Author Note: Sadly I lost all of the pictures I took during this mission so the following posts will sadly not be accompanied with many pictures if any. This post was also written a while ago and I’m only just getting to post it now.

For some time now our boss had spoken about the prospect of having some clients out in the Nebraska area. We were pretty excited, as neither Shane nor myself have flown out in that area before. However as with many things, life got fairly busy and we soon pushed the thought of that mission to the back of our minds. Some time passed and we finally managed to get ahead of schedule on our routes and we once again brought up the prospect of doing a sample photo mission out to the Missouri/Nebraska area with my boss. Our boss gave us the green light and told us that he would get back to us after talking to the potential clients. Sadly the following morning we were rear-ended and to cut a long story short, Shane made the decision to take the car back to Ohio for repairs in order to ensure that it would be ready for their move back to Andrews. We went over several scenarios and options that would make it possible to still come, but he ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth what we would have to do to make it happen. That meant I would be doing this photo mission solo.

Being that this was all on short notice, my boss only managed to get the files to me the night before I needed to do the flight, leading to me scrambling to throw together something marginally resembling a photo route. This led to me getting to bed and in turn waking up somewhat later than I had planned. Despite those set backs I managed to get airborne and on the way to Missouri within a fairly short time. On the way down I picked up flight following from Peoria Approach and stayed on it until well into Missouri. Being that the aircraft isn’t equipped for operations under Instrument Flight Rules I couldn’t file an instrument flight plan so flight following is the most I could do. (On a side note I randomly get awesome controllers … would be nice if I was able to give them a remote “thumbs up” or something lol).

Crossing the Illinois/Missouri border.

Upon getting to Missouri, the first major thing I noticed … was that it wasn’t very different from Indiana and Illinois … at least from the air. Quite a few lakes … and a lot of farmland. Though I managed to arrive there before the clouds started, they quickly moved in and started making things difficult. At one point I was just circling over the same area for 15 minutes. Started to get concerned that people would start wondering why this aircraft was loitering over their house. Eventually I got a break in the clouds and was able to quickly wrap up the photo sites in that section of Missouri. I then made a beeline for the nearest airport and made my first steps on Missouri soil.

The Moberly Airport (KMBY) is actually a pretty nice airport and for some reason it had quite a bit of traffic that day. In the least quite a bit higher than normal, according to the workers. Everything from private jets and King Airs, to helicopters and standard piston singles. I didn’t spend a lot of time here but the staff was very nice and enjoyed what little time I had there. Pretty soon I was fueled up and airborne again.

Airborne again I headed to my next area of operations, which was roughly north west of Kansas City and East of Lincoln, Nebraska. As I’m flying to the first field I realize that I am practically 3 miles from the Missouri/Kansas border and that I could clearly see Kansas from where I was. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add a new state to the “Yeah I’ve been there” list so I picked an airport not too far away in Kansas and headed for it. I think I’ve finally come up with an appropriate description for the airport I landed at … A truck stop with a runway. I may not have been looking hard enough but there wasn’t a whole lot of infrastructure at this airport. None of which mattered to me as I was just wanted to land there and I was shortly airborne again. With fairly little problems I finished up the last of the Missouri stuff and was soon on my way to Lincoln to visit one of my comrades.

Passing the Kansas City class B

First off Lincoln (KLNK) is one of the more chill class C airports that I have flown into. There is no ramp or landing fees and my only complaint would be that their fuel is just really expensive. They also have quite a nice FBO over at SilverHawk Aviation. Once on the ground I met up with longtime comrade/mechanic/pilot John Learned, who haven’t seen since we all split up after their graduation in May. He showed me around their operation, which to be honest was quite impressive … first class stuff. After that I went on to see another friend I haven’t seen in even longer … Wesley Swayze. We had dinner at Olive Garden (The budget conscious person’s fancy restaurant) and got to catch up on all of the things we’ve been up to over the past few years. After that I did battle with the Internet trying to get the images to upload and after talking a bit more I headed over to John’s, which was where I was going to be spending the night. Thus Day 1 ended late with an instant knockout.