The weather was beautiful, in the mid 60's and crystal clear. There was a bit of gusty wind, but up at 5,500' it was as smooth as glass.
The view looking east-ish towards Beaufort and Cape Lookout
I was cleared to land on runway 32L using a base to very short final so I could sneak in before another club member, who was in a Cessna 152 on a 6 mile final. I felt I was getting a bit short-changed on this approach so I requested to follow the Cessna on final in, which the controller kindly allowed.
Final Approach to runway 32L. 400' wide, pretty big.
They practice carrier landings here. This is the arresting gear for the
mock carrier landings that they've pulled off of the runway for us.
mock carrier landings that they've pulled off of the runway for us.
The runway from edge-line to edge-line is 200' wide with an extra 100' beyond that, making for a 400' wide strip of pavement that is about 8,000' long; big strip of concrete. The excessive width made the gusting cross-wind a little less of a problem than it would have been on, let's say, a 75' wide runway. Long story short, the landing was pretty darn good (if I do say so myself). We were given taxi instructions to our parking spot, shut down, and got out. Clearance to land required a VFR flight plan, so I had to call Flight Service to close that.
The tower. If you look close on the right you can see a Harrier flying by.
The first stop of the tour was a hanger that housed a Cessna Citation and two military equivalents of a DC-9. All three of these were for the travel of Marine higher-ups. We got to go inside one of the DC-9s, but the pictures didn't turn out so well (that's why they aren't included here, sorry). Also in the hanger were two search and rescue helicopters. I didn't catch the exact model, but take a look at the picture. They were pretty awesome.
Planes in the hanger.
Search and rescue helicopter.
After the hanger we were treated with an up-close and personal view of the Harrier Jet line. They had quite a few two-seaters for training. Our tour guide was a Harrier student pilot, and had a lot of interesting info. I won't go into any details here, but we learned a lot and left much more impressed with the plane than when we got there. During our tour there were 3-4 Harriers flying around the base doing some training.
Up close and personal with a Harrier.
From here we went to eat lunch at a restaurant on the base. I was about to starve. It was good, not great. Our tax money at work.
One of the highlights of the day was the opportunity to see the air traffic control facilities. I got to visit the inside of a control tower for the first time. It was similar to what I expected except for the people in there. I was expecting some older, seasoned-looking controllers (like what you see on Top Gun). I get up there and there are about 10 really young looking guys -- yes, younger than me -- half of them training and the other half being trained. Because it was Saturday they were all dressed in their street clothes, making it all seem a little less impressive. Notice I said "seem", it was still all business. It was great to see everything from their perspective.
View from the tower. That's N81917 out there (I fly it sometimes).
From the top of the base to the bottom, we found ourselves next in the radar room. Radar rooms, to those of you who don't know, are really dark. My eyes adjusted to the low red light, but I couldn't imagine working in there for several hours without going a little crazy. Beyond that, it was still very cool to see the radar screens, have the controllers explain what they do and, again, see it from their perspective.
The surprise of the day was when the Marines asked if they could come see our planes. We scoffed, "sure, yeah right, you can come look at our planes." To our surprise, they were actually very eager to see them. It dawned on me that most of these guys probably have never seen planes up-close other than Harriers and other cool military planes. A Piper Warrior is a new thing to them. It was pretty cool.
Marines checking out my plane.
Parked plane with Harrier in the background.
Taxiing out among the Harriers.
Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (EWN) with New Bern and the Neuse River.
So all in all it was a great trip. I got to land at a military base, saw some planes up close that I've never seen up close before, saw air traffic control, and got to fly the longest flight of my "career"; yes, 116 miles. It was a great time.
