For some small-plane pilots, coldest days are best days

It takes two hours to get a small plane ready to fly in subzero cold, and another hour to put the plane away afterward. There are more things that can go wrong during a flight on a short midwinter day, so gearing up is more complicated. Still, flying in the dead of winter can be "way fun," pilots based at Birchwood Airport north of Anchorage tell the Alaska Star.

"Every swamp, meadow, river and mountaintop is a potential place to lay down a set of tracks," [Roger Denny] said. "Everything is a runway."

Denny likens his plane to a snowmachine with wings.

"Flying is just playing and sightseeing," he said. "It's trying to land on some lake and make tracks; that's all you're doing."

[Bruce] Hopper prefers winter flying to summer flying.

"The air is so much clearer," he said. "You have clear blue skies, and the mountains are vivid white, and the glaciers are blue."

The cold, dense air means the plane operates more smoothly, he added.

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