Turning the Corner

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
6 Apr 2013	N21481	5G0 (LeRoy, NY) - FZY (Fulton, NY) - 5G0	3.1	1133.6

With weather finally turning the corner toward spring, it was a good day to venture skyward, get back to my roots (i.e., look out the window and take some pictures), and exercise Warrior 481 before she goes down for annual next week.

I flew through Rochester's airspace under the watchful radar eye of what sounded like a trainee approach controller.  I crossed over the top of Marketplace Mall, the former site of Hylan Field.

I had lunch at Puddle Jumpers at the Oswego County Airport (FZY).  My lunch (a mushroom Swiss burger) was quite good and the homemade, complimentary dessert was much appreciated.  It is great to see someone making an honest effort to keep the airport restaurant going - I am certain that it is not easy.

In addition to the bumpy ride, the wind was variable and traffic was frequently switching back and forth between runways 6 and 33.  But at least everyone was paying attention to what the wind was doing.

  :-)

Back in the air, I turned a corner of a different sort; the southeast corner of Lake Ontario.  With the nose pointed toward Canada, I continued northward.

Flying slightly offshore brought some relief from the thermal-induced bumps.

I reached the St Lawrence River near Clayton, NY.  Although the dead landscape of New York in April is rarely appealing, the waterways are always interesting to see from the air.

Blind Bay, located on the south bank of the St Lawrence.

The Rock Island Lighthouse stands vigil in the river just outside Blind Bay.

This part of the world is known as the Thousand Islands for obvious reasons.

See that land over there?  That's Canada.  At this point, I noticed a significant amount of French being spoken on 123.00.

Alexandria Bay, the destination for one of my favorite past day trips.

Farther east is Dark Island, home to Singer Castle.  I think this would be a fun destination for a family trip one of these days.

A freighter makes its way westward through the seaway on a journey that could extend to the westernmost reaches of the Great Lakes.

Of course, my proximity to Canada could mean only one thing.

Labatts?  No, not while flying.  Ice.  Lots of ice.

Fortunately, it was breaking up rapidly under the warm springtime sun.

On the return trip, the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Plant made for a perfect ground reference.  Not that I really needed a ground reference; it was my fourth flight with Foreflight/Stratus on my iPad.  As other reviewers have already noted, Stratus "just works".  It's stupid-simple to set up, starts working right away, and the box pulls in ADS-B and GPS signals just fine from the middle of the backseat where I put it to prevent overheating on the glareshield.  Nice.

But today was really all about looking out the window.

The City of Oswego and the Oswego River.

The Oswego breakwater viewed from 8500'.

Closer to home, I worked with another trainee approach controller before making landfall.

Sometimes, there does not need to be a particular destination or mission.  Sometimes, just exercising an airman's privileges and looking out the window are deeply satisfying.  Days like this are why I'm glad I own (outright, finally) an airplane.