Fishers, IN
Local Fishers institution. Solid burgers, good beer selection, and the neighborhood pilots' favorite landing spot when nothing on the field is open. Crew car at the FBO usually available — call ahead. Fishers itself has exploded into one of Indianapolis's largest suburbs, with the Nickel Plate District providing walkable shops and restaurants.
In 1960 a farmer named Gatewood decided his land northeast of Indianapolis should be an airport, and built one himself: with his own construction equipment and his two sons, he had a 3,000-foot paved runway, hangars, an office with a restaurant, a Piper dealership, and a flight school running within a year. The field fought zoning suits and nuisance complaints from the start, and the Indianapolis Airport Authority eventually took ownership through court battles that reached the Indiana Supreme Court. Renamed Indianapolis Metropolitan, it flies on as the Authority's northeast reliever, and the Indiana Wing of the Commemorative Air Force bases aircraft on the field; the wing's stable includes a Stearman, an AT-6 Texan, and a Stinson L-5.
Geist sprawls in long fingers along the old Fall Creek valley, the dam holding back its southwest end. The branching shoreline and open water make it an easy orientation landmark for anyone working the airspace northeast of Indianapolis — KUMP Indianapolis Metropolitan sits just to its west.
US-40 runs E-W across central Indiana — visible from any altitude as an unusually straight road cutting through Richmond, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute. The Madonna of the Trail statue (one of twelve placed along the route in 1928-29) stands in Richmond. Historic mile markers and tollhouse foundations survive at intervals.
~4nm E of KUMP along the White River. The 800-acre living-history grounds read as open pasture and woodland along the river — the reconstructed 1836 Prairietown buildings and the big modern visitor center sit in the cleared fields, distinct from the Fishers suburbs creeping up around them.
Flying the pattern at Indianapolis Metropolitan, the Cadillac F1 headquarters is the large modern building on the south/southwest side of the field — a 400,000-square-foot facility on what used to be airport property. A light GA field on one side of the fence, and a Formula 1 race shop building cars for the world championship on the other.