 |  | | As with all hot air balloonists, the Youngs usually fly at sunrise or before sunset, when the winds are most stratified and gentle. Balloonists seek to fly when winds at the ground surface are about three to seven miles per hour. | |
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| In 1793, President George Washington gave French balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard a letter of safe conduct. The Frenchman took off from the federal prison yard in Philadelphia, Penn., and landed on a farm in Deptford, N.J. Blanchard had, in effect, flown the first airmail letter in the United States, to New Jersey. |
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 | | | Alexandria Field is in a pastoral setting in northwestern New Jersey. In the lower portion of the photo, four of the 11 homes in the airpark are visible. | |
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In the past three decades, our nation has lost about 25 percent of its GA airports to housing and industrial development, operating restrictions or expensive technology upgrades. New Jersey has gone from more than 100 to 47 GA airports. The remaining airports are struggling to find new ways to continue to exist. One airport that has successfully resisted the scourge of politicians and the lure of the land developer, and is finding new ways to create customers is Alexandria Field, in Hunterdon County in Northwestern New Jersey.
In 1945, William Fritsche, a flight instructor fresh out of the Army Air Corps, and his wife Leah decided to build an airport on his family's farm. They bought 170 acres of a dairy farm that had been in the family since the mid 1800s. His passion would become N85—Alexandria Field. |
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