Keystone Flight

Keystone Flight
For Wednesday July 31, 2024
Michael MacKuen

Today we cross Pennsylvania (the “Keystone State”) from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. We fly across farmlands and forests that cover the ridges and valleys of the Allegheny Mountains (a part of the larger Appalachian Mountain Range).  We visit regions made prosperous by coal, steel, heavy industry and manufacturing during the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. After a down period, these same regions are now battling to regain their momentum. At the end we reach a famous GA field in the Philadelphia suburbs.


The ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania

We begin at Pittsburgh International [KPIT] – a good gathering spot would be the threshold of Runway 14 and the nearby parking NE1, NE2 or NE3. We head for downtown Pittsburgh at the junction of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers. Here we can see the stadiums (and the Andy Warhol Museum) on the North Side and the revitalized city center overlooking the Point Park on the riverfront. Continuing we fly over the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning and the science-and-engineering oriented Carnegie Mellon University. Then along the Monongahela River we see the historically-important Thomson Steel Works. (It was here in the late 19^th century that Andrew Carnegie implemented Bessemer steel-making – a process which made steel economically viable and thus enabled the building of the national railroad system.) We land at Arnold Palmer Regional [KLBE] near Latrobe. (Legendary golfer and CitationX pilot Arnold Palmer learned to fly here.)

A short leg brings us to Johnstown [KJST]. The airport is built on a plateau above the city nestled in the river valley below. Johnstown was a nationally-important steel-making town during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (It is also famous for its suffering three separate massive floods, each of which almost wiped-out the city and low-lying industrial infrastructure. The people survived and persevered.) We continue northeast along the northern section of the Appalachian Mountains’ Ridge and Valley province to land at State College’s University Park [KUNV]. State College, just south of the airport, is home to Pennsylvania State University (the state’s largest public university). Partway along the next leg we pass five miles south of Lock Haven where Piper Aircraft  produced the popular Comanche – before the 1972 flood destroyed the factory and tooling. Not much to see so we press on to Williamsport [KIPT]. In its early years, this was a lumber town. Nowadays, Williamsport is more famous as the 1939 birthplace of Little League Baseball. (On finals, we might see the Little League World Series complex that hosts the annual world championships.) We continue onward to the GA airport Wilkes-Barre Wyoming Valley [KWBW]. (This field is modeled by a local pilot and worth a quick look.) To the north lie the charmingly named Endless Mountains. The Wyoming Valley itself hosts the cities of Wilkes-Barre (“Wilkes Berry”) and Scranton along banks of the Lackawanna-Susquehanna Rivers. With the early-19th century discovery of the world’s largest anthracite coal reserves, the region evolved into an immigrant-populated coal-fueled industrial economy (“The Diamond City”) which prospered until the middle of the twentieth century.

Next we visit the Pocono Mountains (typically “the Poconos”) whose wooded hills and valleys that have long been a popular outdoor recreation area. Within a few hours of the urban areas of New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia, the Poconos are dotted with resort hotels for hunting, fishing, golfing and skiing. We stop at Honesdale Cherry Ridge [N30] before flying over the heart of the region to Stroudsburg-Pocono [N53].

Then a brief excursion over the beautiful Delaware Water Gap before flying to Lehigh Valley [KABE]. The main cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton grew in the 19^th and 20^th centuries with the valley’s steel and heavy manufacturing industries. (Through the last century, Bethlehem Steel was the world’s second-largest steel company.) The region was hard-hit by the late-20^th century decline of American steel and heavy industry, but it has recently successfully rebounded in light manufacturing and logistics. The Lehigh Valley is the state’s third largest economic and population center. On departure, we can take a quick circling look at downtown Allentown before heading south toward Philadelphia.

We land at Wings Field [KLOM] located in a northern Philadelphia suburb. This 1930 site is a well-established general aviation airport. In 1932 the Philadelphia Aviation Country Club was founded here, and its members then founded the worldwide Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) in 1939. And it was at Wings Field that a Philadelphia lawyer Frank Kingston Smith fell in love with aviation and later wrote extensively to popularize the field of private pilot aviation. (He wrote Week-end Pilot (1957),  Flights of Fancy (1960), and 14 other books, and he contributed regularly to Flying Magazine, AOPA Pilot, and Sports Aviation.) For our post-flight confab, I recommend that we gather at the quaint Driscoll Terminal Building slightly uphill from the threshold of Runway 06.

Documentation
The flightplan can be found here.

Aircraft
This is a flight of about 340nm with 9 landings. Any fast-ish GA aircraft, capable of something like 165-170 kts, should do the job nicely. I’ll fly the Bonanza A36TC in the handsome Chapel Hill based livery N5831R by Ryan Butterworth.

Additional Scenery
All of the airports are in the default simulator. That said, several addons will enhance the scenery appreciably. Thanks to these talented addon creators.

Pittsburgh International [KPIT]. ProjectFlightSim
Latrobe Arnold Palmer Regional [KLBE]. H2Air
Johnstown-Cambria Co [KJST]. schultzgaming
State College University Park [KUNV]. schultzgaming
Wilkes-Barre Wyoming Valley [KWBW]. kabobby98
Honesdale Cherry Ridge [N30]. FBOStudios
Lehigh Valley International [KABE]. automater
Philadelphia Wings Field [KLOM]. alan492

Temporarily, you can obtain the full package here (1.131GB). For those economizing on downloads and willing to do without the nicely detailed model of Pittsburgh International [KPIT], a “light package” is here (489MB).

Time and Weather
For takeoff on Wednesday, set the simulator at 3:00pm local for July 31, 2024.
We typically prefer real weather.

Multiplayer Particulars
Date and time: Wednesday, July 31, 2024. 1800 UTC
RTWR Multiplayer Discord Channel
Microsoft Flight Simulator Multiplayer: United States East server.

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (linked here). Please be kind enough to enter the title exactly as it stands in the title=”xxx” line of the aircraft.cfg file. Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!