flying in chicago

Saturday morning my AOPA mentor Todd from MyFlightBlog.com picked me up and we headed to KPWK. There was a fly-in at KJVL in Janesville, WI that would be a gathering of some MyTransponder.com pilots. This would be the first time I flew with Todd, my first fly-in, my first visit to Janesville, my first flight with a purpose other than training exercises, and the first time I’d be meeting any of these folks.

That’s a lotta firsts if you ask me.

The preflight work was interesting. Todd has created some useful tools for flight planning and the information he had was organized and concise. It was my first experience with calling for a flight advisory. Watching him weave all the details together for the flight plan and then execute it taught me quite a few things.

There is a ton I need to learn about planning a flight. Just because you are flying direct from one airport to another doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use a plan. Todd had marked waypoints on the direct route and calculated the approximate ETA’s for each using the weather info and his E6B. Even though we had a Bendix GPS on board, navigating with the sectional chart and waypoints was easier for me to understand. I’d rather be able to look out the window and figure out where we were than to look at a screen. And not every plane has a GPS, so the pilotage practce was useful.

Speaking of the Bendix, the one onboard our plane had a traffic warning system. It’s a super nice feature until it begins to malfunction. Just after takeoff, the system began to scream “TRAFFIC” at us. Initially we thought it was yelling about the traffic below us on the taxi/runways. After another 1000 feet of climb it began to wail some more with no traffic in sight. Something was definitely wrong. The gizmo kept yelping “TRAFFIC”, and every time it did I’m sure we looked like two meercats, sitting up straight, scanning the horizon for anything that looked remotely like another plane. The warning would sound, the traffic would appear on the screen, then it would disappear seconds later.

Instead of the boy who cried wolf, we had a Bendix-who-cried-wolf.

Eventually we shut it off because there was obviously a problem. The sectional and flight plan were essential to navigate the short 40 minute flight as we made our way to KJVL. Todd radioed for landing clearance, landed smoothly, and called ground for taxi instructions “to the restaurant”. I got a big kick out of that. It seemed like an unusual thing to say, but hey, that’s KJVL and Kealey’s Kafe.

As we taxied over I saw something I didn’t expect; a giant parking lot filled with planes in front of Kealey’s. I hadn’t thought much about that. Logically you would need a big parking lot for planes if a lot of your customers fly to your restaurant. I’m not sure what I expected, but it made me smile. Just not something you see every day.

We shut down and headed in. Right away we met Robbie and his four year old son Joshua. I’ll admit here and now that I was jealous of Joshua. What an amazing way to grow up! Robbie’s family is full of pilots, and I’m sure by the time Joshua makes it into his teens he’ll have logged more hours than me…

Many other pilots began to show up, and as the coffee began to flow, everyone began to aviation. When you get a handful of pilots together they talk about flying, planes, air regulations, and anything else aviation related. It was magical to hear stories and discussions about things I barely understood, but since everyone knew I was a total n00b, occasionally they’d translate an acronym or two. It was a warm welcome into a world I still feel like I know very little about.

What surprised me most was their keen interest in podcasting aviation related information. Thankfully I could talk shop about that, but I didn’t realize there would be such an appetite for information about the process of it all. I guess since I’ve been eating and breathing podcasting for so long I tend to forget how little how-to information is out there.

In any case, the food, the excellent coffee, and the really engaging and fun conversations with a group of folks who have a passion for flying proved all the rumors true. Pilots really are a friendly folk. From a completely green student like me, to guys who’ve flown for many years, get a group of aviation buffs together and the good times will indeed roll. I look forward to interacting more with the people I met that day in the future, and I’m sure MyTransponder.com will help foster that.

But we still had to get back to KPWK.

After saying goodbye, we went to preflight the plane for our return when I noticed the shark fin antenna on the underside of the front had carbon on the leading edge. Cessna 172’s have their exhaust pipe pointing down off the nose slightly to the right. With the way prop wash would blow over the body of the plane, I sort of thought the exhaust would whip over the various antennas on the belly of the plane. Like any exhaust, it could potentially dirty whatever it was blowing on.

Sure enough, it wasn’t just the shark fin that was dirty. All the antennas underneath the plane were darkened, including, surprise surprise, the large oval Bendix antenna. It was coated in a thick layer of sooty goo that took a few minutes to clean off with a paper towel. Todd agreed when I suggested that might be the cause of our our Bendix-who-cried-wolf traffic warnings.

During our smooth return to KPWK, the Bendix only screamed at us a few times. In all cases it was legitimate. The sooty antenna really was the culprit, and going forward we both agreed that we’ll make sure those antennas are squeaky clean during preflight. However, only just now, I wonder why the exhaust was so sooty. Could it be a bad plug or two and unburnt fuel? Could it be oil getting into the combustion chamber? I wonder what caused that greasy build-up.