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

Oops - forgot the link to the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/5572722...7594113899664/

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.

Nice shot of the approach! I need to try that this summer. Looks like
you had a beautiful day.

On 22 Apr 2006 10:32:32 -0700, Wiz wrote:

Oops - forgot the link to the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/5572722...7594113899664/

Thanks for posting your experiences Wiz! Great approach pic as well!

With a density altitude of 5200, how did your plane perform on take off?

How high did you go with such a high density altitude for your ride back
home?

Allen

A Lieberman wrote:
On 22 Apr 2006 10:32:32 -0700, Wiz wrote:

Oops - forgot the link to the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/5572722...7594113899664/

Thanks for posting your experiences Wiz! Great approach pic as well!

With a density altitude of 5200, how did your plane perform on take off?

How high did you go with such a high density altitude for your ride back
home?

Huh? 5200 is high density?
OK, for coastal people, this may be unusual, but for most of the US,
with "ground" averaging 1000-4000 MSL, is 5200 unusual?

"Blanche Cohen" wrote in message
...
With a density altitude of 5200, how did your plane perform on take off?

How high did you go with such a high density altitude for your ride back
home?

Huh? 5200 is high density?

5200' certainly is "high density altitude" when it comes to takeoffs. It's
not as high as you can get, of course, but it's plenty high to cause a
significant increase in takeoff distance requirements (power loss, increased
true airspeed).

For cruise, you're right. But the way I read the question, since the
takeoff altitude was 5200', the question is asking what cruise altitude was
chosen. In most of the US, 5200' itself is a high enough cruise altitude.
Granted, even flat-landers fly higher than that often enough, but even so,
seems like a reasonable enough question from an inexperienced pilot.

In the area in question (Appalachians, and otherwise ground elevations 500'
and lower), 5200' is a pretty high airport, and I can believe most pilots
get only that high (or slightly higher) for cruise around there. Heck, here
in the Puget Sound area, if I'm not crossing a mountain and my trip is less
than an hour or so, I rarely climb higher than 3000'.

Anyway, I guess that's a long way of saying that the previous poster's
questions seemed reasonable to me.

Pete

Allen, thanks. This particular club airplane is a 172N with an M
engine, and it normally climbs like nobody's business. Climb
performance was definitely diminished, but still reasonable. As you
suggest, because climb performance was down, getting to altitude was a
little more of a chore, but I had to go up to at least 6,500, about
3,000 agl of the highest terrain, to avoid the worst part of the smoke
plume from a forest fire that was in my way. In retrospect, I should
have climbed to 7,500 because forward viz was still not ideal for a few
minutes...

Wiz


A Lieberman wrote:
On 22 Apr 2006 10:32:32 -0700, Wiz wrote:

Oops - forgot the link to the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/5572722...7594113899664/

Thanks for posting your experiences Wiz! Great approach pic as well!

With a density altitude of 5200, how did your plane perform on take off?

How high did you go with such a high density altitude for your ride back
home?

Allen

On 22 Apr 2006 10:26:38 -0700, "Wiz" wrote:

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


It sure is a beautiful place. I had the opportunity to stay a week in
the area when I had a mechanical failure force me to divert on a trip
to Nashville a few years ago. I ended up staying in Covington, but
visited the Homestead and plan to go back. All the people are very
friendly. Only word of caution is to watch the weather (as always).
I should have only been there for 2 nights, but ceilings were around
3,000 to 3,500 broken to overcast everyday. What looked like a
beautiful day in the valley turned into a windy foggy mess as I got
closer to the airport. Something you may find interesting, Ingall's
field is the highest airport east of the Mississippi.

In the area is something called a Humpback Bridge. There are only 2
in the world. The other is in France. It was really cool to see it
and learn about the engineering that went into building this type of
structure so bridges could span longer distances than ever before. I
also met the great (great?) grandson of the winner of the last
recorded dual in American history! Can't remember his name off the
top of my head, but I have it written down. While at his house he
took out enough historical info to prove it to me which was also very
intriguing. Somewhere around there is an Italian restaurant that
rivals anything New York City has to offer. I ate there twice! Best
place to drink was the Pink Elephant, and there is enough landscape to
walk through you'll probably never get bored.

The two guys who worked at the airport we very friendly, helpful in
every way possible. They made a week I thought would last forever, go
by very quickly and I learned more about the area than I ever
imagined.

z