Our latest flying adventure was to Milwaukee, WI!

Not the “big” Class Charlie/international Milwaukee airport (KMKE below), but a little Delta airport to the north of it – Timmerman Airport (KMWC).

Steven wanted to practice nighttime takeoffs and landings, but wanted to do something fun with it, rather than just hanging out in the pattern at our base airport an hour after sunset, so we found a restaurant to fly to.

So I researched and found a few restaurants with a vegetarian/vegan option and within walking distance of Timmerman Airport. Are these restaurants we would ever purposely drive to? No. Are we way less picky when flying because we are mostly doing it for the fun of flying and for Steven to keep building his skills and working on his proficiency? Yes.

We actually had this flight planned out for Friday a week+ ago but we canceled due to an incoming windstorm – it would have been safe to fly when we had it booked but the plane would have sat out all night and gotten beat up during the storm. Anyway! So we rescheduled for Saturday and had one beautiful non-windy day. Yay!

This trip required quite a bit of planning because we wanted to avoid different Delta and Charlie airspaces on our way up (hence the path not being a straight line below). You can actually call these airspaces and ask to fly through them, but that would be a lot more communications for a 30 minute flight than we wanted!

We aren’t super familiar with the GPS in the airplane – like we don’t know how to enter a route with multiple heading changes like this in it – so I went over the checkpoints with Steven several times to make sure I knew which and when to enter them. I’m getting ahead of myself though.

When we got to the airport, we saw all of the school’s airplanes were out! We haven’t seen that in a while! We preflighted on the ramp (outside) – also hadn’t done that in a while. We even had to wait in line on the taxiway for other GA (general aviation planes). Again, it’s been a while.

We took off at 5:34. It was a beautiful clear day to fly with hardly any traffic in sight.

I enjoyed seeing the Milwaukee cityscape from the plane. It doesn’t show up in a photo, but of course I tried.

Our planning paid off, too. There was a certain point on course when Steven had to turn and fly between the Charlie and Delta airspaces, but it was right as he had to call the Timmerman tower to announce himself and state his intentions. And he had to listen to the weather before that turn so he could tell tower he’d listened (Ah! I just remembered. When we listened to weather it had a warning about birds in the vicinity. Eek. I did see a few right before we were landing but they weren’t in our flight path.). Blah blah blah, it went well.

And we found the airport right away! Go us!

You could see the city off in the distance when we landed. I enjoyed it. Steven was focusing on landing. I tell him about these things later.

We landed at 6:09 and tied the plane down. One of the interesting (???) things that happens to general aviation ramps in the winter is the tie downs fill with water and freeze so you can’t use them (and use chocks instead). The good news is they are thawed now! The bad news is they are full of mud. It’s a bit messy.

On the way to our base airport, Steven was telling me how he listened to an aviation podcast this week and they were saying to always check the FBO (fixed base operator) hours so you don’t have to do “fence jumping” to get in and out if you leave after hours. I never thought of that.

So I called the FBO before we left and they closed at 4:00. Oops. I told Steven we should just check it out – maybe there was a clear code to get in and out. And if not, we’d be waiting a bit so that we could fly back (hungry) at official “nighttime.”

Good news – there was a clear code to use and we were able to leave!

The restaurant I found, Syrs, was so close to the airport. Below is a view of the airport from the restaurant. And there were even sidewalks to walk on. It was about a 5 minute walk. Woo hoo!

Ha. So this is funny and a bit long to explain (but is anyone even reading this?). We were originally going to go to a different restaurant but they close at 4:00 and weren’t an option. I found Syrs as a backup (open until 2 am!) and text Steven about it this week saying “This place by Timmerman shows a veggie burger on their menu 🤷‍♀️ also looks like a vibe 😂 Like it’s also a hookah lounge?”

So I knew the restaurant was also a hookah lounge but didn’t know it was going to have security to get in because it was also a club! We had to go through a metal detector. And Steven always has a multitool on him with a blade and they kept telling him he could take it back to his car. And twice he was like “I flew here.” Like… I don’t have a car to take it back too. Like that even matters. Buah ha ha. Eventually he asked if he could throw the blade out and they were cool with that. They were nice the whole time and it wasn’t weird – we just weren’t expecting it!

But wait for this – we sit down and Steven goes “I didn’t know this place was an actual hookah lounge. I thought you were just saying it looked liked one.” I laughed so much!!!!!! Still laughing about it now as I type this.

I was glad I pregamed with Tylenol for an existing headache on the walk over, cause the hookah smell got to me a bit by the end. The food was great though! We had fried okra and burgers.

We enjoyed chatting (Steven got his weekly work dump/rant from me – it always seems to come out at restaurants) and did our flight planning there before heading back to the airport.

We preflighted, did run-up, and discussed several times how we’d keep an eye on altitude because of the nearby Charlie airspace. The runway we were taking off on pointed right at the MKE Charlie airspace. The airspace shelf starts at 2200 MSL (meaning we have to stay under that altitude) so not a lot of wiggle room there!

We left at 8:27, and sunset was at 7:05, so we were well within the nighttime flying time starting at 8:05.

And Steven was able to turn off course and avoid flying under the Charlie airspace, and slipped right between the Charlie and Delta easy peasy (ha, said as a passenger).

The Milwaukee skyline looked amazing all lit up but nighttime photos from my iPhone suck. Here’s one anyway:

The flight back was a little shorter, with a tailwind (we landed at 8:57).

Our home airport tower closes at 8:00 so it was up to the pilots to communicate what they were doing with one another. Someone was talking off to the west a bit before we were landing, and we had them in sight, so all good!

When you approach the airport you can press the comms button a certain amount of times to turn the runway lights on. This is what they look like when you hit it 7x:

Max brightness! Too bright! Steven only hit it 5x after that.

We landed, then did 3 more takeoffs and landings. It’s required to do nighttime takeoffs and landings every 90 days to stay “current” so you can fly at night with passengers. Steven has told me several times (and I’ve read it in books and heard it on podcasts) that proficiency is more important than currency, which makes sense! So he wasn’t at his 90 day limit, but wanted to practice. If he waits 90 days to do this again it will be the summer solstice and quite late. Ha. We’ll see how much nighttime flying we do until then.

And that was our Saturday night! I had so much fun. Our last landing was at 9:22 and I think we got home around 10:00 – that’s late for me. Hee hee. But it doesn’t bother me at all when we are out flying!