Brief Hot Springs report

Posted a response earlier and mentioned I was going to this airport,
and there was some interest in it, so I thought I'd post a very brief
trip report.

Took off Tuesday afternoon from Gaithersburg, MD (KGAI - Montgomery
County Airpark). Destination Hot Springs, VA (KHSP - Ingall's Field).
Ingall's field is an interesting strip on top of a mountain ridge at
3,600, with drop-offs on either end. Our destination was Virginia's
fabled Homestead resort, orginally built around the natural hot springs
in the area in 1766, with the main construction being from the 1920's.
The splurge on the destination was the girlfriend's suggestion, and
taking one of the club's planes for a 1.5 hour flight (rather than the
4.5 hour drive) was my idea.

We took off and headed north out of the Washington, D.C. ADIZ, and kept
the code we were issued for flight following. Before reaching
Frederick, MD, we turned west and crossed the first small ridge to
overfly historic Harper's Ferry, WV, at the confluence of the
Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. We made a bee-line for Winchester
(KOKV), and mostly zig-zagged over airports down the valley, following
the winding Shenandoah (I prefer to use airports as checkpoints - makes
me feel better to have one nearby just in case). From the valley, we
climbed up to 6,500 to cross the remaining ridges to Hot Springs.

Ingall's field is hard to miss - nothing but trees on the surrounding
ridges, and one open, obviously man-made clearing top center of a large
ridge, which just had to be the airport. The sheer drop-off at the
ends of the runway made the sight picture strange, and I was just a bit
high on final. That was OK, because I had plenty of runway (5,600')
and planned a slightly extended touchdown to help avoid problems with
the potential wind shear from the cliff at the end of the runway.
Crosswind was just a bit tricky, with the runway being mostly
east-west, and the prevailing winds usually north or south. Windsocks
at either end of the field indicated about a 7-knot crosswind, which
disappeared over the runway, leaving the mid-field sock flat, and
requiring me to take out crosswing correction before touchdown. The
folks at the FBO were really nice, fuel was reasonable by area
standards at $3.98 full serve, and the scenery was great. The airport
was VERY quiet - a couple of based planes, and one other four-place
single, though I understand it kind of fills up with corporate jets on
summer weekends. Transportation to the Homestead was via a friendly
driver and a very expensive van ride from the Homestead ($25 per person
each way for the 5.8 mile trip - ouch!). The resort was nice, the food
was decent - I'll let you read about that at www.thehomestead.com.

We did some hiking, soaked in the historic hot springs, shot skeet at
the range... A few photos, including final approach and three shots of
the resort are he I encourage you to use the option to enlarge the
photo of the final approach. The resort is beautiful, they have some
great golf courses including a top ten course. Sam Snead learned to
play at the Homestead, and reportedly loved the Cascades course there.
Unfortunately, I haven't had time for golf since college, so I didn't
try it out. There are also opportunities for hiking, fly fishing,
skeet shooting, mountain biking, horseback riding, etc...

Our original plan was to head south to Abingdon, VA, do some hiking and
take in a play. However, the strong thunderstorms just southwest of
there discouraged us, and we cut our trip short and headed back to DC.
Before departure on Thursday, Leesburg FSS was reporting all clear with
some high cirrus. AWOS was indicating a density altitude of 5,200'. I
leaned for the DA and put in 10 degrees of flaps, wanting to be well
airborne before reaching the edge of the cliff and associated wierd
winds at the departure end of the runway.

Immediately after launch we were in for a surprise - what looked like a
small cloud to the northeast turned out to be a smoke plume from a
forest fire, stretching east to west all the way across the ridges in
our intended direction of travel. We contacted Washington Center to
get advisories so no traffic would sneak up on us, turned southward and
climbed to avoid it best we could. Despite this, it was getting
awfully hazy, and being kind of conservative I was just considering
returning to Ingall's Field, when forward viz started to improve. I
dialed up Leesburg Radio on a nearby VORTAC and made a pirep on the
smoke, and we continued on our way home through warm, blue skies.

Guess this turned out to be a little longer than I expected, and I
skipped a lot of detail. Hope some of you consider doing this trip.

Regards, Wiz