Oct 27 2009
Chi City!
Things have slowed up a little bit in our charter department, but I was fortunate to get a recent trip up to Chicago Midway and back.Weather had been sketchy all day- and has been for the past few weeks. By the time I drove out to the airport the main line of storms had moved east and all that remained was patchy rain and layers of clouds. I was psyched to be flying into Midway at all so I was just happy that the storms weren’t going to cancel our plans. This trip would be in the Cessna 421- only my second trip in it and my longest trip so far.
We double checked the weather, filed our flight plans and shot off of Carbondale around 1030am. Instantly we hit IMC and shot through two layers to eventually level out at 17000, skimming the tops of the second layer. Weather at Midway had forced them down to one runway- 13C. Chicago Center began stepping us down and giving us radar vectors in an attempt to slide us in between the long line of Southwest jets and RJs. I leveled off at 7000ft and held headings as best I could- turbulence was moderate and wrestling this 5000lb piece of metal was proving quite the challenge, especially in IMC.
We were hanging on ATC’s every word, but their best efforts to slide us in failed and we were vectored south with instructions to expect a hold.
The hold never actually came, but instead a series of turns left us in a radar vectored hold somewhere over central Illinois. With each minute-long 180 degree turn my disorientation got worse and worse, to the point where I felt as if the plane was turning sharp left when we were actually straight and level. My PNF gave me the word to just trust the instruments- the mantra every instrument pilot remembers from training. After running race tracks around the sky for 30 minutes, we were finally vectored northeast and cleared for the ILS. By this time I was frazzled and dizzy, but we kept fighting the good fight and established ourselves on the approach. As we neared the DA, I kept trying to run the missed approach in my head one last time should we need it- but luck prevailed and we popped out of the clouds 100ft above DA and my PNF took over to land. Winds were strong and gusty, and we both agreed my one flight in this plane doesn’t exactly set me up very well to grease her onto the runway in this case.
We were both looking forward to kissing the tarmac and grabbing some lunch before meeting our passengers for the return trip, but those plans were quickly foiled when our passengers showed up early. We resorted to eating a couple of complimentary cookies before shoving off for the return trip home, which proved to be far less eventful.
All-in-all it was a great trip and I was able to acquire some valuable IMC time. I snapped a shot of Cicero Ave. on the departure-
Would not want to live there…