A blast from the past.

The following  is something I wrote for my FaceBook page back in October of 2010. As a pilot and flight instructor, I’ve had many, many aviation experiences that not many people mighty ever have. This is what I wrote.

The fun of flying

Probably only pilots understand the fun of the following but I thought I'd share it with everyone. It's the reason flying is both fun and challenging.

This past Monday I flew up to Portsmouth NH to pick up my contact with the Army Corps of Engineers for aerial photos. We have a contract with the Army Corps to fly this guy whenever he needs to take aerial photos of things the Army Corps is involved with, like shore line project, illegal construction in wet lands, etc. This time we were to fly to Newburyport and Plum Island to photograph the beach reconstruction project they were involved with. The Army Corps was dredging the harbor entrance and taking the sand from that area and pumping up onto the beach to replenish the shore. Seems people with houses along the beach were seeing their (ours?) beach being eaten by storms. Gee, the ocean eats the beaches over time. Anyone tell them that that would happen?

Anyway, coming back to Portsmouth after we did the photos, I contacted the control tower on approach and was told to plan for a "land long" landing and plan to exit at a taxiway way, way down the runway. Understand that the runway at Portsmouth (formerly Pease AFB) is over two miles long. Small plane drivers like us like to land such that we don't have a long taxi back to where we need to be. The particular reason the tower wanted me to do this was that a KC135 tanker (think Boeing 707) was going to takeoff at the end of the runway AND a corporate jet was going to take off from the intersection of the first taxiway where I would normally exit the runway. Now "landing long" not usually something we teach pilots because we teach them to aim for the end of the runway. Landing long involves flying low over the runway and planning and adjusting things to make sure you land before the turnoff point but not too far away that causes you to take your sweet time leaving the runway. In this case I had a KC135 jet tanker and corporate jet burning fuel waiting for this little Cessna to do its thing.

So I did my best, dealing with a gusty crosswind and landed where I wanted to and exited the runway in fairly short order. I was disappointed that the tower didn't thank me for doing what I was told to do. But it was fun to buzz the runway that low knowing some expensive machinery was cooling their jets (so to speak) while I demonstrated superior flying skills.

Going to Portsmouth is always fun for me as I spend several years there in the 60's in the Air Force working on and watching B-47s takeoff and land. I never thought, some forty years later I would be flying a plane into Pease AFB, landing on the same runway where I watch countless B-47 takeoff and land. Funny how life takes twists and turns you never expect.