Back in the Saddle of N2825A

Thanks to Mark, my A&P mechanic, Aggie (N2825A) is healthy again. She had been down since our return from Daytona due to a bad fuel pump and gear retract pump.

Steve and I met at KJQF (Concord) at 8 this morning. The ramp was quite full with planes - the NASCAR guys came back very late last night from Chicago. A USA Jet DC-9 was on the ramp, next to one of my favorite aircraft - a Dornier 328. Many other NASCAR planes were on the ramp.

Steve got to the airport earlier than I did and he handled the external pre-flight. Since Aggie hadn't been flown for a month, I had my doubts about it starting easily. Steve and I went through the starting checklist. I turned on the master switch and turned the ignition, and within 5 seconds, she was running!

A call to the Tower and we were taxiing for a 60 mile trip to Greensboro. Steve and I tend to default to Greensboro when we want to get a cross country in, but want close ATC supervision. Greensboro (KGSO) has a 10,000 ft. runway and control tower. There is a decent amount of commercial service to GSO, though not near as much as last year (they lost ValueJet a couple of months ago).

We took off on rwy 20 after our run-up, made a left turn and headed Northeast. As we had expected, it was very hazy - visibility was around 5 miles which isn't much. Still, with ATC watching over us, we were feeling pretty good. And I was glad to have Aggie back in the air. The flight was uneventful and smooth. I put us down on rwy 23 at GSO with relative ease and we taxied to Landmark Aviation, the FBO we've been to at least 15 times. Unfortunately, this visit was different from the others - the attendant advised us she was required to collect $35, a 'facility' fee.

FBOs have started to charge facility fees - an alarming trend for GA pilots. Those of us on recreational flights are being forced to smaller, unmanned airports to avoid such fees. These FBOs make the money on fuel - lots of fuel - to corporate/charter aircraft. Small planes like mine don't take that much fuel and the FBOs, who are typically monopolies at these airports, don't want to deal with us, so they try to gouge us with fees to keep us away. In the case of GSO, it has worked. We won't be back.

Oh well. Steve and I switched seats, called up ground, got our clearance to taxi and headed out. A few minutes later we were flying above rwy 23, on our way back home. And, 30 minutes later Steve put us on the ground - a bit of a bounce, but that's to be expected since Steve doesn't get to land Aggie very often. When we got back, JQF had 3 ExpressJet ERJs parked next to the Dornier - I guess a few of the NASCAR teams waited until this morning to come home.

1.7 hour of hazy flying - but hey, it was flying!