January 25, 2004
My First Passenger (With Help)
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I was supposed to do my first dual cross-country today. "Dual" means the instructor goes along with you. And since my CFI would be there, it meant The Wifely Wonder could go along for the ride. The plan was to fly up to Baraboo Wisconsin Dells airport (DLL).
I spent a good portion of yesterday going over the flight plan, looking at airport diagrams at DLL and Madison's Dane County Regional (MSN) in case we needed to divert, and checking the weather on DUATS, Weather Underground, The Weather Channel, and any other source I could find. As of bedtime, the odds were about 75% that we'd be able to make the flight. Snow was on its way and was due for the afternoon - potentially after we'd be back on the ground at home.
Weather forcasts are barely worth the paper they're printed on, and considering everything I had was electronic, they were worthless. This morning the potential of making the trip had dropped to about 30%. The winds were high and would be against us on the way home. Getting to DLL didn't look like it would be an issue, but getting home might be.
When we got to the airport and my CFI got back from his previous lesson I asked, "So, what do you think?" He asked if I'd checked the weather and I said I hadn't gone as far as getting a briefing from the Flight Service Station, but with what I had seen, it didn't seem likely we'd go. He said, "Well, we could probably do it, but we'd have to fight a hell of a headwind to get home." I didn't want to push it, especially since this was to be Amy's first flight in a small airplane. I didn't want to go out of my way to make her tense, especially if the winds might be rough. I told him I thought it was probably a better idea that we just stay local and do a sight-seeing trip. He agreed with a smile - I think he may have been testing me on the go/no-go decision.
The flight was fairly routine for me. Brice went through a briefing with Amy on how to operate the door latches and seatbelts and what to do in case she started getting airsick or otherwise uncomfortable. We started out heading towards Lake Geneva, pretty much following the route and checkpoints we would have done on the cross country. As we crossed north of Lake Geneva, we spotted a snow squall up ahead - the no-go decision was looking smarter and smarter. The skies out to the west were looking clear and since the winds were out of the southeast, we were still in good shape. I made a gradual turn to the west and skirted the north shore of Lake Como. Brice was tour guiding, pointing out the Grand Geneva Resort (formerly a Playboy resort), ice fishing shacks on Lake Geneva, and other points of interest, mostly lakes. When we got to the western end of Lake Geneva, he pointed out an observatory dome. Apparently the film Chain Reaction was in part shot around there (other parts were shot in Evanston while Amy and I were at Northwestern).
The Observatory
From there, we flew towards Big Foot Airfield (7V3), where I'd done a simulated engine-out landing before. From there, it was southeast past Harvard where Brice showed us a HUGE house with an equally huge backyard that was supposedly built over some kind of underground structure. Brice isn't sure if it's a garage, basketball court, bomb shelter, or whatever, but he watched it being built from the air, so he knows SOMETHING's under there. He calls the house The Castle House.
I then decided it would be cool to fly over the site where Amy and I were married. We had an outside ceremony hosted by my aunt and uncle at their house in McHenry. We have an aerial photo from during our wedding, but I wanted to fly over it myself. I described the location to Brice as best I could and he guided me in the general direction from where we were. I cross-checked against my handheld GPS, but he pretty much got us right there. When I spotted and pointed out the house, he said, "I've always wondered who the hell lived there. You could put a plane down on that driveway!" He's not wrong.
Look at that driveway!
It's a beautiful and impressive house and lot. Amy got quite a few photos of the house, and we headed on our way back to Campbell (C81).
I was a little off my game coming at the airport from a different direction than I was accostomed to. Additionally a stout wind didn't pretty up my pattern at all, but I got us on downwind, base, and final without any real problems. Besides, we were the only idiots flying this particular dingy day (we were well above weather minimums, it just wasn't a pretty flying day) so even if my pattern wasn't picture perfect, we were at little risk of getting in anyone else's way.
I did mess one thing up that may have been due to not having flown in almost a month, having my wife aboard, worring about my pattern or whatever. I didn't think to do my before landing checklist until I was REALLY short on final. When he saw me confirm full mixture and flip on the fuel pump, my CFI said, "I was wondering when you were going to do that."
I bounced the landing a little, but all in all, my passenger was very quiet. After I was stopped and got the plane cleaned up I asked her how she was doing and I noted that she was really quiet during and after the landing and that that could either be a good or bad sign. She said she was fine and I could pretty much hear her smiling over the intercom.
So we didn't get to go to The Dells, but Amy really enjoyed her first small airplane ride. We'd been in a Super Otter before, but we jumped out of that one, so she'd never landed in a small single engine airplane. At one point during the flight, she said, "You just brought me up here so I'd tell you it was OK to buy a plane." I said that depended on if it was working or not. She didn't comment. But I have a feeling a seed's been planted . . ..
The rest of Amy's pictures are here.
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