EAA Sport Aviation - January 2011

won’t stand for that, and I would be routed far to the south near Akron, adding many miles to the trip.

That morning sums up my nearly 21 years of flying out of the New York City area. There are many moments of beauty and even grandeur that are washed away by even more frequent moments of total frustration.

My wife, Stancie, and I never really wanted to live and work in the New York area, but that’s where the jobs we wanted were located. We both started work at Flying magazine in the fall of 1976. But after a few years in New York, we went off to Kansas City to be closer to the core of general aviation that I wrote about. We then moved to Grand Haven, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Michigan to be close to the water and the sailing that we love almost as much as flying.

But the headquarters remained in New York, and if I wanted a promotion to the top spot, that’s where we would have to live. I turned down the offer to be editor-in-chief the first time. I knew how costly and complicated the flying environment in New York is, and the idea of leaving Grand Haven to ride the New Haven train line into Grand Central Station had the appeal of a daily root canal.

The second time the top slot was open I knew I had to suck it up. I wasn’t going to beat New York, but I couldn’t let it keep me from doing the job and the flying that I wanted.

I had a perfect V35B Bonanza when we moved. It had been an ideal airplane for my missions from Kansas City and the Muskegon airport in Michigan. It had enough speed and range to get to Wichita nonstop, and Texas and even the West Coast were within reasonable flying times.

FLYING WITH A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

It only took a few months for me to learn that my beautiful Bonanza wasn’t the ideal airplane for the New York area if you want to fly on a preset schedule and complete a high percentage of your trips, as I must. I learned that lesson when returning to Westchester from Wichita flying through the typically crummy winter weather.

I was handed off to New York approach, and the controller was—as he is required to—telling everyone on the frequency that a DC- 9 had just reported severe icing at 6,000 feet. He gave me the same report and, you guessed it, cleared me to 6,000 feet. I said I wouldn’t descend into any icing, much less severe, which by FAA definition means the fully functioning ice protection system of a certified-to-fly-in-ice airplane can’t keep up.