When Bill Jennings couldn't make it to Hilton Head, I changed plans on Saturday. My Mooney partner had expressed interest in visiting Mountainaire in NC so I suggested that yesterday would be a good day to do it. A call to the office up there said we could fly in but had to watch a video before doing so. It was available at the Millionaire FBO at Ashville KAVL. So we flew up there (got in a practice ILS) and watched the 20 min video about landing at 2NC0. It's a 2800' x 50' wide runway at 4400' with no runoff at either end, just shear dropoffs. We called them from Ashville, told them we'd seen the video and were given an arrival code.
It's not in the Jeppesen database so I punched the lat/long into the 430 as a user waypoint and departed KAVL (BTW, Millionaire did not charge any ramp fee, and we didn't buy any gas. We did eat their free popcorn while watching the video
)
Pretty big mountains (for the east coast) between Ashville and Mountainaire so I climbed to 7500 for the short 15 minute flight. I let an inbound Cirrus land in front of me to watch his pattern. The runway has big signs giving the remaining distance every 500'. If you're not on the ground with 2000' to go, they tell you to go around. As it turned out I flew a pretty good pattern, touched down just where they want you to and was easily able to stop and turn in to parking.
We were met by a sales manager who spent about an hour showing us around. This place is one gorgeous mountain development. A very hilly and beautiful golf course winds through the development ($60k to join
). A number of large, tasteful commons buildings (restaurants, club house and such) have architecture that is perfect for the mountain setting. The homes include condos (only 6 per building), cottages and single family homes, some of which are quite impressive. I would certainly enjoy having a place here.
Our departure and flight home were uneventful, but it was one perfect day to be flying in the southeast. I'm glad to have 2NC0 in my logbook.
It's not in the Jeppesen database so I punched the lat/long into the 430 as a user waypoint and departed KAVL (BTW, Millionaire did not charge any ramp fee, and we didn't buy any gas. We did eat their free popcorn while watching the video
)Pretty big mountains (for the east coast) between Ashville and Mountainaire so I climbed to 7500 for the short 15 minute flight. I let an inbound Cirrus land in front of me to watch his pattern. The runway has big signs giving the remaining distance every 500'. If you're not on the ground with 2000' to go, they tell you to go around. As it turned out I flew a pretty good pattern, touched down just where they want you to and was easily able to stop and turn in to parking.
We were met by a sales manager who spent about an hour showing us around. This place is one gorgeous mountain development. A very hilly and beautiful golf course winds through the development ($60k to join
). A number of large, tasteful commons buildings (restaurants, club house and such) have architecture that is perfect for the mountain setting. The homes include condos (only 6 per building), cottages and single family homes, some of which are quite impressive. I would certainly enjoy having a place here. Our departure and flight home were uneventful, but it was one perfect day to be flying in the southeast. I'm glad to have 2NC0 in my logbook.
