I was not expecting this trip to Kansas City (KC) to happen this weekend. What are the odds for decent visual flight rules (VFR) flying weather in February in the midwest?! But we somehow got a decent window of weather and it worked out. We originally planned to be there Friday – Monday, but ended up coming home Sunday to stay ahead of a snow storm coming in Monday night.
This is the third time we’ve flown to the KC area. The first time we flew a Cessna 182 and had to divert to St Joseph, but later landed at the downtown KC airport to check it out. It was kind of intense, so the second time we took a Cessna 172 and landed in Roosterville instead of downtown KC. This time, we took a 172, and decided to try the downtown KC airport again.
If you are reading this as a little bit of foreshadowing, it is, but also… it obviously all worked out in the end.
We left Waukegan Friday morning at 9:20 am, and flew under the Bravo airspace shelves around ORD. That’s always a bit intense – traffic is congested there since all the general aviation (GA) planes have to fly there to stay out of Bravo airspace. Just part of your home airport being near a major city.
We got out from under the ORD Bravo and there was a bit of traffic around one airport then we didn’t see another GA airplane until we got to KC. It was a quiet flight! We chose not to do flight following, and just tuned into different frequencies around where we were.
After we crossed the Mississippi River, Steven let me fly for quite a bit! I used the yoke only – he controlled the rudder. But I got a really good sense for how sensitive the controls are. I was constantly turning it too far right or pitching up or down when I didn’t mean to. I kind of got a bit better at it by the end. I enjoyed it.
When we got close to the KC airport, traffic picked up again, as to be expected. We made contact with tower and got our instructions, and found the airport (woo hoo – last time we flew to it it wasn’t’ as obvious, but we had studied the surroundings more this time). When we reported midfield they told us to extend our downwind. Downwind is the pattern leg that runs parallel to the runway you’re going to land on. There was so much traffic the controller was having almost everyone extend to space us out. We were #2 in line to land and as we were flying we heard up to #6.
So here’s the thing. Extending downwind is a totally normal instruction. But we had NOT extended downwind here before as it was our second time flying here, AND the runway we were going to use (1) meant that our downwind extended right into downtown KC, as well as toward two huge ass radio towers. It felt like we were headed straight toward the buildings and towers. It was nuts.
But hey, I got a great view of the city.
And I have to say, that controller was ON IT with directing people, and even taking time to ask if we were familiar with the airpace and warn us about the towers.
Phew. I feel a bit tense just writing about it and all I did was sit in the passenger seat.
We landed (12:42pm), got fuel (second time all on “our own” (in quotes cause I just chatted with one the linemen the whole time, oops)), and put the plane in a hangar, then I immediately had to work. Womp womp. Total flight time was 3h 22m.
Alright, the flight back! We paid for the hangar, preflighted the plane, loaded the plane, did a briefing, then runup, and took off!
It was a rare no wind day, so all runways were in use, and they put us on runway 4, which pointed more in the direction we were going.
Our planned cruising altitude was 7,500 MSL to take advantage of a tailwind (we cruised at 4,500 on the way in). KC has Bravo shelves around its major airport as well, so we had to be mindful to stay under the shelves and not climb too fast. Did we get too close at one point? Maybe. Maybe not.
Similarly to the way in, we saw no GA planes, just a few commercial jets. There was also hardly any radio chatter. It’s like everyone was watching a football game or something?
We departed at 3:32, and the flight was 3h 13m. We chatted the whole time, and got to see a pretty sunset behind us.
We had a lot of elevation to lose when we got close to Chicagoland (7500 down to pattern altitude at 1800), but it became tricky with more GA planes flying around our altitude outside of the Chicago Bravo shelves. We didn’t want to lose 500′ a minute when someone was near our elevation and climbing and headed toward us.
All that to say, Chicagoland area was still busy, womp womp.
Our airport wasn’t though! It was calm there too and we got our choice of runway. We chose 5, and came in a bit high and fast. Steven did a slip (first with the left wing down, then the right) but we were still coming in too fast so he went around (basically that means you don’t land and put in more power to reenter the pattern and try again), did the pattern and came in to land. It was completely dark, and he commented on how he needs to keep practicing night time landings because of its effect on spatial orientation. It was the perfect time to do all that – there were NO other planes there!
As soon as we landed (6:45 pm) and parked we rushed to the bathroom. 3+ hours is a long time to hold it! Then we unloaded the plane, dropped off the keys, and got El Famous and went home to watch the rest of the Super Bowl (yikes).
