanza's six seats out, allowing lots of room for bags. Still it seems a shame to not share the remaining seats with someone on such a dazzling morning. I called a couple of friends who enjoy such trips, but they had plans — a wedding to attend, a golf game, life's callings. I'm not disappointed. While I enjoy sharing the sky with others, I'm equally happy for the solitude; a few minutes stolen from the rat race.
The engine, still enthusiastic less than a year after its overhaul, sprints us down the runway and we're quickly climbing away as the gear folds into the belly. I make a right turn and head for the hills. The Catoctin Mountains slide by underneath. Camp David, surrounded on the Garmin moving map with a green circle, goes by the right side as I head deeper into the Appalachian Mountains.
As the flight service briefer from Altoona, Pennsylvania, said early this morning, "If the weather is good in Johnstown, you know it's good everywhere else. It's good in Johnstown this morning." And indeed it is. I spot the airport up on its plateau from 20 miles out.
Just beyond the airport, early morning fog blankets the valleys northwest of the downtown area. Farther ahead, I see the tall smokestacks from a large power plant poking up through another pocket of fog. I wonder, as I cruise overhead, if the people beneath having their morning coffee think this is going to be another in the string of cloudy, dreary days we had all spring. Do they know that a mere 100 feet overhead is the most majestically blue sky imaginable? Will they get in their cars and drive a few miles down the road to discover it is only their little world that is socked in today?
The Garmin display replaces JST with 4G1 as the active waypoint — my destination as we continue northwestward. The autopilot corrects slightly to the right for Greenville, Pennsylvania, the small airport where I learned to fly and near where some family members live. With the GPS, I could fly direct from our home base, but, after flying this route many times, I've discovered that a slight deviation over a couple of waypoints allows me to cross and fly much closer to numerous airports than I would on a direct route. The two-minute change in flight time is worth the security of having a few extra outs if things go bad.
Usually the ridges northwest of Johnstown cause a few ripples in the atmosphere, but this morning the air is glass smooth.
Six days earlier I made the same flight in the opposite direction. I was on my way home after having spent a long weekend in Niagara Falls with my wife and kids. En route home, we stopped in Greenville to drop off daughter number two for some family time. Daughter one moped home with us, anxious for her turn to spend one-on-one time with her cousins later this summer.
The Niagara Falls trip showed once again the utility of a general aviation airplane. Few Marylanders will make the minimum eight-hour drive to see Niagara Falls, especially for a weekend as we did. For us, it was a 90-minute flight to New York's Niagara Falls International Airport. We jumped in a rental car at Tech Aviation Services and were glimpsing the falls 15 minutes later.
The crisp summer air and clear skies at Niagara Falls were a welcome change from what we had left in Maryland. There, we departed in low overcast skies and moderate rain. It was a continuation of what we experienced all spring — unrelenting rain and clouds. As we crossed central Pennsylvania, the rain stopped and layers appeared in the clouds. By Buffalo, the clouds had become scattered. Over Niagara, the skies cleared completely.
A restricted area accessible only by the tour operators protects the airspace over the falls. But the average transient Joe can still get a good view of the spectacle by flying a charted procedure at 3,500 feet. Details of the procedure can be found in the Northeast Airport/Facility Directory and on AOPA Online. We took the aerial tour on our departure. Niagara Falls Tower and Buffalo Approach both know the drill, so don't be afraid to let them know what you want to do; they are most accommodating.
From the air, it's easy to see how the Niagara River connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario. Lake Erie's surface is more than 300 feet higher than Lake Ontario's, so it's not surprising that there's going to be a falls somewhere in that short stretch of water. The falls themselves represent about 180 feet of the drop. The rest is traversed through the narrow Niagara River gorge, which sports some of the most challenging rapids anywhere.
Leaving the Niagara Falls area, we headed southwest across Lake Erie for Greenville to make our delivery.
Now, almost a week later, the small airport with its 2,700-foot paved runway and crossing 2,500-foot turf runway comes into view. I touch down a little faster than I would like and taxi to the fuel pumps. A bit of a tailwind has kept me ahead of schedule. The airplane is fueled and I'm chatting with the airport staff when Jenna arrives. I have one of those surreal parental moments and really do think she's grown a foot in the past six days.
On the way home, she's quiet during the climb. I look over at her and just then she loses a fight to keep back big tears. When you're eight, it's hard to leave cousins behind.
After I level off, I grab the dense foam engine inlet plugs from the floor beneath her feet. She unbuckles for a moment while I plop the plugs on the seat. She climbs up and now with a decent view outside, takes the controls for a few minutes of flying. I point out certain cuts in the ridgelines for her to aim for and she easily guides the airplane toward home.
After we land, I snake the airplane back into its hangar and we grab wet rags to remove the layer of bugs now dulling the finish. "Jenn," I say slyly. "It's almost lunchtime. If we time this right Mom will have the grass cut before we get home."
"Wiener World!" she exclaims.
A lunch date is set.
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