Incredible crosswind landings and take-offs! Crosswind landings in extreme weather conditions and during storms!

One morning this spring, I drove past the quiet municipal airport in Pittsfield, Mass. I couldn’t stop myself from slowing down and smiling as I looked out on the place where, nearly 30 years ago, I first got airborne as a pilot.

I remember strapping my 16-year-old self into the small aircraft, which seemed so tinny and even improvised — qualities that suggested lightness but that also reminded me of my Swedish uncle’s terrifying, Soviet-era Lada car. I was struck, too, by the heat in the plane’s greenhouse-like cockpit, and by the jarring noise of its engine as it caught, which too closely resembled that of the unreliable lawn mower I’d spent recent summers pushing. Soon we were accelerating down the runway. Reaching the correct speed, I carefully moved the control column backward as the instructor had taught me to. The resulting leap transformed the hometown I thought I knew into an almost unbroken surface of undulating treetops. It was magnificent.