Yesterday we flew to Orchard Landing Apple Farm, an apple orchard in Hanover, Illinois that has a grass landing strip!
We found out about this orchard too late in the season to go last year, so I was really excited to go this year. I told my mom and snis we were going and they drove down to see us. What a sweet surprise! It was wonderful to see them all.
We spent most of the day there and had a great time! We left with apples, apple cider donuts, a crewneck and t-shirt, some new friends, and a lot of stories. This post will focus on the flying portion and I will write another about the rest!
We got to Waukegan airport at 9:00 and took off just after 9:50. Instead of flying a straight route to the apple orchard, we swung up to Lake Geneva. Our friend Eric was there with his son for a sailing regatta and we wanted to fly over them to say hi!
Plane stuff: we used a new device to get ADS-B information in the plane. ADS-B is Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast—the technology that tells other planes/air traffic control where you are (ADS-B Out), and tells you where they are (ADS-B In). We always use the transponder in this plane (the 172 we usually fly) for this information, but it often stops working. And not all planes have a transponder that does ADS-B in (the 182 doesn’t). So we bought an ADS-B receiver (a Sentry), and it worked great! Yay!
As we headed to the lake we could see another plane was at our altitude and headed toward us, so we did some turns for spacing. It’s so nice to have this information in advance.
We fly by Lake Geneva often but have never flown along the shoreline. It was fun! We did a circle over the Yacht Club (Eric said he could see us!) then went on our way.
We got up to cruising altitude (4,500′ MSL), and I asked Steven a lot of flying questions as we progressed. The night before at book club, a friend was asking me what Steven and I talk about on our flights. A lot of flying stuff! But on longer flights, normal life stuff. This was more of a medium length flight with a mix that leaned on flying talk.
As we got closer we played “find the runway.” It’s hard with grass strips!
We had studied the aerial photos of the area for clues, but what helped us find it was the red barn (shown with a red arrow above).
The owner showed us where to park and Lucy the dog greeted us when we got out!
We landed around 11:20, and hung out there all day. There was a bit more plane traffic—a taildragger landed (we talked to them quite a bit—more on that in the next post!), the owner’s mother-in-law arrived in her plane (she was getting ready to leave when we arrived), and a plane came in to land and did a go-around but didn’t come back. When I saw their tail number I was like “I know them!” Okay, I know their tail number—that plane belongs to the other school at our home airport. Funny coincidence. I wonder why they didn’t come back and try to land again.
It was HOT yesterday—85°F when we took off at 5:19. Because of the temperature, the density altitude was high, meaning the air is less dense and the plane will act like it’s at a higher altitude and require more time to take off. Pair that with a bumpy field that makes it take longer to get up to speed, and we took off a little farther down the runway than we expected.
It was gorgeous takeoff! Hanover is right by the Mississippi River and we were pointed straight at it until we turned on course.
There was a layer of haze, so we decided to go up to 7,500′ MSL to get above it. Our rate of climb was so slow due to the high density altitude! But we made it up there.
We had a tailwind, so we got back faster than we got there. It was just over an hour flight.
It was a chill flight too. We only altered course a bit to stay out of the airspace around Rockford airport.
We were getting close to sunset during the flight so the sky looked beautiful to the west!
We landed at 6:24 but it felt so late. That’s what being out in the sun all day will do to ya! It was a great day though!
