Chicago

January 20, 2013

It's 7:30am and I arrive at the airport. The sun has just risen over the horizon, sending a warm glow over St. Louis. My instructor was kind enough to preflight the plane before I arrived. We discuss what route we will fly, the altitudes to fly at, the weather and then got an IFR plan filed with the FAA. After taxiing to the runway we call Clearance Delivery and pick up our IFR flight plan. We will be in contact with ATC for the entire trip.

It's a long, slow flight at 7,000ft and it's gradually getting colder as we make our way north. We finally get in contact with Chicago approach. Since we're on an IFR flight plan, they direct us to fly to the west side of the city for traffic avoidance. We decline the assignment because we want to fly on the east side of the city and over Lake Michigan. We're told that if we want to fly that route, we will need to fly to Gary, Indiana then go VFR up the coast to our destination of Racine, WI. They will keep an eye on us by using flight following. We accept the plan.

At about 10 miles to the southwest of Gary, we cancel IFR and pick up flight following. We can see downtown Chicago, and the coast of Lake Michigan is just ahead of us. Its brilliant turquoise color shines in the sun. We reach the coast and cross over to the wide open waters. This is nothing like flying over a typical Missouri lake.

Looking north from Gary, IN

We make our way up the coastline for over 60NM. We have O'Hare traffic flying all around us and are warned of wake turbulence. It never becomes an issue as the planes are kept a good distance away from us. The city is stunning from the air.

Downtown Chicago with the Navy Pier

Nothing but crystal clear water

The air temperature has become a crisp zero degrees and our air vents are constantly blowing open, making the cabin a bit chilly. Upon landing at Racine, WI for fuel, I check my phone's Weatherbug app. No wonder we are freezing, it's says "Feel likes -5 with winds gusting to 37mph." WOW!! The nice airport employee tops off the tanks and we get on our way. Next stop is southwest to Schaumburg, IL. 

Twenty minutes later we land at Schaumburg and make our way to a table at Pilot Pete's restaurant on the field. It's now 1:00pm and my instructor and I are quite hungry. We order chicken fingers as an appetizer. Delicious! He then orders brisket as his meal and I order the beef pot roast. As we're waiting for our food to arrive, we look at the weather forcast and see that we may run into some light snow on our way home. 

Our food arrives and it looks amazing! I take a bite and just melt right into my seat. It was absolutely delicious!

After stuffing ourselves beyond crazy, we make our way back to the plane, but not before borrowing some duct tape from the local flight school. We don't exactly care to fly back with that air vent open, so it's time to play mechanic and tape the thing shut.

We depart Shaumburg and begin our flight home. It wasn't long after leaving the Chicago airspace that the weather starts to deteriorate. We're not in the clouds and we don't see any precipitation, however we have no visibility except for down. Since I have no reference to the horizon, I'm now required to fly by instruments only. Looks like my newly acquired IFR rating has come in handy! We're now at 8000ft, and even being this high up, it's warmer outside than it was in Wisconsin on the ground. 

The weather continues to get worse; it appears that we are now fully in the clouds. We continue flying, then I start to notice tiny snow flurries entering the cockpit. What?! They are finding their way in through other air vents. We look down to the wheels and notice snow building on the tops of the tires. Alright, looks like we are officially in the snow. That means that it's cold outside and we are in visible moisture. It's a perfect setup for icing conditions. I flip on the pitot heat to keep the pitot tube from icing over. I keep my instrument scan going because that's one of the golden rules of flying IFR. In my scan I notice that I'm losing airspeed. I assess the other instruments and also notice that my RPMs are dropping and I can physically feel the airplane running more rough than normal. Although I have never actually experienced this before, I had read about it. My immediate response was to turn on the carb heat. It was an instantaneous fix. We apparently had developed minor carburateur ice. I kept the carb heat on while we descended to 6000ft. Once straight and level I turn the carb heat off so that we could get back to normal cruise speed. But once again the ice developed. Carb heat goes back on and I take us down to 4000ft to try and escape the clouds. Shortly after reaching 4000ft we exit the clouds and the snow all together.

The snow, now behind us

Now at Springfield, MO, it's completely clear and the visibility is outstanding. We can actually see downtown St. Louis from here!

After the long flight, we arrive back home. That was such an amazing experience. We logged at least 550NM, 6.3 hours of flight time and flew through 4 different states. 

This trip has completed my cross country requirements for commercial training. Now onto maneuvers and complex aircraft!