First Flight as a Private Pilot

I took my wife flying with me on Sunday, July 16th. Overall, it was a successful trip and my wife enjoyed it.

It was a very hot day in Chicago: 97 degrees Fahrenheit. When I picked up the keys, Alex joked “no short field landings today, right?” I told my wife that the plane would be hot for a while, until I could climb above 4,000ft, where it would start to get noticeably cooler.

The first leg was from MDW to BEH via GYY and MGC.

This was my first time operating the airplane out of MDW without a right seat pilot. It went smoothly, with one notable event. I was planning departure from 22R. Ground sent me along Kilo and had me hold short of 31C. Then ground asked if I could depart 31C at Kilo. I accepted and ground told me to switch to tower. I switched and ran through my pre-take-off checklist as fast as possible. It was less than a minute, but tower asked if I was ready to roll into position. I hadn’t notified tower that I was on the frequency, so I was a little surprised. I confirmed that I was ready to go, and tower told me to position and hold. As I moved into position, a Southwest 737 was told to position behind me at the start of 31C. As soon as I was in position, tower cleared me for takeoff. I did my from-memory cockpit check and started accelerating down the runway. I turned right on course to 090. Shortly thereafter, the 737 was cleared for take-off and turned left onto its course. I was really squeezed into the flow, but appreciated tower’s efforts to get me off the ground quickly rather than have me sit around for 10-15 minutes for another opening.

We flew over to the lake shore, then down to Gary. Gary cleared us through their airspace at 2,500ft. Once clear of Gary to the east, I climbed to 5,500 ft and it was much more pleasant in the plane. We flew over Michigan City and landed at Benton Harbor. There were no other planes at Benton Harbor so it was a lonely pattern. When I landed and turned onto a taxi-way, I saw a half dozen police cars arranged in a block-the-road fashion and another police car was heading toward me at high speed. My heart leapt into my throat. Did I miss a radio call? Did I land on a closed runway? Was there a TFR that popped up right after I took off? Do I have the appropriate documents onboard? Then the police car did a little squiggle and performed a 180 turn. I then realized that the police cars were practicing some training maneuvers around cones on a road that started off the end of the taxi-way. Whew!

I taxied to parking, shutdown the airplane, and we stretched our legs for a half hour. I thought I had done an adequate job of prepping my wife for the flight, but she provided me with good feedback about some topics that I should have covered:

• Can ATC hear her when I’m talking on the radio?
• Announce when it’s safe for her to start talking after departure and when she should stop talking arriving at our destination.
• Mention that the rudder peddles move, that the passenger’s feet should be clear of them, and that they should not be concerned.
• Inform the passenger of where they are going, what route will be taken to get there, and how long the flight will take. (I believe I had done this, but a repeat just before closing the canopy isn’t a bad idea.)

The next leg of our flight was over to Valparaiso (VPZ). As we got near the community, I veered out to the west and setup to overfly the field at 2,000ft AGL. That was done for the benefit of my wife, who attended Valparaiso University for her undergraduate degree. We flew over the campus and she picked out residence halls in which she stayed, buildings in which she took classes, and the university’s chapel. That really made her day. We landed at the airport, taxied to parking, and debated how we might get a meal. We had assumed that the FBO was closed, but it turned out to be open and the gentleman behind the counter was very helpful. The FBO is a very nice, modern building inside and not an eye soar from the outside, either. I topped off the airplane to avoid a stop in Gary on the way home. The FBO lent us a courtesy car and recommended three restaurants—all of which my wife was familiar. Since we would be returning after the FBO closed, the man instructed us on the manner for leaving the car and getting back to our plane. We picked a restaurant, had a wonderful meal, and returned to the airport. There was plenty of daylight left, which disappointed me a bit because I’m not night current for carrying passengers and would have liked to shoot a couple of night landings somewhere other than Midway to get current.

When I called FSS for the brief from VPZ to MDW, the briefer informed me that a direct path would take me near U.S. Cellular Field, home of the White Sox, and that she was uncertain if a game was in progress. I informed the briefer that I would plan to head straight west of VPZ and approach MDW from the south.

The winds were calm, so I took off on 27 and Amy got to see Valpo’s campus from a much lower altitude as I climbed to our cruise altitude. The flight back to Midway was largely uneventful. When I contacted MDW tower, I was issued a squawk code, wrote it down, and read it back from short term memory. When MDW tower is busy, they don’t usually confirm that a read-back is correct, and I didn’t get a confirmation here. I reached over to the transponder, entered the number I’d just read back, and looked down at what I had written to confirm it matched. Except that it didn’t match. What I’d written down was one off from what I’d read back and entered into the transponder. I asked my wife which number she’d heard, but she hadn’t been paying attention. I then resigned myself to the fact that I needed pipe up and confirm my squawk code. Amateur. I called tower to confirm the number in my transponder and received an affirmative—so I had just written it down incorrectly, but used the correct number everywhere else.

When on short final for 22L, I realized that I did not recall a clearance to land, so I had to call tower again. This didn’t make me feel bad—both Bill and Alex had turned to me on base or final and asked if we’d gotten clearance, as they had not heard it. But on top of the squawk code incident, I was feeling a bit sheepish. I called “Midway tower, nine-delta-sierra on short final for two-two left. Confirm clear to land” and received an affirmative response. I got down, rolled a ways as my parking was at the other end of the airport, and tower informed me to turn left on Foxtrot and over to ground. I read back, cleared the runway, stopped, and switched the radio to ground. I was just starting my after-landing-checklist when ground called me and told me to cross Yankee without delay, then over to parking. I acknowledged, skipped the checklist and performed the Flying Takes Common Sense mnemonics [UPDATE—for those who asked: Flaps, Transponder, Cowl flaps, Switches], and crossed Yankee over to parking. As I was turning into the tower apron, my wife asked if ground had told me where to go before I had told them I was on their frequency. “Yes”, I shrugged. “Sometimes they get busy and need to hustle us through.” I’m glad that I got my wings in this environment, because if radio calls or the workflow in very busy towered airports were new to me, things would not have gone well at all.

My big take-away from the flight was that Bill may have trained me better for handling Midway’s peak traffic than Alex did. Bill emphasized the memorization of cockpit workflows because there will not be time to work through a formal checklists sometimes when leaving or returning to Midway. On this flight, he was right and I was very, very glad that I had my takeoff and after landing cockpit workflows memorized to fall back on when the controllers ushered me through the system faster than I planned. Of course, I could have always said the magic word: “unable”—and I would use it in a heartbeat if I felt that my safety would be compromised by the expedited handling from controllers—but I don’t want to be that guy. Additionally, I know that the Midway controllers expect a certain level of proficiency from pilots operating under their watch and I need to be at that level if this airport is going to be my aviation home.