© C Blythe 2004

I was at the airport again by 8am. When Rich and Sharon turned up, I was just finishing  filing my flight plan. I reported to Rich that we were likely to be flying towards the only bad weather between Madison and the Pacific that morning. As we had the ability to download the weather radar pictures in flight, he responded that we would see how it went.

As I was flying first, it was my job to preflight the plane. Rich set about loading the luggage and Sharon was organising some cookies from Scott’s Pastry shop in the airport and collecting the packed lunches. Then it was a quick team pic before leaving.

Chris, Sharon, Rich, FR

10 am I started her up and away we went. We got airborne, got our IFR clearance, direct to Mason City, punched that into the Garmin 530 GPS and I climbed to our cruising altitude of 6000 ft. I went to trim out and blow me it just happened, straight and level at 6000, no fiddling about, no chasing the altimeter; this seemed so easy. After about 20 minutes of hand flying FR, Rich introduced me to the autopilot. This had both heading hold and altitude hold. Rich wanted to be sure I had trimmed out the aircraft properly before using the autopilot.

The first leg was straight forward, track the heading, follow the GPS and get the approach plate out. With 50 miles to go, I get the AWOS, and tell center what I want to do at Mason City. It was to be the VOR 35 approach, a miss and then a hold before moving on to Spencer where we planned to land, refuel both body and aircraft and swap pilots.

Mason City VOR 35

I was ready with my final preparations for the approach. The Mason City VOR was selected and both it and the DME identified. I was cleared for the approach and also cleared to 4000ft, which I did via the down switch on the autopilot. At 8 miles out I switched off the autopilot and began a 80 degree turn aiming to join the arc at 7 miles. I was established on 7.5 miles. As this went up to 7.6 I turned right 20 degrees and waited: 7.5,… 7.4,…. 7.3,… 7.2,… 7.1,…7.1…. another 20 degrees and we cruised round the arc. So as to not rush later on I dropped the gear and flaps, pushed the prop lever to fine and mixture rich and set up the “approach dirty “ configuration. Next it was the turn of the HSI. The inbound course was 356 degrees. Finally I set the watch to 2min and 3 seconds. In all of this I was fast approaching the final approach course and was still at 4000ft. Rich asked matter of factly when I was going to descend further. I almost said when cleared when I remembered that I was cleared for the approach and could follow the published profile.

“Now will do” I replied and pulled the throttle to 17”. I needed to lose 1000 ft and then another 700 before passing the VOR (FAF). This was when the workload began to increase exponentially. The arc was beginning to look ragged and as I was wondering what to do when I saw the DME getting nearer to 8 DME the needle on the HSI started to move so again I turned right and captured the approach course.  Thankfully the height was also coming right. We passed over the VOR and I started looking for 1700 ft my MDA. At 1700 ft I halted the descent and looked at the stopwatch to determine the MAP. I had forgot to start it! Anyway looking at the DME I saw it come up to 3.4 miles and then went into the missed approach. Rich decided that we should not hang about Mason City any longer than we needed to so we scrubbed the hold and headed north to give us some distance. We were cleared back up to 4000 ft and then headed northwest to Fairmont. It was decided that we would stop at Worthington.

As we flew around the eastern and northern edge of the weather sitting over Spencer it felt reassuring that we had the sort of kit on board that enabled us to see in almost real time what lay ahead. It was to come in really handy again.

Having prepared my plates for the day the night before, I did not have anything to hand for Worthington, Thankfully Sharon was watching the trip with her set of plates and she passed me the GPS / NDB plate for RWY 29.

I was hopeful that we could do the NDB approach; in the end we did the GPS approach with a straight in to Runway 29. This time I did start the clock and the approach went like it should. The only difficulty was the strong wind which was 25kts plus. Welcome to the Prairie lands of Minnesota.

We taxied to the terminal building where it seemed deserted. Someone stuck their head out of a door, asked if we wanted fuel. Rich said to fill her up and we proceeded inside to eat our packed lunch. The logbook says that this leg was 2 hours and 40 minutes, all but 10 minutes under the hood.

As I sat and ate the lunch, I pondered about what had just happened. I felt tired but pleased; the mission had been accomplished and I came to understand just how well I had done when Rich said “Nice job”. I was looking forward to Sharon having her turn to fly not least so that I could compare myself to her. I also needed a rest before flying the last leg of the day.

The airfield at Worthington is massive but rather empty a bit like the web site, http://www.ci.worthington.mn.us/Airport.htm with the wind blowing so hard it all felt a bit desolate. I was pinching myself a bit. On Monday I was at Heathrow and on Friday I was here in SW Minnesota in the middle of nowhere going further into nowhere. This was surreal.

During lunch, Sharon slipped off to file her flight plan and cancel the one we already had in the system from Spencer. We were now going from Worthington to Sioux Falls and then onto Pierre. Normally we would have stayed the night in Pierre but that weekend there was a dedication to Korean War veterans taking place which had booked up all the motels, so we were to continue on to Rapid City, South Dakota.

Worthington - bleak and windy on the Prairie - all the buildings as far as the eye can see across the plain have trees and bushes as windbreaks

Sioux Falls came up pretty quick for Sharon and she was quickly into the ILS RWY 21. Sharon is hot on the ILS but had a bit of trouble with the hold and trying to visualise hold entry. Anyway once we had done a couple of turns, Rich set us on the way to Pierre. This gave Sharon the chance to set the autopilot and take stock of the next task. We followed the airway V120. 7 DME out we joined the DME Arc briefly before joining the final approach course. The approach is a little offset from the runway but Sharon did it well and greased the landing. That was a couple of hours under her belt too.

At Pierre there was only time to visit the restroom before we were on our way again to Rapid City the gateway to the Black Hills of Dakota and particularly Mount Rushmore National Monument.

As we made our way towards Rapid City, Rich told the story of an airline crew which had recently landed at the nearby air force base instead of  Rapid City airport. The base is the home to the 28^th Bomb Wing flying B1 bombers so the airline crew and passengers had a bit of a difficult time with the military.

After checking with ASOS we plumped for the VOR RWY 14 approach.

Rich pointed out the air force base. Whilst there was a DME arc as part of the procedure he guessed we would be vectored onto the final approach course. Sure enough we were vectored and we joined the final approach course about 4 miles northwest of the Final approach fix.

As we passed over Ellsworth AFB Rich asked me briefly to look up and see Rapid City and then look down and see Ellsworth. There were 20 – 30 B1 bombers parked out of the apron. It was an amazing sight. It was also easy understand to why pilots could make a mistake. After all it has been known for aircraft to land at St. Athans instead of Cardiff. 

Anyway it was soon back to the job in hand. Almost midway along and abeam the Ellsworth runway was the 10 DME point for the FAF. I reduced the throttle to 10” manifold pressure called the tower and got clearance to land and slam dunked the plane down to MDA and waited for the MAP. It was a DME distance again but this time I did start the watch.

Before we reached either, Rich said “look up”. I did, it looked great and with little time to think I made the simplest of landings. “Nice job” said Rich, “Nice job” I thought too.

I looked round and Sharon was beaming one of her best smiles. It would be a fine dinner tonight. It had been a challenging day with a lot of flying. The log book said that we arrived in Rapid City almost eight hours after leaving Middleton. I had flown for four hours. That was more than I had ever flown in a day and of that 3 hours 40 was under the hood. To say I was tired was an understatement. My only worry was that there was 6 more days of this to go and then hopefully a checkride on the seventh day. Could I last the pace?

The hotel sent a minibus out to pick us up and take us the 7 miles into Rapid City. As we checked in, Rich handed out the work for the following day. He gave us our approaches and told us to plan and file our routes. We were to meet at 6.30 local for breakfast with an ETD the following morning of 8 am.

20 minutes after checking in we met up again to go to dinner. It had seemed ages since we ate our packed lunches. Over the years this trip has been taking place Rich and Field have managed to find the best restaurants at all the various night stops. Tonight was no exception.

The biggest surprise was the beer. This place managed to offer Newcastle Brown Ale on draft. Passing this up I followed Rich and went for a dark  cold beer called “Moose Drool”. I made the mistake of having another during dinner. Back at the hotel we had to resume our flight planning. Not a chance from me. I promptly fell asleep at the table with an approach plate in my hand. Thankfully after an hour I woke and went to bed properly remembering to arrange for a wake up call at 5 am. It was still only 11 pm local at this time. The only worry I had was the chance of a hangover in the morning.

Morey Field (C29) to Rapid City (KRAP)

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