Another Pilot Joins the Ranks

Congratulations to my student Tony Lewis who passed his private pilot checkride today!

Happy Holidays

Maybe Santa will finish our Ercoupe project! :-)

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Chilly Flying Day

This morning I rode with Ted, Dale, and Don in the Archer to Manitowoc for breakfast. It was 2°F when we left. It was a little hazy but other than that and the cold, it was nice flying weather. I flew a lesson later in the day and it wasn't much warmer. It was worth the effort - I was glad to fly!

Marsh area east of Lake Winnebago

High Cliff State Park

Reintroduction to the Cessna 340

The first time I flew a Cessna 340 was in August 2000 when I was a student pilot just about to head off to college. It was a treat from the owner who was a flight instructor friend of mine. I thought the plane was easy to fly but I was overwhelmed by its speed and all the controls. The main thing I remember is my hard landing.

All these years later with the right pieces of plastic in my wallet and knowledge of how not to land twins, I took my second-ever flight in a C340. The Navajo Chieftain is in for scheduled maintenance and one of the company's 340s happened to be around. Today's trip had us going to Rochester, Minnesota and Columbus, Mississippi, with an extra fuel stop in Springfield, Illinois.

It was a measly 1 degree Fahrenheit when I started my day and 9 degrees when we took off from my hometown of Clintonville, and that was with the sun shining. A brief visit with some clouds on the way into Rochester left some residual ice, so we had to get deiced before departing again. It was the first time I had ever seen this process, and boy, does it work slick.


The flight to Mississippi was uneventful. Up at 17,000 feet we caught a nice tailwind and were zooming along in clear sky above puffy clouds. That's the highest I've ever been in a propeller-driven airplane (it's pressurized). We saw the Gateway Arch in St. Louis shining in the sunlight. Our flight lasted only 2 hours and 45 minutes because our groundspeed was as high as 270 knots (310 mph). The grass was green in Mississippi and it was 48 degrees.


I flew the next leg to Springfield. The airplane felt feather-light compared to the Navajo and seemed to want to leap off the ground. Just as I remembered, the plane is relatively easy to fly. The sun set during this leg so I logged a night landing in Springfield. I flew 2.5 hours.

As we were getting out of the plane, four F/A-18 Hornets were sitting right behind us with their engines running. Later I stepped outside to watch them take off one after another, with what looked like blue flames shooting out their backs when the afterburners were on.

I rode in the right seat on the next leg because I was too tired to fly. Courtesy of the last FBO I had a thermos full of hot cocoa and earplugs under my headset. I dozed off a couple times, but otherwise enjoyed a view of the full moon lighting up the snow below.

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Madison Twice, Missouri Twice

"Didn't I see you in here before?" The worker behind the desk in Madison was right: it was my second stop at the airport. Today's missions in the Navajo Chieftain had us zigzagging across the same area a few times. We had a good trip.

We began at sunrise in Oshkosh. We stopped in Madison and then Lewis University Airport in Romeoville, on the southwest side of Chicago. Then it was off to Kansas City. I was surprised to see snow on the ground all the way there.

In the sliver of space between the fuselage and engine nacelle, I saw a barge go under a railroad bridge on the Illinois River as if threading a needle. More sections of barge waited downstream. Just a few months ago, I learned about piloting barges on this same river in the book Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee. It's probably easier to fly a Navajo than to steer a barge on the Illinois River.

On approach to Kansas City Downtown Airport, we flew around the city to the south (past lots of tall towers) and got a great view of the skyline on final approach.

After Kansas City we flew back to Madison. I took a picture of Dubuque, Iowa where I went to college and did most of my flight training.

In Madison, the sun set between a couple of my favorite things!

Next we flew to Warrensburg, MO where the University of Central Missouri had an endless row of Cessna 172s parked. The night ended with a flight back to Oshkosh.

The weather was outstanding. There was hardly a cloud in the sky except for some high cirrus and a few low clouds in Chicago. There was almost no wind anywhere the whole day, not even aloft, until the last bit of our final leg. Approaching Oshkosh we hit the south side of a low pressure system and found a 45-50 knot tailwind during descent - which was dandy until I had to turn around into it and land, fighting wind shear all the way down. Other than those last five minutes we barely hit a bump on the trip. At night, the clear sky and nearly full moon made the snow-covered ground show up as if it were daytime. I forgot how cool that can be.

My share of the flying was 6.2 hours but we had a much longer day than that. Time went very fast because everything ran so smoothly today.

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I flew the red, orange, and green legs of the flight

Great Turnout for Sheboygan Lunch

It's barely December and cabin fever is already setting in. Today was the first time I've flown in a week and a half because the weather has been so bad. It's been windy and snowing a lot lately. Also I had a cold over Thanksgiving and the following week, adding to my misery because I missed a good flying weather day in there.

Where are those bright, clear winter days that I seem to remember we have here? Don't know. But I'll take a cloudy one as long as I can fly. Today was one of those.

A fellow Brennand-based pilot and I decided it's been far too long since we've organized a group fly-out. The last one I can think of was in June. Ouch! Time to fix that. We e-mailed and called our pilot friends to invite everyone to fly to Sheboygan (SBM) for lunch.

Everyone must have thought that would be a good idea, because we had a great turnout today. I was quite surprised, actually. Despite temperatures not far above zero, eight planes and one helicopter flew in for lunch at the Final Approach Steakhouse inside Burrows Aviation. There were 16 people. When the waitresses wanted to split us into two groups, we insisted upon dragging their tables and chairs together to make one king-sized table instead! The food was good as always, and the conversations were great. I think we all agreed we need to do this more often.

I flew in with two of my students who are each preparing for checkrides. Most of us were from Brennand Airport, but I also rounded up a couple people from elsewhere: a Madison-based friend from the Pilots of America message board, and a former student of mine from Oshkosh.

I really wanted to get a picture of the ice on Lake Winnebago but my camera was not cooperating and I didn't have my cell phone. The patterns in the ice were awesome.

The air was very smooth today, making for a great flight. I could see snow moving in on the way back. Not long after everyone's toys were put away into hangars, it started snowing hard and didn't stop for hours. This is the first taste of the beating we're going to take over the next few days. Tuesday could bring half a foot of snow. I'll be looking forward to the next time I can fly!