{"id":527,"date":"2013-06-02T21:12:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T03:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uberthnkr.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2014-03-11T23:13:03","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T04:13:03","slug":"fly-all-the-routes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uberthnkr.com\/?p=527","title":{"rendered":"Fly ALL the routes …"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Note: Due to various things coming up and this post being delayed, this post refers to events occurring on May 24,2013)<\/p>\n

It’s become a routine now where we sit on the ground for a few days due to terrible weather, and then fly the living daylights out of the one or two days that we have great weather. Today was no different. We’d been kept on the ground by several days of thunderstorms and low ceilings and were now finally given one great day. I think “great” might even be an understatement … the weather was a textbook case of beautiful. As you can see from the screenshot below of the TAF’s (Terminal Area Forecast … A weather forecast for the immediate airport area) for our general operating area “Awesome!!” might have been more appropriate.<\/p>\n

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Translation: AWESOME!!!!<\/p><\/div>\n

We were getting close to the due dates for quite a few of the routes and we were going to use this opportunity to get all of them done. So we rushed to the airport, finished off the preflight and launched off as quickly as possible. The first thing we noticed was that the TAF’s certainly weren’t lying … it was absolutely beautiful up there. The visibility was beyond great and to the front of us there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We could immediately see the Chicago skyline right after getting above the tree line and for several miles while heading to the south. At one point I was sure you could see well beyond 50 miles in any direction. There were clouds building behind us but for the most part they seemed to be dissipating and moving east. Feeling pretty happy with how the weather turned out we headed further south.<\/p>\n

The picture taking was fairly uneventful and we strung routes together in the most efficient way possible, jumping from route to route where necessary in order to avoid having to fly back to the beginning after completing one of them. Soon enough we’d burn through our fuel supply and headed back to the Logan County Airport for our fuel stop. I think I remember bringing down the Logan County Airport in a previous post but I don’t think that was exactly fair. It really is a nice field with a beautiful grass runway and well kept ramp facilities. It’s just that the FBO (Fixed Based Office … an airport front office\/pilot lounge\/passenger lobby of sorts) could use some serious work … or at least an upgrade. There is also an aviation museum on the field. It might have been open when we landed but we didn’t have a lot of time so I didn’t get to check it out at all. What I was able to look at was the impressive collection of antique planes they had sitting out in front of the lobby. Some of them I couldn’t exactly identify \u00a0\u00a0so i’ll leave that to the more aircraft savvy of my friends (John\/Brock\/Mike … show your stuff). We got fuel, dealt with a minor issue and were soon airborne again.<\/p>\n

Now that we had full fuel we were going to do another “Stay up in the air until we’re done\/ our bladders fail \/ or we \u00a0start getting close to minimum fuel”. With 6 hours of fuel on board that could potentially be a very long time. Luckily in just over 4 hours we got all the southern routes done and headed back north to Bult Field for a fuel stop.<\/p>\n

Now if you haven’t flown into Bult Field (C56) i’d suggest you give it a chance if you’re in the Northeast Illinois region. This airport has the classiest FBO of all the FBO’s i’ve ever flown into. The theme of the building seems to be a very large wood cabin and it certainly is impressive. Instead of trying to describe it in words i’ll just let the pictures in the gallery speak for themselves. Apparently, according to my boss, the FBO also doubles as the mansion for the millionaire that owns the airport (The FBO is in front and his mansion behind) which accounts for it’s impressive size and design. After a quick lunch we departed to northern Indiana to finish the final two routes.<\/p>\n

Now there is a really cool advantage to operating at about 5000 – 6500 feet in the northwestern section of Indiana … you get to play with all the Chicago Midway airport arrivals. Today there were quite a few coming from the east (which might have been the arrival procedure in use) and we saw a whole bunch of them including one of the Southwest Airlines planes with the Shamu paint scheme (http:\/\/www.airliners.net\/photo\/Southwest-Airlines\/Boeing-737-5H4\/0973838\/&sid=22ec7c8ca6d0924a1f4e90115c78114b). Sadly I didn’t get a proper look at Shamu One (or Two or Three … not entirely sure which of the 3 it was) because I was flying but it was one of the coolest things ever from what I did see.<\/p>\n

After we wrapped up the last set of the fields we headed back to the home field where I proceeded to make the best landing i’ve ever done at that field and on a grass field in general. Good thing too … because on the back taxi I noticed that the boss had actually been waiting for us. It would have not been a good day to bounce. After securing the airplane and transferring all of the data, we packed up and headed home. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\t\t