Airport Tour of North Georgia

Last night I decided to take a little tour in the Skyhawk. I wanted to check out some of the other reasonable sized airports in the area. None of those sidewalk sized runways, but real airports.

I started by flying from Dalton down to Carter's lake, then over towards Gilmer County. Along the way, I did another flyby of the tower thing:

(click to enlarge)

I still can't figure out what it is. Nor can I locate anything like it in the area using Google Earth. I wonder if there's a forum somewhere for FSX users to identify odd stuff like this?

From there, I landed at Gilmer County Airport, 1486 ft. above sea-level, with a smaller runway than Dalton, but not too small (3500' long, 75' wide).

I did a touch-and-go landing and then headed south to Pickens County. That airport is more like Dalton's, 5000' runway and 100' wide, but like Gilmer, it's more in the mountains (1,535' elevation). Another touch-and-go, then due west to Tom B. David airport in Calhoun. That was an interesting landing. About the time I announced my position and intent to land, another small plane (Piper Cherokee, I think), announced its intent to land on the same runway. It was a couple of miles closer, so I swung wide south of the airport to give him time to land.

As I passed the airport, I was able to look out my left window and spot the Piper flying the pattern. I had to zoom in to see more than just a smudge moving along parallel to the runway. Then, by the time I had swung around and was about to turn into the pattern myself, I got another view of him on final approach and landing.

Calhoun is actually a little bigger than Dalton, 6000' long and 100' wide, and slightly lower at 647 feet elevation. I did another touch-and-go, then headed northwest towards Barwick/Lafayette airport but with a slight sight-seeing detour:

(click to enlarge)

The mountain range in front of me is called "The Pocket" because of how the ridge comes south, turns and then heads back north. I've ridden my bike through this area a number of times (including a tough climb over the ridge), and have spent a weekend here with my Daughter at the Girl Scout Camp. There's actually a small lake (large pond?) in there, but it was not modeled in FSX.

After flying down into and back out of The Pocket, and resumed my northwest track and started looking for the last airport. The pocket runs north/south, so I should have just turned due west instead. I ended up almost missing the airport on the north side, but sorted things out, turned south and did one final touch-and-go. Barwick/Lafayette is 5350' long, 75' wide and at an elevation of 777' above sea-level.

My tour almost complete, I turned back due East and returned to Dalton. Total flight time ended up being one hour and twenty-five minutes, with five total landings.