iFly GPS Forum

HI Mike,

Yes...it can be a busy but beautiful place to fly.  The 33rd Wing is now a training wing for the F-35 with about 50 a/c on station.  The Tyndall F-22 School is there now also while Tyndall is being rebuilt from the hurricane.  On top of that, it's also a training ground for controllers so you have to listen well and make sure they don't send you somewhere you shouldn't be.  They tend to be pretty patient with us bug smasher though.  You got talked to for going too slow...lol, I routinely get turned over to the tower at Field 2 and told to report at Base for 19...about 5 miles away.  I can tell from there voice they expect that to be a much quicker trip than it's going to be.

My partners and I keep our Cherokee tied-down there and I trained for my Inst rating at the Aero Club in 2016.  You are correct, there are some obviously military specific approaches but each runway has approaches, both ILS & RNAV, for us regular guys.  There's no reason Ifly shouldn't treat those approaches the same as any other airport since there are aero clubs, some commercial, and other reasons civilian a/c fly into military installations.

Chad

Arthur,

That's great - if you're ever up in the northeast, USA, give me a shout out - will meet and buy lunch! My aircraft really needs a paint job right now and I am getting estimates..original paint from 1976...

Mike N714AJ

Probably getting off topic here but I'll give you a picture of what it looks like now.  DTS is definitely too expensive...they cater to the rich folks.  They do have a tower now so it's not as chaotic as it once was over there.  Cview is nice but doesn't have hangars to rent, just increased their tie down rental to $150/mth (unless you have them do your annual then it's ($75)...kind of a mob shakedown going on there, and the fuel tends to be about $1 more than Defuniak, Milton, or on base.  Same outfit the owns the FBO at DTS owns the one in Cview.   If you're retired or have base access and are willing to join the Aero Club, you can get a base landing permit and rent a tie down from the Aero Club...at least for now...who knows in 5 years?  Defuniak and Milton both have T-hangars and cheap gas.  Milton has many more T-hangars than Dfun.  Ruckel is getting an upgrade right now with T-hangars.  The area next to it is being developed into a housing community.  I won't fly out of there...its forested and there's just no place to go if you lose an engine on TO.  In the 10 years I've lived here I know 3 people (two separate incidents) who lost thier lives after an engine loss on TO out of there.  Last one was an instructor of mine.  Both ended up hitting trees.

Best of luck getting back down here.