Saturday, July 18, 2009

Hackettstown - Sky Park / Beechcraft Bonanza A36 (N6835W) / VFR

Not long after landing at Hackettstown, wanderlust drove me to move on, so I decided to fly up to an even smaller airport, Sky Park, in Red Hook. Again this took me east of the hypercrowded Class B airspaces over NYC and its airports. I filed for 3500 via SAX.HELON.TRESA, and eventually climbed to 5500 for better visibility.

The airport was tiny indeed but I was able to locate it and land safely. As with the previous flight, it was raining for most of this flight, but it wasn't cold (about 14° C at altitude). It was completely dark for this flight, as it was well after sunset, but I had terrain below to guide me in addition to VORs.

With this flight and its predecessor, I flew mostly by autopilot and GPS to lighten the workload in the poor VMC and nighttime through which I was flying. The Bonanza is pretty well equipped.