Every spring the Greater Cincinnati Airmen’s Club held a spot landing contest at Montgomery County (now Dayton Wright Brothers) Airport in Southern Ohio. It’s a non-towered field about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati with a long paved runway pointing southwest into the prevailing wind. I’m sure some wise soul realized that challenging rusty, winter-weary aviators with a stiff crosswind might result in some bent tin. Non-toweredness, of course, is an essential element for any decent spot landing competition. I mean, who wants an air traffic controller screwing up your approach for some triviality like conflicting traffic? Afterward there’d be breakfast at the venerable greasy spoon on the field that, a few years later, sadly fell victim to the local health department.
You don’t hear much about spot landing contests anymore and the anemic attempts I watch on practical tests (yes, even commercials) suggest accuracy landings have gone the way of spin training and dead reckoning skills. So I think we should get ’em back. They’re fun — OK, sometimes embarrassing — but a surefire way to sharpen basic skills and not nearly as expensive as the current $300 hamburger run. That is, if you don’t get carried away and put your nosewheel through the firewall.
