For some reason one of our more anticipated routes had been eluding us for weeks. It was one of the longer ones and would take us all the way up into central Wisconsin. However it seemed as though the weather was conspiring against us in every way possible. It would either be really bad here and we couldn’t leave (our aircraft are only legal to operate under Visual Flight Rules or VFR so we can’t go into clouds or low visibility conditions. That aside taking pictures from inside of a cloud could possibly prove to be challenging) or really bad there and great here. There was also my personal favorite, forecasted to be great and then turn terrible by the next morning.

Finally we were able to get a break in the weather that allowed us to go out and do the trip. It was one of those “bad here, great there” days but it was not bad enough to prevent us from leaving. So we rushed out to the airport and got airborne as quickly as possible.

The reason we had been looking forward to this trip was that it brought on a bunch of new possibilities. Mainly it was our first time flying into Wisconsin and we had also planned to fly the Chicago skyline on the way back time and weather permitting. The flight to the first set of fields was a fairly decent one, taking about an hour and a half, but it wasn’t a boring one. There was a group of skydivers about 6 miles south of us and you could see them gliding down to an airport… as well as the jump plane diving at a pretty impressive rate of descent to beat them to the ground. There were also the pair of largest nuclear cooling towers I have seen (Found out later that it was the Exelon – Byron Generating Station). They almost looked like they were reaching up to us and we were up at 6,500 feet.

Eventually we crossed the Wisconsin border and were soon at the first set of fields. This route was one of the nice ones where you don’t spend a lot of time circling in the same area. Its mostly take a picture of a field or two in one location and move on to the next set further down the line. The nice thing about Wisconsin is that it is a very beautiful state. It kept us from getting bored on the flights between fields. Eventually we started reaching the end of our fuel supply so we made our way to a nearby airport in the town of Portage.

The area around the Portage airport (C47) is actually rather nice. The town and the airport is located just off the coast a river and in between *gasp* hills. After flying over flat land for the past two months any kind of elevated terrain is cause for celebration. The winds were favoring runway 04 which was among the smaller runways I’d flown into. It was 2,559 feet long but a mere 40 feet wide. The landing was uneventful though it’s still a pretty fun airport to fly into.

After having lunch we switch pilots and headed up again. This time into the more challenging airspace in the route. Typically during operation we’re at 6,500 feet, which puts us above the bubble of controlled airspace surrounding a lot of the airports with control towers. The only exception would be the Class B airspace that surrounds the nations largest airports and restricted areas. The difference between Class B and restricted areas is that as the name suggest restricted areas are very restrictive … and in most cases civilian aircraft would not be allowed into the area. Out route took us between two such restricted areas and it was there that the iPad being used decided to have a disagreement with the Dual XGPS external GPS device. My Nexus 7 uses a fairly accurate internal GPS so I continued to use that while I troubleshooted the iPad to figure out why it decided to cut out right then … needless to say it couldn’t have picked a least practical time to do that. Eventually after multiple reboots and threats to throw it out the window we finally got it working again and continued on as planned. It was also right about this time we realized that the restricted area was not actually active that day and that we would have been fine regardless. We quickly finished up the last few fields and headed home.

Now came the exciting path of the trip. Both Shane and I wanted to try flying the Chicago skyline at least once. Seeing it from the air is a whole different experience from seeing it on the ground. For those of you unfamiliar with the Chicago Class B airspace, here’s a quick description of what it’s like. Imagine an inverted wedding cake, there are shelves layered on top of each other with each one wider than the one below with their centers right over the Chicago O’hare airport. The airspace around the Chicago O’hare airport goes from the surface straight up to 10,000 feet and is about 6 or so miles in diameter. The layer outside of that goes from 1,900 to 10,000 feet and is about 10 miles in diameter. The layer we were planning to go under was 3,000 to 10,000 feet and extended about 15 miles from the airport. As long as you stay under a particular layer then you don’t have to get permission from the Chicago TRACON / Approach Control to enter the airspace because you are effectively under it. The only risk was that we’d be about 2 miles out over the water and even if we were able to glide back to land in the event of an engine failure the Chicago City coastline does not have many landing areas … and Lake Michigan is almost never actually warm. However our aircraft was well maintained and reliable and we didn’t foresee any problems in that regard. Our major concern was to avoid inadvertently wandering into controlled airspace.

 

The Chicago segment began with our descent from 7,500 feet several miles out. We would need to be under the 4,000 foot altitude required for the outermost shelf of the airspace. We then stepped down to 3,300 to get under the 3,600 MSL shelf and to provide additional clearance to the Waukegan Regional Airport (KUGN) Class D airspace (topped out at 3,200) just incase we had to had to deviate over it. Finally as we approached the coastline of Lake Michigan, we stepped down to our final altitude of 2,300 feet to stay well below the 3,000 foot shelf. I may not have mentioned this before but I am not a huge fan of flying over water in a single engine aircraft. It may not exactly be a reasonable worry since aircraft engines of today are fairly reliable, but looking out the left side of the plane and seeing nothing but water to the horizon reminded me that I truly would prefer an aircraft with more than one. That aside looking out the right side of the airplane revealed a view that would make you forget all that. It really is something you just have to see for yourself and can only be beaten by the view I imagine you’d get while flying through the mountains. You never really get to see this view when you’re flying into and out of Midway and O’ Hare. Airliners move so quickly that they blast by it in a hurry or are way above it by the time you get there. We were just about the altitude of the buildings and had time to actually enjoy what we were looking at. To make it even better, it was just about approaching sundown so we had the bonus of having a sunset flight along the coast. Additionally we were able to pay our respects as pilots to the former Merrill C. Meigs Field (KCGX) … May it rest in peace.

After clearing the Chicago Skyline we ducked into a space between the Chicago Midway Class C and the Gary International Class D airspace and headed back to home base. We managed to get in just before dark, which was a good thing as our field was not lit. After putting the airplane away and grabbing all the equipment we headed for home. After a 9 hour flying day, we just needed to go home and sleep.

ACHIEVEMENT GET!!!:
– Landed in Wisonsin
– Second Longest Duty Day
– Chicago Skyline!!!!
– Saw Merrill C. Meigs Field (What’s left of it at least)
– CHICAGO SKYLINE!!!! (Twice because … reasons)
– Longest period spent flying over water at low altitudes