ATIS “Tango” was advertising 43 degrees C when we landed Sunday afternoon. Although I’m “mathematically challenged” I think that works out to about 110 degrees F, which might explain the eerie quiet on the Lunken tower frequency. David Zombek had just flown an outstanding private pilot check ride in the 172. He’d worked long and hard to earn the certificate and was appropriately proud and excited; it sure called for a celebration, but the flight school — hell, the whole airport — was as deserted as it had been four hours earlier when we’d met.
The noticeable general aviation “malaise” in my part of the world puzzles and worries me: Blue Ash Airport is shutting down; some lady general running Wright-Patterson Air Force Base recently “vaporized” the base’s military aero club — the oldest in the country; Dayton’s Phillipsburg Airport is for sale — airplanes, buildings and all — for $550,000; and today, when I landed at or flew over fields at Moraine, New Lebanon (Dahio), Brookville, Versailles and Mad River, Ohio, they looked like ghost towns. The only chatter over 123.0 on this warm, sunny July afternoon was from the $(&#@*% parachute droppers at Middletown and a few traffic pattern calls.
