The Tuesday before the flight, I started on the first flight planning chore: selecting an airport near St. Louis as the destination. Cross-referencing Google Maps with Runway Finder made CPS the obvious choice. I then read the FBO reviews on the AOPA airport directory and AirNav, which were all very positive about Ideal Aviation. I called them and chatted with a nice gentleman for a couple of minutes. I gave him my ETA on Saturday, an outline of my plans for a lunch, and got the number for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Based on the airport location, reviews of the FBO, and my conversation, I knew that CPS was an excellent choice. Step 1 completed. I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed that the airport was in Illinois—I would have liked to add Missouri to my list of states in which I’ve landed.
Next up: weather. Grandma would be very disappointed if she expected us to show up and we had to cancel, so we decided to wait until Friday night to see what the weather had in store. I watched a really nasty system hang out in Texas on Thursday and Friday, but when it started moving east, all of the forecasts were that it wouldn’t get St. Louis until late in the evening—3-4 hours after we planned to leave. I was a still on the fence, but decided we could call grandma and let her know we would “probably” be showing up to take her out for lunch. In the morning I checked all of the weather maps, TAFs, and the area forecast again. The original forecast was still for the weather to show up 3-4 hours after we’d leave. I told Amy that we would be going to St. Louis, but that I would be phoning for a weather briefing frequently while we were in St. Louis to keep an eye on the weather—we might need to make an early exit and there was a small chance that we could be caught in the weather and grounded in St. Louis. She was fine with those odds.
I used Aero Planner to map out a path along I-55 by using airports as way points. (MDW-LOT-DTG-PNT-BMI-AAA-SPI-3LF-TROY-CPS.) I printed out the TripTick, including frequencies, sectionals, TACs… and instrument approaches as CPS and my alternates just in case. I spent Friday night and Saturday morning studying the maps in the TripTick, from my VFR AirChart, and the latest sectional to review the route and to be familiar with page numbers and how the sectional would need to be folded.
Part of the return trip would be at night so I wanted to know the route, obstacles, and MEAs well. Also due to the night flight, I wanted to get flight following—especially on the way back. During my lesson Friday night, I spoke with Alex about getting flight following. With Chicago’s congested airspace and very busy controllers, when is the best time to make the request? Alex recommended I follow the usual protocol and ask Midway Tower when they terminate my radar services. Alex told me that Chicago Center and Chicago Approach “never” give VFR flight following and to expect MDW to recommend I try Peoria Approach when I get south of LOT. Fair enough. When I got home from that lesson, I informed Amy that I would asking for flight following, what it was (radar people would keep an eye on me for the whole flight like they do when I’m near Midway), why I wanted it (another pair of eyes, practice for IFR, someone knowing where I am if I need assistance, etc.), and what it would mean (I would have to keep an ear out for my call sign on the radio and occasionally talk to people more than I have on previous trips). She appreciated knowing about the flight following, as the radio communications still make her nervous and she likes every “heads-up” about it. As an aside, to ease her mic freight, I remind her of the Death Star incident.
We arrived at Midway and I used a private booth at Atlantic Aviation to call for a weather briefing. No changes. I pre-flighted and we took off. While heading south-southwest still within Midway’s radar coverage, a saw a paraglider at 10 o’clock low. I knew I should keep up my scan for other aircraft, but my mind was still clicking away to process what I was seeing. Where did he come from? Where was going? Was he a threat to me and should I deviate? Then I exclaimed OH! It wasn’t a paraglider. It was a big bouquet of birthday balloons! Sheesh. Still, it was something to keep an eye on—I had never shared the sky with something like this before and I didn’t know how it would move. After watching it another couple of seconds, I concluded that it was not ascending further and would pass near me, but beneath me. I resumed my normal VFR scan and kept half an eye on the balloons. The trip is already off to an interesting start.
Another minute or two and Midway terminated my radar services. I requested flight following and they told me to give Chicago Approach a jingle and gave me the frequency. Hmm. Well, nothing to lose. Like many student pilots, I spent a lot of time in my training reading aviation articles in magazines and online. I had always been drawn to the ones from controllers and I knew from reading those that busy controllers make their decision to provide VFR flight following based on their first impression of you—the aptitude with which you delivered your request. Naturally, a pilot who sounds confident and relaxed and who provides all of important information in (approximately) the correct order indicates a level of professionalism and gives the controller confidence that he/she won’t cause any surprises or create undo workload for the controller—thus, they are more inclined to accept your request.
Just to be super prepared, I dialed in the Joliet VOR (JOT) and let the Garmin GNS 530 tell me my precise radial and distance so that I could give a good fix to Chicago Approach. I dialed in the APP frequency I was given and listened for a couple minutes to get a sense of things. It was busy, but it wasn’t non-stop chatter, so I went for it. Having made that decision, I ran into another point for consideration. Controllers I’ve read and spoken to in person differ on their opinion of whether pilots should always start short (“Chicago Approach, N269DS”) and wait for a response or should give the whole request in one blurb (frequency congestion permitting). The Midway controllers prefer the latter and they are pretty busy people, so my inclination was to go with the whole blurb since the approach frequency wasn’t overly crowded.
(Me) Chicago Approach, Diamond Star November-Two-Six-Niner-Delta-Sierra VFR six east-northeast of Joliet VOR at Two-Thousand, Five Hundred. Request flight following.
(APP) N269DS, Chicago Approach. Squawk 1234. What is your destination?
(Me) N269DS wilco. Squawking 1234. Destination Downtown St. Louis: Charlie-Papa-Sierra.
Wow! Wow wow wow! What an ego boost! I sounded good enough on the mic for the super-busy, don’t-even-bother-asking Chicago Approach to give me flight following! I am Superman! A few minutes later APP contacted me to tell me that I was outside of their radar coverage and to switch to Chicago Center. Chicago Center! Whoo hoo! Time to get myself a job at Southwest Airlines! (I joke, of course. I was elated at the time, but I don’t seriously think I’m all that.)
After that, things were very routine. When I got out from under Bravo I climbed to 6,500 feet after advising the controller of my intentions. I didn’t get a lot of advisories during the trip. In fact, I got so few that I grew concerned I was missing calls to me due to the cockpit conversations. (I wasn’t.) I was asked to change altitudes once due to other VFR traffic, which was a nice heads-up. I also heard an amusing bit on the radio while getting advisories from Peoria Approach. A pilot had just been handed off from elsewhere to Peoria.
(APP) N1234, what is your destination?
(N1234) Palwaukee, north of Chicago.
(APP) They have you in the system as going to Pawnee City, Nebraska.
Anyway, we looked out the window and watched as the snow-covered white fields gradually turned to brown as we travelled south. After the first 90 minutes, Amy was getting bored (!) and thinking about her work, so demanded that I keep her distracted. I thought for a moment and started “On my way to grandma’s house, I saw an airport.” She looked at me incredulously, but we started playing and got to M before we passed over Litchfield (3LF) where I started my descent and we stopped the game. We got a beautiful view of the St. Louis arch as we approached CPS and I mentally kicked myself for not bringing my camera.
CPS was a wonderful airport with very nice controllers. I tested this because my taxi instructions were “taxi to the west ramp” and I ended up needing progressive taxi when I got to a three-way intersection I didn’t understand and couldn’t figure out on the airport diagram. (B, B1 and something that’s not named on the diagram that would would assume is C3.) I felt embarrassed while calling for the progressive taxi, but sitting in a three-way taxi intersection probably wasn’t the time for ego.
Moving on, I’m happy to report that Ideal Aviation was a fabulous FBO! The staff was very friendly and very helpful with maps and directions.
So far, the plan for the day was working out just right. It was only a little past noon when I shut down the engine. I checked the weather forecast at the FBO and it continued to predict the storm to arrive after 9 PM. We had a nice lunch with grandma, but as our dessert arrived (grandma loves vanilla ice cream), the sky turned dark. Not scary dark, but no longer friendly and inviting. Amy and I exchanged a glance.
We dropped off grandma and Amy went inside while I called for an abbreviated weather briefing. The opening line from the briefer wasn’t good: “With weather like this, I can’t do ‘abbreviated’”. Gulp! I listened intently as the briefer painted a picture of doom and gloom rolling in from the southwest. Highlights from the briefing: “Northeast Texas: IFR. Oklahoma: solid IFR. Western and central Missouri: IFR. All of that has a convective SIGMET, too. The leading edge has sleet and freezing rain below… well, any altitude you can reach.” Inversion layers, freezing layers. My head was spinning. All I could think was the line from South Park: It’s heading right for us! Then we got to the bad news: “Let me see where that leading edge is now on the radar. It appears to be 50 miles south of St. Louis right now… And there is more 50 miles southwest… And more to the west 50 miles.” Suddenly, I was feeling claustrophobic. Here’s the kicker, though: the forecasts continued to predict that the bad weather would hold off until 7-9 PM. Yeah. Right. If I trusted the WX forecasts I wouldn’t have kept checking them at every opportunity.
I got off the phone with the briefer, went inside and informed everyone that we had to say our goodbyes—now. On the way to the airport I told Amy about the weather briefing. We made good time back to the airport. While Amy was signing the car rental forms, I took a peak at the animated radar images on the FBO’s weather computer. St. Louis was in the center of the screen. The entire left and bottom portions of the screen were pink (rain/ice mix) and green—and they were, literally, heading right for us!
We wrapped up our business at the FBO and preflighted the airplane. I took the opportunity to tell Amy about the speed that storms move and how the plane will easily outrun the weather—once we’re off the ground. While I felt rushed by the weather, I deliberately slowed down for the preflight and double-checked everything. I don’t want to be one of those NTSB reports.
We took off without much ado, picked up flight following about 40 miles south of Springfield and flew back to Midway without incident. My landing at Midway was a little long—I treated it like a soft field and let the plane stay in ground effect, gently lowering itself onto the runway. I used about half of the 3859’ runway. Since I had the runway length to spare, I thought the soft-field approach was a nice way to avoid dropping the plane in from a couple feet too high due to possible night illusions.
When we got home, I pulled up the weather for St. Louis. Turns out, the forecasts were accurate. The weather didn’t move in until after 8 PM. But when it moved it, conditions deteriorated fast. In the span of 20 minutes the METAR was updated 3 times from VFR to LIFR.
MDW-CPS: 2.4
CPS-MDW: 2.2 (1.5 night)
