Today, Friday was the day. I finally did what I've been wanting to do for quite some time. I flew to 50 different airports and did 50 full stop landings. This beats my old record of 37 airports. I believe I beat the past record set last year.. That record was either 43 or 45 airports and it took two pilots and two different planes to complete it.
Friday morning I got a late start. I departed Schaumburg at 9:16. At 10:45 PM I made my final fuel stop at DuPage. I counted the airports. I was one short. Schaumburg was supposed to be the 50th. I didn't want to duplicate a landing so I called Tracon in Elgin, hoping someone I knew was working that late. Denise Gorlich who's husband is a controller at O'Hare, tried to get me into O'Hare. After waiting about 20 minutes (on a land line) she came back with bad news. No way would O'Hare let me do a stop-n-go. I would have to do a full stop taxi-back. That meant having to stop at Signature and paying a fee. Just taxiing to Signature probably would have taken an hour. It just wasn't worth it. I mentioned the bad news to the tower at DuPage and the controller offered to call Midway on a land line. He explained to Midway what I wanted to do and they told him to tell me to start heading over. Landing at Midway at night with all the commercial jet was one of the most exciting things I've ever done. I was a little nervous because they don't light up the runways like other airports. It took me a few seconds to figure out where the runway was. I landed 4L ,came to a full stop, and took off. As I was climbing out, a jumbo jet was departing 4R parallel to me. I've never been that close to any size jet. I didn't think the tower would allow me a full stop.
The total trip was 888 miles, 14 hours and 10 minutes, 10.9 hours actual flying time. I probably wouldn't do this again. The night portion of the trip was a little nerve racking. From Kankakee to 16 miles east of Kankkee, then north to Valparaiso, it was so dark I had to keep an eye on my instruments, plus my temp gauge was riding close to the red. (I could have had 54 airports if Sangar, Hobart, Meadow Creek and Frankfort had lights)
It's 3:40 AM as I'm writing and the room is rocking as if I just got off a cruise ship. It's been like this since I landed. I never thought I'd feel lousy after a flight until now. It's good to be back on earth.
Lee Hogan
Friday September 10, 2004
Gene at Northwest Flyers (NWF) replaced my alternator the other day after I reported a loud whine. While we were talking on the phone, I said "I am always optimistic when it comes to repairs that NWF makes", there was a slight pause from Gene, "I then asked should I be pessimistic?" Gene promptly chuckled WHETHER YOU'RE OPTIMISTIC OR PESSIMISTIC, JUST DON'T BE SURPRISED ! I guess that really says it all, doesn't it?
Speaking of repairs and mechanics, have you been by the NWF Hangar recently? Steve Bilek has been working on his Beechcraft. He claims to be to putting a little more time into getting it back into flying condition. If it keeps going the way it has, he should be able to fly it pretty soon! It won't be long!
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