Flying to Chicago
While it’s not one of the 92 counties, we did have a chance to spend a couple of nights in Chicago recently…
Flying to Chicago is pretty awesome. It’s easily a 4 hour drive for us, but only a 1.5 hour flight. Furthermore, I flew myself into Midway earlier this year for a conference (with my instructor for moral support), and it was a piece of cake. Most general aviation pilots I know would avoid Midway, and go to a smaller airport in the suburbs, but why not Midway…it’s convenient, they’re just as accommodating, and it really doesn’t cost much more. You have to be a bit more on your game with the air traffic controllers, but it was a clear day, and not a busy air traffic time, so I had no concerns.
Our 1.5 hour flight was more like a 2 hour flight, as we had a brutal 50 knot headwind slowing us down. Add to that the turbulence, and it was rough. On a clear day, I can hold altitude within +- 10 feet. On this day, I was having trouble keeping it +- 200 feet. Yet, Isaac slept most of the time, and Annie managed to keep her lunch down.
Beautiful shot of downtown Indianapolis
And the speedway
Isaac checking it out
Downtown Chicago
Annie compiled a video with the takeoff and landing. Note the traffic around the airport just before landing.
Video: BAK to MDW
Also interesting was they changed my landing runway twice. I was on 31C, the big main runway. About 4 miles out they asked me to shift over to 31L so another faster plane could land on 31C. Then about 2 miles out, as seen in the video, they asked me to shift back again. That was a first for me.
Because we had such a strong headwind, the landing was very very slow (which is a good thing, it’s less wear and tear on the plane). It’s hard to tell, but we were going maybe 40mph or so on short final. That’s slow.
So we spent a few days playing around in Chicago.
With two days of Chicago behind us, we headed home. Thanks to a shift in the winds, we again had a 50 knot headwind beating down on us the whole way. An overcast layer of clouds kept me down to 3000′ the whole way home (I didn’t want to venture in them as I didn’t think I could get on top and didn’t feel like flying in the “soup” the whole way home)
Our assigned route took us over Lake Michigan for a short while, likely to keep us out the way of other traffic. At 3000′, you’re not very high above the water. In a single engine plane, it’s not smart to get too far away from shore in case of an engine issue – you want to be able to get to land and not ditch in the cold water. Unfortunately, ATC couldn’t keep us close enough to the shore for comfort, so for a short period of time we had to live with the notion that we were outside of gliding distance from the shoreline. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable feeling, but is a risk you take.
Annie captured some video again of the takeoff and landing (see link below). It was extremely windy in Chicago, the takeoff was a little brutal and we slid across the runway pretty good once we got a little lift. You can also hear the stall horn go off a few times, as we got caught by a couple of gusts.
Back in Columbus, the tower put us on the slightly unfavored runway for some reason. At the last second, a gust blew us down onto the runway and we bounced. This isn’t uncommon in gusty conditions, but I didn’t feel favorable about salvaging the landing, so we did what any good pilot would do, and did a go-around. This time we lined back up for the more favored runway, and had a nicer landing.
Video: MDW to BAK