Best of Aviation

This is what private aviation is all about and what I remember so much about my youth spent around airplanes.

The sign says it all!

Not something you see everyday -- the active runway is just a few feet the green.

Aviation and golf go together, and this airport combines the two avocations nicely.

One of the more fun things about flying small airplanes is flying where large airplanes can't go, like small grass strips like this.

The nose is canted to the left to compensate for a crosswind. Airport runways are aligned with the prevaliing winds, but most days there is at least some crosswind, so all student pilots learn to deal with them.

Upward sloping runways like this one help us stop faster and thus consume less runway. We can land this airplane in about 500 feet with special techniques, but our standard runway is 2000 feet or longer to provide a buffer.

Here we are on approach to a small airport in central PA during an absolutely perfect day for flying.

Although we do a full preflight inspection of the aircraft before first flight of the day, we do a quicker inspection that covers all the essentials including oil and gas condition and quantity every time we stop for fuel.