One pilot’s romantic ideal of flying might be the soft, sighing touchdown of a taildragger on freshly mowed grass at the end of a warm summer day. Another’s could involve a floatplane splashing down next to a favorite Alaskan fishing hole, or a sailplane working the thermals. No matter which of these might be your ideal, they all require warm weather, which is kind of hard to find right now in the Northern Hemisphere. Frozen fields, ice, snow and low overcasts may be the norm where you are, robbing us all of favorite destinations and leaving behind gray, overcast days and dark nights, perhaps laden with frozen precipitation.
That said, winter flying can offer many pleasures. Among them are floating over a snow-covered landscape, weekend trips to your favorite ski venue, or trading floats for skis and doing some ice fishing. Putting aside the operational challenges winter weather can bring, there are many other practical demands it may pose to our flying. With that in mind, we offer up some tips that can help make committing aviation during the winter more practical and enjoyable.
