The Ford Tri-Motor: A Centennial Flight - Leg #1 KMDW → KDSM

Back in early October I posted a blog titled: The Ford Tri-Motor: Part 2 - A Centennial Flight - Flight Plan.  The route for the full flight is displayed below.

The flight-plan I'll be discussing today is Leg  #1: KMDW - KDSM (Chicago to Des Moines). Click on the red airport codes to review the SkyVector data for each airport.  

This flight will be real-weather - daylight - VFR - full gross.  Because we are flying west, the planned altitude will be 4,500 feet.  

Additional Data - Ford Tri-Motor:

• STANDARD DATA: Seats: 15; Gross weight: 13,250 lbs.; Empty weight: 7,800 lbs.; Engines: three 425 hp Pratt & Whitneys.
• PERFORMANCE: Top speed: 140 mph; Cruise speed: 115 mph; Landing speed: 60 mph; Range: 478nm; Service ceiling: 18,500 ft. 

Note: If you don't own a Tri-Motor, do the flight in a Cessna 150/152 or the equivalent.  

Let's talk about navigation.  Remember this flight took place in the 1930's.  No GPS.  No ADF. No Victor Airways. No VOR-to-VOR.  

So how did those old-timers do it?

I went to Aeroxplorer and this is what they wrote: 

• "The earliest form of aerial navigation was known as 'pilotage', another term borrowed from aviation's maritime predecessors, where it meant steering a ship through harbors or other dangerous waterways. Pilotage, or contact flying, is navigation by reference to landmarks or checkpoints and requires visibility. 

• Naturally, pilotage is only possible in good visibility or darkness. Darkness was such a scourge to early aviation that it wasn't until the 1920s that airmail and passenger service dared attempt it, guided it first by bonfires set at regular intervals along a given course, then later by a system of beacon stations like the ones that stretched across the American continent both east-west and north-south. 

• With the invention of aircraft instrumentation came the ability to navigate by calculating one's position without seeing landmarks at all. Knowing one's airspeed and compass heading, for example, along with the speed and direction of any wind, allowed navigators to deduce their position based on the time, distance, and direction of flight. Thus, the term 'dead' reckoning, where 'dead' is derived from DEDuced.

• Pilotage and dead reckoning are still taught in basic flight training today. After all, an electronic instrument such as a GPS receiver could fail. Can pilots find their way with just a map and what they see out the plane's window? In this regard, a great debt is owed to an early airmail pilot named Elrey Jeppesen. When Jeppesen was hired by Boeing Air Transport in 1930, pilots still relied on automobile road maps or followed the railroad tracks, affectionately called 'flying the iron compass'." 

So, flying seat-of-the-pants, using dead reckoning and no cheating (computers or other electric devices) [E6B permitted] will be the order of the day.  I suggest however, also using IL & IA road maps.  They're great backups for this kind of flying.  Old-time pilots I met in the 1960's swore by them. 

KMDW to KDSM via KSQI - KIOW

The rest of the planning is up to you.  Have a good flight and most importantly, have fun!

Your thoughts?

Kenneth (Ken) Butterly, Founder