Best of Aviation

Why do birds sing? They don't have to buy gas when they land. Without 100 octane aviation gasoline, this marvelous invention called an airplane is nothing more than an expensive full scale model.

Just after departure from Hagerstown, Maryland. This is home to one of the best FBOs in the Northeast, so it's always a pleasure to stop over for gas and some great crab cakes at the local off-airport restaurant.

Headed westbound across central PA, here's a good shot of the Susquehana River as it wanders through the city of Harrisburg.

Nestled in a bulge in the Connecticut River, the Hartford-Brainard airport is one of our refueling stops on trips through the northeastern states.

One of the more fun approaches, landing runway 2 at Hartford-Brainard in CT brings you very close to the river. The river leads you right to the airport after you break out of the clouds during approaches in bad weather.

A look out the right window at some folks having almost as much fun as we are while on approach to Hartford-Brainard airport.

Not every day is perfect flying weather, and hot and hazy days like this one are pretty typical in summer. Since we're flying under instrument flight rules, we can poke through haze and clouds legally.

This is what we call a "sucker hole", or a small hole in an otherwise solid cloud deck that can encourage a non-instrument rated pilot to use them to get on top of the clouds, only to have the hole close, leaving them stranded.

When I saw this at an airport in central PA, I figured I would send it to Phil Boyer of AOPA. He got a kick out of it. Now THAT is what I call one hell of an airport watch program.