Excellent Midwest IMC flying today!

[ScottM]

Wow what a great weekend of flying!

Got in some super nice VFR and some great IFR in. Saturday it was maximum CAVU in the Midwest. I took of and headed down to Bloomington VFR. I could see for miles, blue skies, and temps right at 65F. Super smooth. On the way back decided to practice some maneuvers and did a stall series, followed by steep turns in each direction. I was very happy to nail these as I had only practiced them in my plane a couple of times. So I decided it was time for a few performance maneuvers and started with lazy eights. I was having so much fun doing them that I got a little lost and ended up going a bit fast and steep. Hit 70 degrees of bank with 140knots IAS on my Warrior, OOps! Slowed it down and started paying attention again. Landed and cleaned the plane up.

Today, Monday, I was meeting my friend to do fly some approaches. Since getting the plane in June I had not yet taken it up into IMC but I had flown some approaches under the hood to get used to her. The last time I was flying under the hood my vacuum pump failed. After getting a new on I have been hesitant to bring the plane up into IMC until I was really sure the new pump was working and something else had not caused the failure. While today was planed to be under the hood the WX was MVFR to IMC. We had ceilings from 1800 to 4000 with high cirrus. S0 I decided to file and do it in the clouds.

First stop was KUES. We got our clearance and took off up to 5000 and above the layer. Did the NDB28 into UES, went missed and vectors to the ILS10 circle to land R28. Nailed that baby too!

We got updated conditions and then flew off to JVL for a VOR/DME 22. I am still getting used to flying with real DME so this was a good one. For some reason though my VORs would not agree on the course. One was indicating left of course and the other right. Both were close when checked on the ground, +/-2 degrees, but they were not giving me good info in the air. I used one of them and it turned out to be wrong. When I looked up I was pretty far from the course. Made an adjustment and at the missed point climbed to the published hold. Was in IMC and nailed the hold on the first try. It is great when there is no wind and you do those things right. Requested vectors to the ILS32 and landed.

Refilled back to the home AP got my clearance and took off. As expected I was to enter the Chi-App airspace at Krena intersection and then would get RV to 10C. As I was approaching Krena RFD-Dep told me to look for VFR traffic at my 9 o'clock and at 4500. There was solid ovc at 4500 so I questioned the VFR , they responded affirmative. As we were looking a 172 blundered up through the clouds and right at me. He took evasion just before I did and I told departure I had the traffic and "he just came up through the clouds and was in no way in VFR conditions" I hope they track the bugger and nail 'em.

After my hand off Chi-App tells me to take a heading of 130 at Krena to C81. I respond that I am not going to C81 but 10C. He was a little confused and re cleared me to 10C. I requested the GPS-B but he said it was not available and that I could have the VOR-A which was fine for me. Then 5 seconds later he said the GPS-B was now available and I could have that and he cleared me to the IAF. I was over the top of 10C at 5000MSL heading of 103 and got my approach clearance for the approach and that meant I had to do the whole approach without the vectors. I was glad as I do not get to do full approaches unless I specifically request and even then Chi-App wants you to cancel IFR asap and seldom will let you do them.

So did the full approach and landed without event. 2.9 hours total, 2.5 in actual, 5 approaches, 1 hold, and a great weekend of flying.

 

[mikea]

Wow what a great weekend of flying!

I shoulda been there with you. By the time I the energy make the drive I figured out that I'd have maybe 35 minutes to fly before sunset. I hate being so far away from the airport.

Refilled back to the home AP got my clearance and took off. As expected I was to enter the Chi-App airspace at Krena intersection and then would get RV to 10C. As I was approaching Krena RFD-Dep told me to look for VFR traffic at my 9 o'clock and at 4500. There was solid ovc at 4500 so I questioned the VFR , they responded affirmative. As we were looking a 172 blundered up through the clouds and right at me. He took evasion just before I did and I told departure I had the traffic and "he just came up through the clouds and was in no way in VFR conditions" I hope they track the bugger and nail 'em.

Wassa matter? Didja ever think that maybe he had autopilot?

 

[mpartovi]

I have yet to fly any approaches back here in the midwest. I've only flown IMC and under the hood in the south-east. Any things I should be lookin out for?

I remember how chi-app was when i was flying VFR here and they're usually alright if their load is light. They tend not to be overly excited when they hear "Chi-app...Cessna xxxx..."

 

[ScottM]

I have yet to fly any approaches back here in the midwest. I've only flown IMC and under the hood in the south-east. Any things I should be lookin out for?

I remember how chi-app was when i was flying VFR here and they're usually alright if their load is light. They tend not to be overly excited when they hear "Chi-app...Cessna xxxx..."

Chicago will want you to cancel as soon as possible. Also be aware of traffic flow in and out of the area. For Chicago, traffic comes in from the SE, SW, NW, and NE, the outflow is N, S, E, and W. So you will be vectored to one of the fixes they deal with before getting your final clearence to your airport. Yesterday my approach clearence was a simple vector to the IAF and then I had to fly the entire approach because I had to do the course reversal, I did not get vectors to final and have found that I rarely do in Chicago.

Departing Chicago is somewhat of a challenge too. Getting your clearence in the air is sometimes difficult so I call the TRACON with my cell phone on the ground after I have done my run up. A lot of times I will get a clearence and they will ask me to depart VFR and pick up IFR a few miles west and with RFD approach. If it is hard IMC they are a bit more understanding.

The only other advice I have for you when flying IFR around Chicago is to stay flexible. My filed route is almost never what my clearence and multiple amended clearence will be. On a trip to Vicksburg, MS. I was vectored around so much that I used an hours fuel and had not even made it to Peotone. I had to divert to Decauter to refuel or risk not having my reserve when I was going to land.

 

[gismo]

Chicago will want you to cancel as soon as possible. Also be aware of traffic flow in and out of the area.

Yeah, they really like it when you cancel when the airport is in sight. It also helps if you tell them in advance that this is your plan rather than waiting for the controller to go throught his whole spiel "cleared for the visual at xxx, frequency change approved, cancel with me in the air or with FSS on the ground..."

Departing Chicago is somewhat of a challenge too. Getting your clearence in the air is sometimes difficult so I call the TRACON with my cell phone on the ground after I have done my run up. A lot of times I will get a clearence and they will ask me to depart VFR and pick up IFR a few miles west and with RFD approach. If it is hard IMC they are a bit more understanding.

But when the weather sucks, you may experience considerable delays on the ground as it seems that IFR traffic from the relievers has a lower priority than stuff coming into and out of ORD. I once sat on the ground with engines running for almost 40 minutes at PWK waiting for a takeoff clearance. For the first 30 minutes nobody launched including three jets who probably each burned more fuel sitting there than I did all the way back to Minneapolis.

The only other advice I have for you when flying IFR around Chicago is to stay flexible. My filed route is almost never what my clearence and multiple amended clearence will be.

Yeah, I could swear that if you filed A/B/C you'd get W/X/Y/Z, but if you filed W/X/Y/Z and took off five minutes later you'd get A/B C. I have found that the sooner you get out of ORD space and into center, RFD, or GIJ space the sooner you will be heading in the right direction. I suspect that if you knew the boundaries, and file a route that crossed the nearest one as directly as possible, you might actually get to fly that route. Of course even then you'd be given a different routing before takeoff, but it would be amended in the air to be what you filed by the first non-ORD controller. In any case, I wouldn't bother asking ORD for something more direct, but as soon as you get handed off to center or another TRACON ask and ye shall receive direct most of the time.