Andover-Aeroflex Airport

I'll get back to the maneuvers that I was referring to last Friday in my next post (Wed. June 8). But first I want to spend a little time writing about another scenic airplane flight that I took with Mike (pilot/CFI) yesterday. This time, we flew in a Cessna Cutlass (aka Cessna 172RG), an airplane with a constant speed propeller and retractable landing gear.

Retractable landing gear is what the name implies, the landing gear retracts into the fuselage. Simply, after the plane has achieved a certain speed and is safely off the ground, the pilot operates a lever to retract the landing gear. Mike's habit is to have the person sitting in the right seat (me) check to confirm that the gear is up on the right side of the airplane while he checks the left side of the airplane. The constant speed propeller requires a couple more gauges. Oh, and there was a Garmin GPS in the plane, another first for me.

The Cruise speed of the Cutlass (120 kts) is a little faster than in the C-172 trainers that I have ridden in. So, we made good time to our destination, an airport in northern NJ (12N), Andover-Aeroflex. Aeroflex is a public airport, and also serves as the tanker base for the northern division of the NJ Forest Fire Service. The airplanes were off contract by early May.

We flew in on runway 3. As you can see from the google earth images, the approach to runway 3 is over a lake. Literally. Mike did a good job on the final approach, keeping the airplane at a safe elevation over the lake. The only interesting part was the flock of Geese sitting at the end of the Lake right at the end of runway 3. Mike raised the nose just a tad to keep a respectable elevation over the flock of Geese. The Geese did not budge, thankfully. They just hung out and watched this noisy airplane fly right over them.

I've attached a couple of images of Andover-Aeroflex from Google Earth, a photo I took while we were taxiing to depart showing some of the hangers, and a couple of photos I took of the Cutlass' cockpit.