Landing at Van Wert County, OH

I chose to land at Van Wert County, OH, just over the border from Indiana. Mainly, it was because it was on a straight line from Peoria to Glens Falls (more or less) and also because their fuel prices were listed as being lower than at other nearby airports. Finally, they were 2 hours from Peoria. I like stopping after two hours to get more fuel: that seems to work well for me and leaves me tons of reserve in case I can't land someplace and have to continue on to a different airport.

I listened to the Van Wert airport weather when I was about 40 miles out. The wind was blowing from the south, fairly strongly, which meant a crosswind landing on the paved runway. However, they have a grass strip that is a north/south runway. Hmmmm.... grass - I love landing on grass! So, when I got closer, I radioed them and asked about the condition of the grass runway. They said it was good and had just been mowed. That cinched it! Grass it was going to be.

As I descended down from 5500' to 1750' (pattern altitude there), I discovered that the winds were fairly gusty and not strictly from the south but were shifting from the south to southwest to west and then back to south. I went past the airport and then turned back and entered a left pattern for runway 18. The following video shows the approach and then the landing on short grass runway. Unfortunately, I came in a bit faster than I normally would on grass, so the plane bounced slightly when it touched down. Not badly but enough so that it wasn't one of my better grass landings. Oh well, you can't win them all.

The airport manager turned out to be a great guy who said "Nice short field landing!" I said that I didn't think so because of the small bounce and he said "It looked awful good from here." I liked this guy. :)

He got fuel for the plane and then was friendly and chatty for a few minutes. All in all, it was a nice place to land for 20 minutes of rest and relaxation. :-)