As some quick background, my father is a duck hunter. He belongs to a duck club in north-western Illinois. It is located just south of Bath, IL. My dad asked my last week if I wanted to fly over with him on friday and fly back on Saturday. He would be willing to foot 50% of the bill (no more according to FAR Part 61.113). I looked up some possible landing sites and found only one. Havana Regional. Luckily it was only about 5 miles from the duck club. Interestingly it is a grass strip. I don't know about you guys, but I've not landing on a lot of grass strips at night. This strip did have runway edge lights, but no beacon. The lights are on all the time from dusk to dawn, so it shouldn't be too hard to find with the GPS. I planned the flight knowing that I would have to stop for fuel some where.
Here is what I came up with:
KHFY - KAAA - 9I0
Looked good to me. Nice and direct. AAA had 24/7 self serve.
On Friday morning my dad asked where we would be eating dinner. Well, I didn't see many options at AAA, so we decided to make a stop at Coles County (
KMTO). They have a restaurant on the field. I've been to MTO before, the first time was on my dual XC and then again on my
solo XC. I altered the route and planned the flight. We would be able to fuel up at MTO as well.
I picked up my dad at 5:00pm on Friday and we headed down to KHFY. While my normal drive is about 30 minutes, it took us almost an hour due to traffic. That was a bummer, but I mood wouldn't be spoiled, we were going flying!
I did my preflight, briefed my dad and we taxied off. We departed from KHFY, headed out under IND's Charlie airspace and climbed up to 2500'. We were going to stay low because there was a pretty mighty headwind at high altitudes (30-40kts). We stayed down low because it was only about 15-20kts in the face.
We landed at MTO after 1.4 hours on the HOBBS. One of the runways was closed but the one we needed was in great shape. Unfortunately the FBO had closed 30 minutes prior. I should have called first, shame on me. My dad and I went ahead and ate anyway and planned a stop in Decatur. We would be able to go inside the FBO and get full service fuel. I usually don't do that, but it was getting cold out and I could have used a free cup of coffee. At KDEC we chatted with the line guy about landing in Havana. He had no personal experience, but he knows other people have planned it at night. We paid for fuel, said our good byes and took off. KDEC is a controlled field, so we got to do a straight in arrival and straight our arrival, barely any lost time on the Hobbs.
We climbed to 4500' in order to have a better margin of safety at night. The sky was extremely clear and I swear I could see the lights of St. Louis over 100 miles away. When I got about 10 miles out from Havana and my dad and I stopped the field. I made my radio calls, did a low pass at about 150' in order to check out the runway before landing. The turf was in fantastic shape. I stopped the plane in about 800' and made the turn off towards parking easily.
I slept wonderfully that night. My dad got up early to hunt and I woke up to make myself sausage patties and eggs. We departed Illinois around 11:00am and were back home in 2.2 hours. Before heading back we took some really cool photos of the club. Those are all included below. Check out the one at the end of KIND. We received flight following again and got to fly over the touchdown point of runways 5L and 5R. I love FF in Indianapolis.
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| Transient Parking Ramp |
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| One of the Three Buildings on the Field |
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| Building Two |
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| Me, Walking Toward the Plane |
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| Turning Around at the End of the Runway |
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| The River |
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| Bath, IL |
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| Can you spot the duck blinds? If you can, they aren't very good blinds! |
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| Over 2R2 |
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| KIND in the distance |
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| Runway 5L |
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| 5L and 5R with the terminal in the middle |
Thanks to my dad for all the cool photos!
