Comment "Harrowing And Fond Memories" on Lincoln Park Airport, United States

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Harrowing And Fond Memories

my flight instruction took place at BeechEast over at TEB back in the 80's... the instructors there (some of best people on earth) seemed to enjoy bringing the cocky students (like myself) over to Lincoln Park for a lil bit of humility training (i mean, after all, we did pay for it, didn't we)... maybe it was that look of shock and fear in our eyes when we first sighted the runway... maybe they took some sadistic pleasure in casually announcing, 'ok there's the runway, go ahead and land', and then sitting back and gauging our reaction, knowing full well that all any person of rational sensibilities could see was this ribbon of what looked like half a roadway with numbers on the ends... surely that couldn't be the runway that he was asking me to land on... it was just too thin to be a runway for real airplanes...

or maybe it was the knowledge that after landing at Lincoln Park once or twice, the new, soon to be pilot would be confident of his or her abilities to take their charge into anything that the FAA allowed to be called an airport... regardless of the width of its runways... maybe these flight instuctors knew a thing or two... or three...

so nowadays... whenever i see tv news replays of those airliners making emergency landings... and the pilot puts it down right on the centerline... i can rest assured that that pilot probably landed at Licoln Park at least once during his/her early flying days...

i drove out to Lincoln Park once after that... i just had to get a feel for what looked like one of those idyllic small local airports... from a different perspective... i wasn't dissapointed...

is the lil viewing gallery at the north end of the field still there...

--Mike Hense

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