Middletown, DE Cross Country...Just Because

Unable to find a passenger to fill the right seat I was forced to fly alone. Not that I minded too much. There is something about flying solo that is special. No one can bother you a 3000 ft. It's just you and the airplane. And if you not in controlled airspace you don't even have to talk to ATC. I wanted to make this flight count for something. I decided I should make it a cross country flight to practice some navigating and log the time. That meant that I needed to find an airport that was more than a 50nm straight line distance from Tipton. Cambridge was out, 47.3nm's away. Ridgely too, at 42.2nm's. I also wanted it to be somewhere I hadn't been before. I started looking on the chart to find a airport that fit my criteria. Summit (EVY) seemed to fit the bill. It was in Delaware, practically in New Castle near the Delaware Memorial Bridge. It sits just south of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal which connects the two rivers. To get there would be a trip across the bay and then up the east coast. On the way I would fly near the Chester River cross over the Sassafras River. Once I got near the airport and descended, I could see the cooling tower of the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey across the Delaware River. The traffic pattern for the airport took me over the canal and the railroad bridge on the base leg before I turned onto final and made the landing. Once I shutdown I tried to make a "guess where I am now" phone call but no one answered. I went inside the Flight Ops building and got a soda before I decided to snap this picture as evidence that I had been to the airport.

Once I got up again and climbed to 3000ft. I decided to try and take some video. I could see from the chart that the Chester River was off my left side. I tried to narrate a little but all you can hear from this video is the engine noise.


After I got into the ADIZ I sprinted back to Tipton and set down about a half hour before sunset.