Yesterday I flew to Springfield for the 35th annual ACEC awards on a private turboprop jet. The smallest plane I have been on before yesterday was an airline's commuter plane between Washington Dulles and Baltimore. That plane was probably twice as big as the plane I was on yesterday. Yesterday's plane was a Beechcraft King Air 200.

We were scheduled to leave DuPage Airport at 8 AM. I didn't want to be the one holding up the show so I got there at 7:20 AM and was the first one there. We didn't use the main terminal. The company that houses and maintains their plane has their own facility. There is a half-circle driveway that goes right up to their front door and under an awning. I was told to just pull up under their and leave my keys in the car. Someone came after a while and pulled it into their private lot.



The next guy to show up was the head of their GIS department. He is an older guy, mid 60's, got his degree in mathematics, but has been in surveying and mapping for his whole career. He started in GIS 15 years ago before it became the rock star career it is today. We were chatting for a while in the lobby, and then our pilot showed up. We were only waiting on one other guy. He forgot something and had to turn around and go back home to get it. Once he showed up we walked through the back of the building, through the spotless hanger, onto the tarmac and into our plane.





The three of us were getting settled in the plane while the pilot did a pre-flight external walk-around check. One of the guys made a comment about me sitting in the cockpit. I picked up on that right away and asked if they didn't think the pilot would mind.

When the pilot got on board I asked his permission and he said no problem. It was a tight fit climbing over all of the avionics but I managed.

I just sat there fascinated as he did all of his pre-flight checks. My main concern was that I didn't accidentally bump a switch that I shouldn't and that I didn't distract him from doing his job. I was just grateful to be up there taking it all in. The check list is all electronic. A list of items to check pops up on the screen and he just goes down the list and clicks a button to mark it off as he verifies that item.

He told me to put on the set of noise cancelling headphones that were hanging next to my seat. We could talk to each other in the noisy cockpit without the need to raise our voices. I could also hear all of the radio traffic through the headphones. He fired up the starboard engine and then the port. He monitored their gauges for a few minutes, then he looked at the ground support person to verify the chocks were pulled away from the wheels and that it was safe to start moving. He released the parking brakes and we started to roll from the force of the idling engines. We pulled a few hundred feet away from the hanger and then he stopped and set the parking brakes again so he could do some more engine checks. He powered one engine up to almost full power for a few seconds, backed it down, and then did the other one. When he did this the whole plane was shaking pretty good. If I had a full cup of coffee I probably would have spilled some. Cool!



Everything checked out good so he called the tower and asked to be put in the queue. They told him to roll to a particular runway and how to get there. As we got to where they told him to go they said there were two inbound planes and that he would have to wait for just a couple minutes.

Once they landed and cleared the tarmac the tower called and said he was clear to go. He released the brakes and rolled to the center of the runway. He did a few last minute checks and then pushed the throttles all the way forward until the torque meters were registering almost 100%. I think they were right around 97% or 98%. The whole plane felt like it was hopping around and shaking. At this point I don't think I could have been smiling any harder. He released the brakes and we instantly jumped forward.

I am used to flying commercial jet liners and to using almost the entire runway to build up speed before the back wheels lift off the ground. It seemed like we were airborne after using up only about a quarter of the runway and it took just a few seconds. It was everything I could do to keep the fit of giddy laughing I felt inside from coming out.

I expected once we were in the air for a few minutes and leveled out he would just sit there and monitor gauges and look out the window. Nope. He was almost nonstop busy. It seemed we would leave one tower's airspace and enter another tower's airspace every five minutes! When that happened the tower giving up control would tell him what radio frequency the new tower was expecting him on. I didn't ask but I assume the one tower also electronically tells the next tower to expect us. He acknowledged that transmission and thanked them for their help, and then dialed to the next tower's frequency, announced his call letters, said good morning and I think said his elevation and bearing. He would then pick up a little pad of paper and a pen. The tower would answer back with a string of confusing numbers that at first made no sense what so ever, but by the end of the day started to make sense. He would write all of that down on the pad and then acknowledge it back to the tower.

They would tell him if they wanted him to maintain his elevation or climb higher and which waypoint he should be heading to. Now this is the part I thought was really cool. Every 59 days they get a new data card to update the plane's computers with every waypoint in the United States. A waypoint does not represent a physical feature on the ground. It is just a latitude and longitude point with a five character name. When the pilot files his flight plan it is from waypoint to waypoint. Once he is in the plane he just types in the waypoint and the plane navigates to it. From DuPage Airport to Springfield there were four or five way points. He types them all in ahead of time. Once we get to a way point the plane automatically changes course to point to the next waypoint. Aeronautical charts have all of these waypoints mapped out. It is just like planning a trip on the road. You have to figure out which route you want to take. Maybe the most direct route would be right through O'Hare airspace, but you might not want to deal with the traffic so you plan your route with waypoints that take you around O'Hare.

The tower told him when he gets to BOMER (a waypoint) they want him to be at 5,000 feet. At the time we were at 13,000 feet. He programmed that information into the computer and it calculated at what rate of descent we needed to fall so when we reached BOMER we were exactly at 5,000 feet.

Actually he didn't want to start descending at that point yet, so he typed some things in telling the computer when we were a certain number of miles from BOMER to begin the descent. When we reached that point the plane slightly nosed down and we started our descent. The only thing he had to do was back the engines down so we didn't speed up and overshoot our target. The computer calculates the rate of descent and indicates that on a little display. If he is not falling fast enough the needle is above a little mark, and if we are falling too fast the needle is below the mark. He just adjusts the engine speed so the needle is within the mark.

Landing while in the cockpit totally blew me away. When you are in the back of a plane looking out of a side window you don't really get a feel for how the plane is moving in space. You don't realize that you might be coming in a little sideways. I could feel as we twisted one way and then back the other way. Crabbed a little bit to one side and then back. Very neat feeling. When we were 100 feet above the ground a computer voice counted down our height above ground. "100 feet. 90 feet." I think when we got to 50 feet it just said the numbers. "50. 40. 30. 20. 10" Bump.

Once we were on the ground the tower told him to do a 180 (their exact words) and what runway exit to go to.

We got to the airport, got off the plane, and a hotel courtesy van was waiting for us. One of the things the flight company takes care of for you is ground transportation.

We got to the hotel ballroom early, so we just milled around for a while. I made few phone calls and bought some expensive gum.

The photographer got there and set up his gear. Every company/client that won an award got their picture taken with their award plaque and three of the heads of the ACEC. I got to hold the plaque for our picture.

Pictures were from 10 AM until 11 AM. From 11 AM until noon they told us to take our seats but nothing happened. No food was served and no one said anything. At noon the food started coming out and speakers started speaking. After a while they would call out the award category, who the engineering firm and the client were, and who was accepting the award. I got to go up in front of a room full of civil engineers and accept an award.

The food was pretty good. We started out with a nice plate of fresh salad greens. The main course was a big sized chicken breast that was pan fried with a light flour coating and then covered with a little cream sauce seasoned with garlic, a nice piece of broccoli raab, and a small serving of mashed potatoes that tasted like they were seasoned with garlic and butter milk. For dessert we had a small bowl of chocolate mousse.

The second the luncheon was over we darted out to the hotel desk to request the courtesy van back to the hanger.

I asked the pilot if he needed a copilot for the trip back, and he said of course he did.

This was my view looking back from the cockpit.











This did not turn out very well, but it is worth showing for a few things. You can see the plane icon right in the middle of the circle. That is us. We have radar on so you can see some of the clouds showing up as green smudges. The yellow letters NEWTT are a waypoint that we are heading to. The yellow line is our project course. The circles with the three little nubs coming off of them are airports. This was taken right as we are leaving DuPage airport, symbolized by DPA.



There are four computers on the plane and they all talk to each other and compare their readings back and forth. If two computers don't agree with each other on a reading they will highlight to bring it to the pilot's attention. For example every hour each airport broadcasts the barometric pressure at the airport. The pilot has to manually dial this in for the altimeter to work correctly. He purposely dialed the wrong pressure in on one of the computers and showed me how it balked at him telling him one of them wasn't right. Cool!

Every inch of mercury on the barometer is equal to 1,000 feet of altitude, so if he has the barometric pressure dialed in wrong, 29 inches of mercury versus 28 inches of mercury, his altitude will be off by 1,000 feet.

This is the DuPage Airport tower when we returned.



When we got back to the hanger our cars were lined up with the engines running waiting for us. The guy standing to the left of our cars is holding a carpet for us to step onto.