Flying in the Comfort Zone

Over the past few months as I prepared for the move to Chicago and during the move I had to cut back my flight time. As a result when I would get out once every month and it would take me a while to feel perfectly comfortable in the plane again. It is not to say I ever felt unsafe because that is not the case but instead I felt like I needed to concentrate twice as hard and rely on checklists much more that when I was flying more regularly.

Today I had my first flight where I felt as comfortable again as I did when I was in the height of my training. It was one of those days where I really felt at one with the plane. I flew northwest to Lake in the Hills Airport. This is a nice little uncontrolled airport. I wonder if it was flying in an uncontrolled environment like I did for so much of my training that helped me feel so at home today. Lake in the Hills is a typical small field with a 50 foot wide runway and about 3000 feet in length. I loved it!

After completing three nice full stop landings I flew north to Campbell Airport in Gray Lake, IL. At Grays Lake I made a nice smooth landing only to have it be bounced around once on the ground by a runway that is in need of being flattened and resurfaced.

At that point it was time to return back to Palwaukee airport. As I prepared to turn my base leg for runway 34 I had a great view of O'Hare International Airport which was quite a site.

As usual it was wonderful spending a little over an hour in the air tonight and I look forward to my next flight.