Dan’s Pilot Times

July 3rd is my Dad’s birthday. Like last year, we went flying to celebrate his special day. Unlike last year, now I have my license and was able to take him, my mom and my wife for the birthday flight all by myself without an instructor tagging along. The weather was gorgeous and I had a busy flight planned for us. We first headed down the lakefront to view the Chicago skyline, which my parents hadn’t yet seen in the air. They loved it, identifying all the sights along the way and taking tons of pictures and videos (see the pictures here). The skies were fairly busy that afternoon, and two times other Cessnas passed a little too closely for my comfort level – where I altered my heading a bit just to make sure. Obviously everything went fine, but just reconfirms for me how important it is to always stay alert (especially when the autopilot is engaged).

After the skyline, we headed back north, west, and then south around O’Hare’s Class B airspace to get to Pilot Pete’s at Schaumburg Airport (06C) for some early dinner. My Mom hadn’t eaten there yet and we had a great dinner there (the food is always really good). On the way back to Westosha, we flew over my house and even spotted my neighbor outside his house. Later he said he was able to see us from the ground and figured it was probably us.

After the flights, we quickly drove back down to Arlington Park for some horse racing action and fireworks later in the evening. All-in-all, it was a great day for me as a pilot and as a son. I love being able to celebrate special days with my Dad, Mom, Wife (my family) in such a cool and unique way.

This flight I logged 1.7 of pilot-in-command time.

Last night I went on my first Chicago lakefront / skyline flight.  We had our first real taste of Spring yesterday with temperatures reaching up into the mid 60’s, and clear skies and little wind all day, so I couldn’t resist going up with my wife for a flight.  I figured visibility would be incredible, but unfortunately there was a little bit of haze once we got up into the sky.  That being said, once we were fairly close to downtown, everything was visible just fine to the naked eye.  However, photographs still were affected by the haze and the dusk light.  We tried our best though and posted pictures here.  We got some neat pictures of downtown, Navy Pier, and even a controlled brush fire in (I’m guessing) Mundelein on our way back.

The flight itself was fairly uneventful and super smooth as the winds were calm.  I departed Westosha and headed direct to Campbell (C81) to avoid Kenosha and Waukegan airspace.  From there I headed East-Northeast to the shoreline and just followed that down.  I cruised around 2,400 feet the whole trip to give myself plenty of vertical buffer (600 feet to be exact) from the 3,000 lower edge of O’Hare’s Class B airspace.  The flight was surprisingly quick to get to downtown, about 34 minutes after takeoff.  If only travel by car could be so efficient!  And oh how awesome it would have been if Miegs Field was still open… darn! darn! darn!

Overall it was a great flight and a good change to give me more experience for when I take more guests up to fly.  I’ll have to try it during broad daylight and a full night flight too eventually.  I logged 1.2 hours of flight time.

I guess it was only a matter of time that I’d experience a scrubbed flight…especially being from Chicago. I was in beautiful Las Vegas for most of this week, but yesterday after arriving back at home the snow started falling heavy and fast. I knew by 9pm the night before my planned lesson today that we would have to cancel. Sure enough, after talking with my CFI we decided it wasn’t going to be nice enough to fly. Granted, this morning I DID see a small plane in the air, but even so I wouldn’t have been comfortable landing on icy/snowy runways (let alone dig the plane out of a snow bank).

Oh well, that’s weather for ya! I’m going to TRY to fly earlier in the week, maybe Tuesday…but of course I hear we have more snow on the way. It’s almost April and we’re still getting snow! Oh well, I’m from Chicago…par for the course!