Collegedale, Tennessee

For my birthday, I received a gift certificate for one "Discovery Flight" from a flight school based out of the Collegedale Municipal Airport in Collegedale, TN. They are about the same distance from us as the Dalton Airport, and they're cheaper!

I'll probably take that flight in the next week or two, so I thought I'd switch back to the Skyhawk, since that's what they train in, and fly up to Collegedale to check it out.

This is a smaller airport than Dalton, but not by much. Runway is 5,003 feet long (about 4o0 feet shorter than Dalton, but still more than enough for the Skyhawk) and 75 feet wide (Dalton is 100 feet wide). On approach, I noticed that (due to my terrain mesh upgrade), Collegedale now sits up on a plateau:

(click to enlarge)

It took about 20 minutes to fly up and was an easy flight. I had forgotten how much simpler the Skyhawk is to operate than the Commander. On approach though, the air got really choppy. I was fighting the controls all the way in and ended up landing on one wheel:

(click to enlarge)

Hard to see, but there's a puff of white smoke coming off the left wheel where it touched down first. I'm also nose-left, so after touching down I had to get on the rudder to straighten back out. Otherwise, not a bad landing.

I'm going to stay here for the week and get used to the terrain, the roads around the airport, and to landing the Skyhawk on a narrower runway.