Saturday, November 18, 2006
Scariest Thing I've Seen in a While
The NTSB has posted a recreation of a near-miss at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (ORD) involving a 737 cleared for takeoff while a 747 is landing on an intersecting runway. The NTSB estimates that the planes cleared each other by only 35 feet.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Flight to Sporty's
My flight to Sporty’s (I69) went without a hitch. I flew with a friend who is completing his private pilot training at Clow (1C5). He handled navigation while I handled aviation and communication.
The route I settled on was MDW-HALIE-V340-RID-I68-I69. This took me around the MOAs in northern Indiana, east to Fort Wayne, IN (FWA), then south to Cincinnati’s Bravo, which I followed clockwise around to Sporty’s. I flew to Sporty’s at 5,500 MSL, which took me over FWA’s Charlie. I called FWA approach at the appropriate time and picked up flight following all of the way to I69—I’m glad I had just covered that topic with Alex! My interactions with flight following definitely had some rough edges on which I need to improve, but was a solid start to using that service.
Sporty’s was a bit of a disappointment. I had imagined aisles upon aisles of aviation goodies and an experience like being a child in a candy store. Alas, Sporty’s retail area was very small with only two short aisles and a counter area. The aisles and counter area were glass displays, so no touching the merchandise. The people behind the counter were happy to go into the massive warehouse behind the retail area and get anything I desired to peruse, but it wasn’t the candy store experience for which I had hoped. I picked up the SureCheck avionics checklists for the Garmin GNS 430/530 and Garmin G1000. The checklists make it easy to review common procedures for those devices without firing up the VFLITE trainer (which I love, but requires access to a computer).
We then flew home using the reverse route of our arrival at 4,500 MSL. I asked for flight following and received it all of the way to HALIE. Our arrival back at MDW was uneventful.
MDW-I69: 2.3 hours
I69-MDW: 2.7 hours
The route I settled on was MDW-HALIE-V340-RID-I68-I69. This took me around the MOAs in northern Indiana, east to Fort Wayne, IN (FWA), then south to Cincinnati’s Bravo, which I followed clockwise around to Sporty’s. I flew to Sporty’s at 5,500 MSL, which took me over FWA’s Charlie. I called FWA approach at the appropriate time and picked up flight following all of the way to I69—I’m glad I had just covered that topic with Alex! My interactions with flight following definitely had some rough edges on which I need to improve, but was a solid start to using that service.
Sporty’s was a bit of a disappointment. I had imagined aisles upon aisles of aviation goodies and an experience like being a child in a candy store. Alas, Sporty’s retail area was very small with only two short aisles and a counter area. The aisles and counter area were glass displays, so no touching the merchandise. The people behind the counter were happy to go into the massive warehouse behind the retail area and get anything I desired to peruse, but it wasn’t the candy store experience for which I had hoped. I picked up the SureCheck avionics checklists for the Garmin GNS 430/530 and Garmin G1000. The checklists make it easy to review common procedures for those devices without firing up the VFLITE trainer (which I love, but requires access to a computer).
We then flew home using the reverse route of our arrival at 4,500 MSL. I asked for flight following and received it all of the way to HALIE. Our arrival back at MDW was uneventful.
MDW-I69: 2.3 hours
I69-MDW: 2.7 hours
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