Nine Days Later From My Last Post

Today tt was 60degF and sunny. It was a gorgeous day for flying, and I did.

Almost all of the snow that was there nine days ago is gone, only the remnants of large piles and some stuff on north-facing hills remain. The ground alongside the paved areas at the airport is soft and almost squishy.

There is a layer in the atmosphere of brownish shmutz at the surface that goes up a few thousand feet or so. It seems to me that the brown layer is worse this year than in years past.

Winter Flying

That is ice on the trees. It was sunny out, the ice had melted from my airplane where the sun could shine on it. That meant that the right side of the tail and fuselage were covered with about an eighth of an inch of clear ice.

I was able to taxi to another part of the airport and park the airplane to turn that side of it directly into the sunshine. Less than a half-hour later, I was in the air. Overall, though, I spent more time preparing for the flight than I did flying, which is not terribly unusual in the winter.

Avgas here is now $5.30/gal. I can check fuel prices on AirNav, but some of the reports are over three weeks old and given the volatility in fuel pricing, a three week old report is worthless. Unless the price of local fuel is outrageous, I'll buy at my home airport, as I have an interest in seeing that they stay in business.

Anyway, the airports in southeast NY state may see a bit more airplanes on the tiedowns this year. The governor of CT wants to add a personal property tax for airplanes, which will make it attractive for those who can stomach the extra driving time to move them to other states. That'd be good for my airport, but not so good for airports like 11N and DXR.