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On Oct 26, 2009, at 2:10 PM, Jim Wilkes wrote: Guys, As a follow-up to this discussion, have/did any of you ever land at the now closed Floyd Bennett NAS out on Long Island, NY ??? They were OBO (Official Business Only), PPR (Prior Permission Required) prior to landing there, mainly because of a lack of parking space. While I was a brand NEW T-33 IP at Craig around 1964-65,I had a 2/Lt student who had lived and gone to school at NY City College--I think it was (BA,MA,PhD). He requested to go there on his T-33 cross- country and after checking and KNOWING we weren't going to get permission, I called their ops folks and unbelievably received permission. Off we went to FB NAS and the fun began with the clearance to descend to around 3000'and proceed to the Colts Neck VOR (don't have a clue why I would remember that) and I can't find it on my HIGH altitude charts and started searching for the correct LOW alt chart among the numerous ones in the map case. Within about 30 seconds the controller pops up with the comment over the air of "AF Jet 12345,understand you don't have your LOW alt charts out and can't find the correct one and thus have no idea how to find Colts Neck VOR. Turn right xyz degrees to heading abc for radar vectors to Colts Neck for a descent to 900'(I think it was) and then a vector direct to FB NAS. We were sent out over the coast on a heading towards FB and were immediately asked if we had the field in sight. I replied yes, we had all 6 of the fields in sight and since I was unfamiliar with the area, I asked him to stay with me so I could find the right field. He stayed with me a minute or so ,constantly asking if I had the field in sight. He finally did me in by saying the field was at 12 o'clock ( I can still see 3 fields at 12 o'clock) at x miles, he was CANCELING my IFR and contact tower for landing on abc.d frequency. While the student (2/Lt Tinney Wheatly--later a KC-135 driver in case any of you knew him) flew the bird, I was looking at runway outlines on my approach charts trying to make sure I landed at the right place. All of a sudden, a Navy jet (I think it was an F-4) came in from right above and passed directly over us in a shallow descent, scaring the hell out of us, but he pulled ahead because his speed was so much faster than us and headed for one of the fields in front of us. I told Tinney, he's Navy, this is a NAS, we're going to follow him and land where he does. He pitches out for landing (from 900') and the tower clears us to follow him. That's when it really got cute--I looked down and we were landing on a base STREET. The SPs were stopping cross street travel and the street we landed on (right behind the Navy bird), all had GREEN on their street stop lights.. At the end of our roll-out, the SPs had another street blocked for us to taxi back toward Base Ops while we followed a follow-me truck. After we de-planned, the ground crews towed out T-bird out towards a large multi-engine plane parked on the ramp and pulled it UNDER the wing and chocked it--just like had happened to another IP (Jack Esler, now a retired Delta Capt) and me at New Orleans NAS during Mardi Gras 1964, in our T-37.
Jim |