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Jim K

Jim K

Final Approach
PoA Supporter
Joined
Mar 31, 2019
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5,273
Location
CMI
Display Name
Display name:
Richard Digits
Took the Cessna up north and knocked out 4 more airports in my quest to land at every public airport in the state. Discovered in my flight planning that one of the ones on my list is now charted as private, so that is technically 5 off the list today. Only one remaining is paved, 8N2 "Skydive Chicago"- I'm going to wait until it's cold as to not interrupt their operations

3G8 and 3H5 are the other two, one of which is listed as an "ultralight port". These little grass strips have been a lot of fun. A couple of the ones I hit today I would be surprised if they were still around in 10 years. One of those, Cottonwood, 1C8, is probably the most unique one I've been to outside of 6Y9. It's buried in the suburbs north of Rockford. Taking off of 18 puts you over the top of a highschool at ~100'.

As always I didn't take enough pictures, but here's a couple I did get:
IMG_20220915_141432897.jpg IMG_20220915_125552868_HDR.jpg IMG_20220915_124308235_HDR.jpg

Part of me wishes I had thought to take pictures at every airport and make a book, but that would make it hard to hit multiples in a few hours like I did today. Also, I'm pretty lazy, so there's that.

Flying is fun. Exploring is fun. Exploring by air is more funner.
 
What are those cooling towers for in the second pic?

I've been slowly collecting stamps from the Virginia and Maryland airports. Nowhere close like you are though.
 
I hit 8N2 a few days ago in the 170. I just went early in the morning, as skydive ops didn’t start until 9 am. I was surprised as to how hard it was to find.

How did you like 0C8? 0C0?
 
RingLaserGyroSandwich said:
What are those cooling towers for in the second pic?

I've been slowly collecting stamps from the Virginia and Maryland airports. Nowhere close like you are though.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station

kaiser said:
I hit 8N2 a few days ago in the 170. I just went early in the morning, as skydive ops didn’t start until 9 am. I was surprised as to how hard it was to find.

How did you like 0C8? 0C0?
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0C8 was the nicest, and there was actually life there...a piston single was waiting for me to takeoff, and there was a guy pre-flighting an ultralight

0C0 was rough, as you said, but not terrible. That Navion in the weeds made me sad. I want to rescue it. This is one I can't imagine being around much longer. The hangar building looked like it was about ready to collapse, and town is real close and building in that direction.

You need to take the cub to 1C8. It's a cool one. The grass is decent, but it's REAL hard to pick out of its surroundings.
 
A few years ago there was a web page called pilots across America,they kept track of pilots landings at different airports. They required pictures of your airplane at the airport. They then ranked pilots by amount of landings.
 
frfly172 said:
A few years ago there was a web page called pilots across America,they kept track of pilots landings at different airports. They required pictures of your airplane at the airport. They then ranked pilots by amount of landings.
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Chip and Nick did the “Go Fly America” deal back in the late 2000’s (circa 2007). I’d still like to bring that back someday.
 
RyanB said:
Chip and Nick did the “Go Fly America” deal back in the late 2000’s (circa 2007). I’d still like to bring that back someday.
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I did several of those, we were to have the person working at the airport hold the go fly America sheet.

upload_2022-9-15_20-26-13.jpeg
 
Bill said:
I did several of those, we were to have the person working at the airport hold the go fly America sheet.

View attachment 110554
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Way cool!

I came across an old thread after thinking about those days with a picture of Leon Bagby at 3M3. Really threw it back for me there for a second!
 
Nice!

min my years I’m still surprised how few airports I’ve landed at.
 
I took that picture!
 

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Bill said:
I took that picture!
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Leon was the face of the airport for a long time. I used to walk in there as a kid from time to time and he’d always be sitting at the desk. Once in awhile he’ll stop by to visit. Still doing okay, just needs a walker to get around.
 
I want to try 0C0 at night, but I’d prob do a few low passes to get an idea before actually landing, and also wondering if there is a list of lighted grass strips within an hour of Chicago.
 
@RyanB Early in my flying career (but post-PPASEL), I was hesitant to go off to visit airports that I had not visited prior. So I latched on to the Go Fly America challenge as a way to conquer that hesitation/fear. On a good weather weekend day I would make a list of airports that I hadn't embarrassed myself by landing there, and went through the process to thoroughly plan my flight. It got so that I could knock out several airports a day without much trouble. Later on some snowy cold winter day, I went to Google Maps and plotted them all. Here is that map.

i would recommend this to any newly fledged pilot as a good way to get comfortable with flights away from home base.

I finally stopped. After hitting the unclaimed airports close to me, it was becoming too expensive to continue. As I knocked off the close-in airports, the remainder were, by definition, further away. And I had proved the point to myself many times over, that landing away was something that I could do well.

-Skip

Oh, I also had a Glider landing, not solo, in Arizona. I was down there on a business conference, and Glider flights was one of the extracurricular activities. I asked for a flight with a CFI-G so I could put the flight in my Log Book in case I elected to continue to the rating. I ended up not doing that. Oh well...
 

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