Night Flight

A friend and I decided to plan for an evening spring flight sometime soon – and the weather aligned with our schedules for this to occur on Sunday evening. I proposed the idea for a night flight to him because I know the weather to be much calmer at night, especially the winds and the resultant turbulence associated with those winds. We planned for a take-off (TOT) time of around 19:00. The plan was to climb to 3,000 and fly a northerly heading toward BUU and then turn northeast toward RAC. It was my intention to perform a full stop landing at RAC to be able to count the entirety of the trip toward my XC time. In fact, I was able to log XC, PIC, and NIGHT time with this trip, which was really helpful to build hours toward the instrument rating.

After the landing and taxi-back at RAC, we immediately departed to the south – taking care of the operating Class D airspaces (UGN & ENW) that we had to cross in order to take the scenic downtown Chicago flight. As always, Chicago Approach was very hepful in dissemanting flight following for our Piper aircraft. We were able to avoid a helicopter flying at a similar altitude as us thanks to the GNS430 TCAS and FF. The views were breathtaking. The sky was clear, the winds were calm and the turbulence was non-existent. The only thing left was to enjoy the beautiful views that were before our eyes. The city is so vibrant and golden at night – so peaceful flying above it. You feel like your on Cloud 9.

As we were transitioning toward the south side of the city, Chicago Approach gave us the rather cool option of cutting through MDW Class C airspace with altitude “at our own discretion.” Boeing 737s inbound to ORD were just 1,300 feet above us, we were all communicating on the same frequency. When we were clear of the ORD and MDW airspace, I let Irfan take the controls for a while before bringing her back to DPA and performing two full stop landings. I love landing at night because of the beautiful ALS approach lights in combination with the calm weather.