When Air Facts resurrected the speed records that it started in 1968, it brought back a flood of memories of my Dad’s participation in the program. So when a planned family trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin, was on the calendar, I figured this was a good time to attempt to beat Dad’s record—well at least one of them.
The go-around. Also known as the missed approach. I’ve never understood the panic that the go around instills in non-pilots. I ride in the back of airliners to and from work every week and go-arounds sometimes happen. The gasps, white-knuckles, and wide-eyed gazes directed at the flight attendant(s), during this maneuver seem unwarranted, but it happens every time.
What era would you consider general aviation’s golden years? A fellow pilot asked me this question recently and it was quite thought provoking. Today’s glass cockpits, avionics, and electronic charts are wondrous devices that make technology from the 1990s seem positively quaint. But what about the exciting and innovating days of the 1950s and 1960s, or the early 1970s when gas was still cheap, airplanes were abundant, and the interiors oh so groovy?
This past September, the Northeast U.S. was plagued by “the low that wouldn’t go away.” This cutoff low-pressure system sat and spun for two weeks bringing daily gloom from the Mid Atlantic to Maine. Unfortunately, in the midst of this crummy weather, I was scheduled to give a talk at AOPA’s Summit in Hartford, Connecticut on September 24th.
A late June family wedding was to take place in West Dover, Vermont, at a location about a mile from the Mount Snow Airport. I have had a love/hate relationship with this airport for years. It’s the only airport that I have been unable to get into a whopping 75 percent of the time. Weather, wind, and runway conditions—or a combination thereof—have all stymied my attempts to land there over the last 15 years.
It was actually Father’s Day weekend, but this flight was all about Mom. The mission was to pick up my mother at her home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and drop her at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport in Islip, NY to see her friend who lives on Fire Island. I had the choice of flying either my family’s Cessna 172 or Beechcraft Baron.
Our recent family trip from the Washington D.C. area to visit family and drop our money at Universal Studios in Florida was off to a crummy start and we hadn’t even left our house. A strong cold front was advancing to the East coast and trailed into northern Florida touching off daily rounds of thunderstorms over our first destination of Orlando’s Executive Airport.
One cold day, I was taxiing out to the runway in our Cessna 172 when another pilot says over the Unicom, “Uhhhh, Skyhawk taxiing out, you still have your cowl plugs in.” Ugh, how embarrassing. I was with my wife and had my tail thoroughly between my legs as I hopped out to remove them.