The 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500

Last Thursday, a fellow member of the flying club we belong to mentioned that the next day was known as “Fast Friday” at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This is the final full day of practice before the time trials that decide who will qualify to race in the 500 the following weekend and what their starting positions will be. Bob was looking for a fellow pilot to join him on the trip to spend the day at the track.

Well, I didn’t lose any time in scheduling my half a vacation day. Late the next morning, we launched out of Waukegan, Illinois and flew along the Chicago lakeshore South and then Southwest over the endless farms of Indiana. About an hour and a quarter later and we were cleared to land at Indianapolis International. After landing, I taxied to my favorite FBO at Indianapolis. Now, those of you who are frequent readers of this blog know that FBO means Fixed Base Operator. Airports generally have one or more of these. This is where you park your plane, get gas and supplies, and check the weather data before committing to flying. Inevitably, most of these are pretty plush with leather chairs and couches and big screen televisions. Many have sleeping rooms and rental cars and/or courtesy cars that they will loan in exchange for buying gas. Who pays for all of this; the big guys in their fancy Lear jets who buy gas by the thousands of dollars. Guys like me get the perks that they do for virtually nothing.

So, we walked into this FBO, Million Air, past 3 rows of parked Lear jets. Apparently others had the “Fast Friday” idea. As I was signing in, the counter person asked if we were going to the Motor Speedway. When we said yes, she asked if we wanted free parking passes. Do we? SURE! Then she asked if we’d like free passes to their executive suites. Wow, (trying to look cool, like this happens to me all the time) SURE!

So, we drove to the Speedway where a parking attendant directed us. When we got out, a guide showed us to the suite. Now, the suites at Indy are big air-conditioned rooms at the very top of the stands overlooking the track. This one, had a full bar and a long line of hot food in chafing dishes. Since I couldn’t take advantage of the bar, I made up for it with the food. Bob, the non-flying pilot, had no such constraint so he availed himself of both.

Before long, the bartender asked if we’d like pit passes and passes to Gasoline Alley, the garages. SURE, again!

Now, let me show you what this means. Look at this picture. Do you see where the people are standing between the fence and the white line? This is what it means to have a pit pass. You can walk the entire length from one racing teams pits to the next. VERY cool. …and, by the way, just CRAZY loud. Typically, you’ll hear a car SCREAMING from the far turn and, being this close, by the time you turn your head, he’s gone. You get to see the pit crew in action. The car races in…is jacked up…4 new tires, new tank of gas, new oil, clean the visor on the helmet and 7 seconds later, fishtailing out again. 7 freakin’ SECONDS!!

After looking at the cars…

…and the spare parts…

I realized that what keeps these cars on the track is the very same thing that keeps a plane in the air – money.

Walking along the pits, we peeked in and saw the telemetry that each team has. 

There is a television camera on a pole that tracks that team’s car around the track. Another screen shows the pit crew all of the instrument data that the driver sees and another shows data that the driver doesn’t see, tire pressures, oil pressures, fuel flow, etc. Amazing stuff.

We also saw the famous start/finish line which bares the bricks that the track was originally made of.

We got to see some famous people, including Mario Andretti (who doesn’t turn around when he sees a camera).

But the whole time, I was looking for someone else.  Finally, we reached the Go Daddy pits and there is the most famous, uh, er, “pony tail” to grace the Indy track.

Danica Patrick.

She doesn’t look too shabby from the front either.

Here she is in her office, ready to go to work.

All in all, what a great day. Now time to go home. We drove back to the FBO, checked the weather, preflighted and were off. Though the weather was beautiful at Indy, it was characteristically crappy back home. Along with criminally corrupt politicians, a bankrupt state and city and virtually no good Italian food (yeah, don’t fall for that “Chicago Style” pizza line, that’s not pizza), Chicago has the market cornered on crappy weather.

So, here’s what it looked like on the way out.

Those things you see poking out are the Sears tower and a few other buildings taller than 800 or so feet tall. We were flying between two cloud layers. One started at about 1200 feet MSL and ended about 1800 feet and the next layer, above us, started at about 3000 feet and went to maybe 5000.
 
On the way home, the weather was beautiful until we got to Gary, Indiana, just south of the Lake. By now, the weather had further deteriorated so that the lower cloud layer now ended 300 feet from the ground. Those of you who are pilots will note that VFR pilots (like me) need to have a minimum of a 1,000 foot ceiling in order to land or take off. Sooo, I spoke to Flight Watch on the radio and they reported that my airport, Waukegan, was reporting a 300 foot ceiling but there were several adjacent airports I could divert to. They asked my intentions and I replied that I would continue motoring up the lake (trying to avoid the buildings (just kidding) and see what Waukegan was like when I got there about a half hour later. Well, predictably (good living I guess) Waukegan was still reporting 300 foot ceilings. It did seem to me however that I could, through the clouds, make out the occasional glimpse of something that looked like an airport. So, I pulled a little known trick out of my quiver and asked Waukegan for a Special VFR clearance. They asked me to stand by while they got permission from Chicago Air Traffic Control. Now, SVFR is not special in the sense that you’re looking forward to it. On the contrary, it’s a way to land your plane if you believe you have the skills that it takes to land in conditions between 1 and 3 miles visibility (keep in mind, you’re travelling at about a mile every 25 seconds or so) and “clear of clouds” (meaning no minimum ceiling). Soon enough, Waukegan gave me my SVFR clearance and while maneuvering to where the airport should be and calming my nervous passenger (a newly minted pilot), we began to descend. I made my turn to final to line up with where the runway should be and lo and behold, it appeared out of the clouds. I reported “runway in sight” and got my clearance to land. Ever the show off, I made this one of my gentlest landings ever.

What a great and fun trip. Oh and, before I forget, did I mention that you can just never get enough of that “pony tail”?

Bratburger-itis

Well, all week long I and three of my co-workers (all fellow engineers) had been dreaming of Friday. You see, there’s a very common expression among pilots called “the Hundred Dollar Hamburger”. In fact, there’s even a book that been written with that title. Here’s what it means. What do pilots love more than anything else in the world? FLYING! Of course. So, if private pilots spent their time just flying around aimlessly in circles doing nothing but drilling holes in air, ordinary folks would think they were a little aberrant. So, what do they do? They plan trips to fly to lunch (or dinner). Pilots will fly, 75 or a hundred miles for a hamburger. Of course this burns up around a hundred dollars in avgas, hence the term, The Hundred Dollar Hamburger. The book, and the website of the same name, tell pilots where to fly to for great lunches or dinners.

Well, my buddies and I had planned and were dreaming all week long about just such an adventure. Anyone from the Midwest knows that Wisconsin is famous for a lot of things but health food isn’t one of them. I had discovered, on one of my first trips to Madison, the holy grail of burgers. Here it is:

What you’re looking at is a quarter pound beef burger, topped with a quarter pound bratburger, topped with onions sautéed in beer, topped with bacon, topped with cheddar cheese, all on a pretzel bun. OMG!

So, my buddies and I planned to fly to Madison, Wisconsin to the mecca of burgers, The Great Dane .

All week long, the weather was looking good. When I called for my flight weather briefing Friday morning, the briefer mentioned the potential for moderate turbulence (this is like driving down a bumpy road in a car) and potential for gusty winds. The velocity of the winds was less than what I had comfortably handled before so I wasn’t concerned. Yeah, it might be a little bumpy ride but… here is the image I had in my head.

Pilots have another expression that’s called “get-there-it is”. Simply, this means, don’t feel so pressured to get somewhere that you make a bad decision. Okay so perhaps we had a mild case of “bratburger-itis” but again, the predictions weren’t for anything worse than I knew I could comfortably handle.

Now, here’s an expression that my instructor drilled into me. “The weather isn’t what the briefer tells you it is, the weather is what you’re actually in when you’re in the air.” Sometimes the two are pretty different.

So, Friday dawned and my friends and I launched from Waukegan, Illinois into gusty winds. It turns out that the winds were right on our nose (headwinds) and were 55 knots (about 63 miles per hour) or so and the moderate turbulence was bordering on severe turbulence with frequent rocking of the wings and sudden changes in altitude. Unpleasant but, again, certainly not the worst weather I’ve flown in. (Not so sure I could say the same for my passengers.) Despite me constantly asking if everyone was okay and assuring them we could turn back if they wanted, they all urged me to press on (see definition of that insidious “bratburger-itis”). So, not only does 55 knot winds mean that you’re being bounced around but, now your groundspeed, instead of being 115 knots (132 mph) is around 60 knots (69 mph) so you get to enjoy the effect MUCH longer.

Finally, we got to Madison and I announced we had to begin our descent and that typically, the ride would get bumpier closer to the ground. One of the passengers plaintively said, “You have to descend?” I calmly explained that, unfortunately, the restaurant was on the ground.

Well, I made a good landing (no, really) and we taxied to the FBO. I picked up a courtesy car and we drove off to the Great Dane. Now, I vaguely recalled hearing something about public workers (teachers, firemen, etc.) demonstrating in the Capitol. As it turns out, that day, there were 25,000 people demonstrating. Lucky for us, by the time we got there, the demonstrations were largely over. Not so lucky for us, most of them went to the Great Dane for lunch (and copious amounts of beer). When the hostess asked if we’d mind waiting 45 minutes for a table, none of my cohorts piped up and said, “hell no, we’re flying back where we came from” so, we waited. All agreed that when we did get our lunch, it was every bit worth the experience. It was AWESOME. In fact, if you go to Webster’s, and look up awesome, you might just see the picture I pasted above.

Eventually, we moseyed back to the FBO for the ride back. I had already explained that with a tailwind, the ride should be smoother and definitely faster and to ensure smoother, I would fly higher. (Not wanting to decorate the inside of my 172XP with the remnants of 4 bratburgers, I was REALLY hoping I was right.)

Well, we departed Madison and I climbed to 5500 feet. The winds had not subsided so when we leveled into our cruise altitude, we were zipping along at 175 knots (over 200 mph!!!). This meant that our 1.5 hour ride to Madison would now be a half hour ride back.

Typically, when I’m returning from points West of Waukegan airport, I line up 10 miles to the West to make my initial call and then I begin my descent from there. So, this is what I did. Of course “typically” I’m not going 200 miles an hour. So, slightly over 2 minutes later, I’m now 3 miles from the airport and I’m at 4000 feet. Unfortunately, the airport is only at 732 feet (poor planning on someone’s part). I pulled the throttle back to idle and began a serious descent. So, here we are, descending at about 1500 feet per minute and slowing up to maneuver into the pattern. When I had lost most of the altitude (2 minutes later) I was lined up with the runway with my flaps down. Close to the ground, the wind shifted until I had full right rudder in to avoid being blown off the runway. A few seconds later, we descended a little more and, wind shear, the wind shifted 180 degrees and we now had full left rudder in to hold our alignment with the runway. Finally, as we kept descending, the wind lined up right down the runway and we settled into a perfect, soft landing. My passengers cheered and asked, “when are we gonna do this again”?

What’s better than that? This is the reason I fly.