Peter has put up a trip report that I did for a trip that I did from Lincoln, Nebraska to Badlands National Park, South Dakota in 2007.
Here is the link Badlands National Park
It was a very enjoyable trip, and really showed how useful having a PPL could be, by turing what would have been a long boring car drive into something much more enjoyable.
I've travelled a lot around the USA, but have to say that Nebraska & South Dakota really showed me a side of it that I'd never seen. It certainly helped to put a lot of what I read in the media into context!
Colm
Very nice trip report Dublinpilot. I enjoyed reading that.
I stopped at Rapid City on the way back from Chicago a year or two back. After a 4 hr flight in really bumpy conditions, the controller kept me in an Orbit E of the airport for about 10 min as though he was in Edinburgh or something and then shouted at me for turning off onto a cross runway instead of the parallel taxiway. Doubtless I deserved it.
I found the Mt Rushmore impressive, but not so much as some of the visitors. A family with a little girl of 5 or 6 came through the arch and the little girl stopped in her tracks, eyes and mouth wide open, just staring unbelievingly at the mountain. I reached for my camera but thought better of it, leaving the scene to the little girl's memories, which doubtless she will keep for a very long time.
Flying down to Cheyanne, Wyoming the next day I routed over the Custer battlefield and was struck by how different the terrain is to what i'd always imagined. Instead of the open plain in so many movies, it consists of countless steep valleys and narrow ridge lines, ideal territory to hide an army in those days before aviation.
(I shouldn't give the impression that US controllers are agressive. They're not - but everybody is entitled to a bad day).
Nice! Thank you!
Thanks guys :)
I stopped at Rapid City on the way back from Chicago a year or two back. After a 4 hr flight in really bumpy conditions, the controller kept me in an Orbit E of the airport for about 10 min as though he was in Edinburgh or something and then shouted at me for turning off onto a cross runway instead of the parallel taxiway. Doubtless I deserved it.
I wouldn't worry too much about it. But that did remind me of one of the most bizarre conversations that I ever had with ATC, which occured on this trip.
I had flight following from Denver Center, and was somewhere over South Dakota at (I think from memory) 8,500ft. I noticed that their transmissions were getting weaker and weaker and I began to get concerned that I might lose them shortly.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, as I'd just contact another ATC unit and ask them to let the first one know that I'd just lost contact with them, but out there, there was nobody else to contact. They had already lost me from radar, and I did't really want them to get overly concerned if we lost comms as well.
So I mentioned that their transmissions were getting weaker and asked what they would like me to do if I lost comms with them.
Their answer "You aren't allowed to lose comms when on flight following!"
I, as diplomatically as I could, explained that there wasn't a lot that I could do about the laws of physics (without using the phrase 'laws of physics').
So they told me that if I couldn't maintain comms that I should cancel flight following, to which I simply replied "Roger". (Message received and understood).
About ten minutes later I did lose comms, so I climed up another 700ft or so and I could receive them again, and said that I would now like to cancel flight following.
I was then told that I'd cancelled flight following 10 minutes earlier! That was news to me!
I wondered if a local pilot would have seen the conversation as bizarre as I did, or if it would make more sense to them with local knowledge. I spoke with a local instructor who also found it bizarre, but explained that as Denver is a fairly quiet sector they often put the trainees on there first, which can result in some strange things.
Perhaps you encountered one too ;)
Colm,
Thanks for a very nice report. Its reassuring as a naturalized US citizen to read how that were treated nicely by the FBO, if only to know that America does in fact still exist... Outside of urban nuttiness.
As for the ATC weirdness.... hey they are Federal employees, what do you want? :-))) We try to keep them chained up, scared and under control but it doesn't always work. At least they weren't unpleasant.
