Went flying yesterday

My uncle's a pilot and offered to take me up 'n around the area for an hour or so yesterday. Of course I brought my camera!

This is the Fox River in downtown St. Charles, IL. You can see the Baker Hotel on the left side of the river (big building with red roof), and the municipal building, with it's Art Deco clock tower, on the right side. The bridge up near the top is an old C&NW rail bridge. You can also see the famous Blue Goose grocery store and the remnants of the old Cord Piano Company factory.

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This is one of the dormitories at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. I lived in this building my freshman (and only!) year at NIU.

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I have others, but a lot of them were out of focus or blurred because we'd start bouncing around on an updraft. I'll try and get some of the better ones fixed up and posted if anyone's interested!

-Wm.

What was the bird???

Nice!

It is really fun to shoot pics from a plane, especially if you know the places (and people) you're taking pictures of.
I have some video of friends waving up at me from about 300 ft.. Also, a pretty good video of a flock of Canada Geese flying along side me. A friend of mine has some good videos of my plane in flight taken from his (similar) Aeronca Defender.
My old Airknocker is laid up right now. I'm thinking that I may have to retire just to have enough time to work on the plane and get back to flying.

Here are pictures of where I live in NJ (all from my Aeronca 65T):

https://npmccabe.tripod.com/aeropics.htm

And here are pictures I took quite a while ago of the place I work (I took these from my friend's J3 Cub):

https://www.angelfire.com/nj/ccmdotedu/aerophot12.html

https://www.angelfire.com/nj/ccmdotedu/aerophot34.html

https://www.angelfire.com/nj/ccmdotedu/aerophot56.html

I did some aerial photography once...


And some fishing/shrimp boats last year for fun,

Man, if you tried to repeat that shot of the Capital today, you would be met by some unhappy pilots in their F16s and escorted to a little meeting with the FBI, FAA, and other nice men in suits. That is really cool, and it will be a long time before you will get a chance to repeat it.

We were in a Piper Archer, and don't think we were much above 3500 feet. We went out past Elburn, round DeKalb, down to Joliet (we were trying to find the racetrack in Joliet so's I could photograph it. Uncle sez we'll just have to go back up and find it!). Anyway, here's a few more.

This is the covered racetrack in Elburn. It's actually a waypoint for area pilots.
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This is us on approach to DuPage Airport. Note the MetLife blimp moored off to the right.
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And finally, the Chicago Air Show is going on this weekend, so all sorts of neat planes have been flying round the area (a B-1B flew over earlier this morning, and I've seen the Angels on flyout repeatedly). Anyway, the Red Baron team is based out of DuPage. As we (which is to say my Uncle) were going through the pre-flight checks, they rolled out and took off. I was probably a thousand feet out when I took this.
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-William

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Man, if you tried to repeat that shot of the Capital today, you would be met by some unhappy pilots in their F16s and escorted to a little meeting with the FBI, FAA, and other nice men in suits. That is really cool, and it will be a long time before you will get a chance to repeat it.

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No... even when I did that they would have probably shot at us. It took a lot of time to get the necessary security clearances and jump through the right hoops, there were a number of government agencies that were involved and were watching us. We were originally told to land at the White House to be "inspected" by the Secret Service, but they scrubbed that because the President was in-residence.

After 40 hours of lessons, the TSA finally made it just about impossible for non-citizens to attend flight schools, I understand why and all that's fine, was an expensive adventure; never thought owning an LBC would be more expensive!

And just what is a covered race track for. Ahh, raceing I'm sure, but what?

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And just what is a covered race track for. Ahh, raceing I'm sure, but what?

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I believe it's a horse racing facility. I didn't know it even existed till I flew over it. I may drive out and look around.

-Wm.