LightHawk Flight to Cape May

The sunlight filtered through a high layer of mackerel clouds as we flew towards it—well, really towards southern New Jersey. On an August Friday morning, the skies north of the DC metro area remained relatively quiet, prompting me to tune in Potomac Approach just to hear some back and forth. Stephen was asleep in the right seat; I take that as a vote of confidence that he slumbers so readily while I keep us on course.

The Maryland countryside wakes up as we fly to Millville to meet our LightHawk passenger for the conservation flight. [Credit: Julie Boatman] The flight plan in ForeFlight applied to the chart to track marshland, dredged island status, and new infrastructure along Cape May. [Credit: ForeFlight/Julie Boatman]

We’ve been tapped again for a LightHawk mission, supporting the conservation flying efforts of the nonprofit group I joined as a volunteer pilot last year. We’re building on our mission last year, which was to run GoPros on the wing and on the glareshield to capture the water levels along the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic shorelines around the DelMarVa peninsula during a king high tide.

On this day we were booked to meet Jim Wright, volunteer photographer for The Nature Conservancy, and provide him lift for shooting the marshlands and barrier islands that pearl along the Atlantic from Sea Isle City to Cape May. He would also check out a handful of dredged islands for their status, and frame up in his lens the new boardwalk at the nature reserve in South Cape May Meadows.

As luck would have it, when we went out the evening before to preflight the Cessna 182 that our friends so graciously let us use, we needed to top up the tires with air. For anyone who has wrestled with the wheel pants and tire stems on the high-wing Cessna fleet, you know this is much easier said than done. After a lot of cursing—and a call to a generous A&P with the local Martin’s flight department who possessed the right fitting for the compressor’s air hose—we sorted out all three wheels. That should improve my landings!

Early Friday morning we topped off fuel at KHGR (avgas is running $5.95/gallon self-serve, which feels joyous) and headed east. Just off Hagerstown, a dancing oil pressure reading had me momentarily concerned but it settled down and appeared to be just the probe—the single most likely thing to fail on the combined Garmin G1000 NXi/Lycoming IO-540 installation.

We met up with Jim at Big Sky Aviation at KMIV, and Stephen headed for the airport café while I settled Jim into the right seat, with his laptop and camera ready to go. It wasn’t his first LightHawk flight by a long shot, so I briefed him on the specifics of the airplane and the flight, and he was delighted that we would be able to open the window all the way once airborne.

Looking out over the ocean as we fly south along the Atlantic shore. [Credit: Julie Boatman] The Atlantic coastline passes under the wheels of the Cessna 182 near Avalon, New Jersey. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

We took off for the eastern shore, and popped through a thin, scattered layer of coastal cumulus around 1,500 feet msl (and agl on this part of the state). The coast itself was clear, and it was too early for the banner towers to populate the skies. We headed south, making circles around various points of interest, trying to determine exactly which little spot of sand and sawgrass was the critical one. Fortunately, we had time in the tanks and capture it all just in case.

Once down around Cape May, Jim spied the new boardwalk that sits between the town and the lighthouse, and we made circles there to ensure we got it at every angle. Part of the mission was also to show the juxtaposition and interplay between development and nature preserve, so Jim took a few landscape shots with the town in the foreground and the beach and the wide Atlantic sea stretching out to the east.

The Nature Conservancy’s Jim Wright photographs the southern tip of Cape May, with South Cape May in the distance. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

On our way back to the Millville airport, we had one more point to spot, on the Maurice (pronounced “Morris”) River that weaves back up the Delaware River delta towards the town of Millville. Bluffs line part of the river. For the life of me, I saw no “bluffs,” but perhaps my perspective was skewed by too much time out west. Jim took enough shots to nearly fill his card, and when we landed back at KMIV, he ran out of battery as we were snapping a shot of us in front of the airplane. Impeccable timing to be sure!

Mission accomplished, we bid farewell to Jim—a screech owl expert who has written a book on the amazing birds—and packed up to head west before the chance of thunderstorms blossomed into a certainty. With 4.3 on the Hobbs back at KHGR, we pushed the trusty girl back into her nest, and patted her on the cowl. We collapsed back at home, spent but satisfied.

The LightHawk mission has once again brought meaning to our flying.

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