Chicago Aviation

Length: 1.7 hours
Total Time: 29.3 hours

Today's flight was a bit more intense as there was a good amount of turbulence. Below 2,000 MSL the turbulence was enough to push the plane +\- 50 ft.

I climbed to 5,500 feet and started to do some standard straight & level flying. Then I went through the same routine as yesterday, except I didn't feel comfortable practicing Minimal Controllable Airspeed due to the turbulence. I did get up the comfort-level to try some power-on stalls. These simulate a stall after takeoff, so they occur at full power. These are a different from power-off stalls as there is much more torque to counteract as well as a much higher attitude to achieve stall.

All the while there was quite a bit of radio chatter. Some messages were unreadable while others were getting stepped on. Due to this, a good amount of energy was dedicated to listening for calls in my area & searching for traffic. I spent about ten to fifteen minutes doing 90° turns until I was reasonably assured that I could practice my maneuvers.

I had only one visual contact the entire flight. It was heading north at least 2,500 ft below me. It was the relative size of a dime, so it's really difficult to find other planes in the air. The best way to find any traffic is to hold focus on one section of airspace. Then, using the entire range of vision, including peripherals, look for any relative motion. After each scan, shift your view 10° at a time and refocus. This is the recommended method of searching for traffic.

As of right now, I'm comfortable executing the maneuvers, but I still need some practice to ensure I keep within the performance thresholds. I would say that I used the entire +/- 100 feet for most of my maneuvers. A few times I would notice that I lost 500 ft while performing stalls. I don't believe this is unacceptable, but I'd like to be able to recover quicker.

When I returned for a landing, I intending on flying by the airport to the west then entering a 45° downwind. As I approached the field, I realized that I would be breaking Gary's Class D airspace if I entered on my intended path. Instead, I descended to pattern altitude 2 miles south of the field and entered crosswind for runway 9.

Upon turning final for runway 9, AWOS was reading wind between 050 & 070 at 8 kts. Not as much crosswind as yesterday, but still enough to require a crab angle on approach.

The landing was quite good. A solid single upwind wheel landing with the second wheel touching down about five seconds after. Then the nose-wheel touched down during the rollout. No complaints with this landing.


View Flight20090517.kml in a larger map