I'm a low time pilot (77 hours). In the interest of expanding my
comfort zone and accumulating the cross-country hours required for an
instrument rating, I decided that instead of boring holes in the same
sky every flight that I woud try to go at least 50 miles away when
possible.

Yesterday, I decided to fly to Joe Zerby (ZER) in Schuykill County,
PA. I have been flying a 172N since my checkride in July but I
decided to take 152 and save some bucks. Started out from N10 in
winds that were about 12 knots. After passing RDG I flew over two
ridge lines and encountered a lot of turbulence, well at least a lot
of turbulence for a 152. After passing the second ridge, the
landscape looked like a huge bowl with a plateau in the middle with an
airport on it. This created two situations for an experienced fellow
like myself.

First, was the strange sense that I was too high even though I wasn't.
The valley around the airport was lower than the airport and it took
more concentration than I expected it would to focus on the airstrip
and not the surrounding terrain. Secondly, I encountered winds like I
have never seen before in my long ten month flying career. While
trying to land on this aircraft carrier looking runway I encountered
wind shear, updrafts, downdrafts and a major crosswind blowing at
about 25 knots. Fortunately, the runway is long (over 4k). After an
ugly and scary approach the landing was actually very smooth. No
bounce, no perceptible side forces on the gear, no injuries.

After landing, I had to taxi a considerable distance to the ramp which
proved to be even more difficult than the landing. At least my
instructor drilled the proper control inputs for taxiing under these
conditions into my head.

After changing my underwear, I watched a few other idiots come in and
their landings looked a lot like mine. My big question is this: is
this airport always like this because of the interesting topography
around it or was this simply a tough, windy day? I would like to go
back sometime with the wife but I think a landing like that would
scare her away from flying forever.

Rich Russell
P.S. The take-off was just as adventurous. Once beyond the runway
and the cliff, all hell broke loose and it felt like I was in a
hurricane until I gained some altitude. Oh well, I wanted to expand
my horizons and I did.