February 26, 2005 - Citabria Flight
Airport Circuit: Northern Maryland - Southern
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The road to Essex Skypark. Literally. With the snow, it was
actually scenic. Normally, you can see the ugly swamps on each side,
and illegally dumped trash along the roadside. |
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Despite having snowed Thursday, Saturday brought good flying weather.
I decided to head north and land at airports I had never been to before.
Maryland's Eastern Shore certainly looks different covered in a blanket
of snow.
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Another view of the Eastern Shore. |
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As soon as I cleared the ADIZ, I descended to 500 feet for a little low
and slow. I ran across this big amorphous blob of birds.
It's kind of fun to follow them around.
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| I've seen this private strip
before. It's hard to tell it's there with the snow. |
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| The first airport I stopped at was
Cecil County. It easily won the friendliest airport of the day award.
There were a bunch of regulars in the homey FBO building. They were
interested in the Citabria, Essex Skypark, and the ADIZ. A classic GA
airport. I'll come back here again. |
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Next stop was New Garden. It sits on the top of a hill. Had a
pretty good crosswind on landing. It seemed like a working airport.
I didn't see much in the way of an FBO office or terminal so I just
taxiied back out to the runway and departed. |
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Brandywine is about 10 miles east of Philly. It has a
relatively new terminal but didn't have a restaurant. The airport
was fairly busy and looked to be thriving. It seemed like it
catered to a bigger (and more expensive) GA planes. A big twin
took off ahead of me. Apparently the airport is pilot owned.
I snapped this picture of a Helicopter Museum across the runway.
That's a big V-22 Oprey in front of it. You know, the plane
they've been building for 20 years and the military still doesn't have
it. I actually saw one flying down at Patuxent Naval Air Station
about 8 years ago.
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I headed over to Chester County and made a nice wheel landing. As
you can see, it's big. But it didn't seem all that busy. It
did have an excellent restaurant in the terminal though. It had big
radio-controlled model airplanes hanging from the ceiling and aviation art
on the walls. My kind of place. My bacon and cheeseburger was
first-rate and the buffalo fries were superior! |
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Taxiing out behind some big iron.
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| Smoketown was similar to New Garden
in that there didn't appear to be anything to see. I didn't even get
out of the Citabria. It was time to head back home.
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| I spotted this dam heading south
towards Baltimore. Despite flying in this area for years, this is the
first time I've seen it! |
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| I logged 3.0 hours. Good
flying day! |
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