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Meigs is a VFR airport, meaning Visual approaches. no ILS landings there.I'll give you 2 ways to navigate from O'hare to meigs. #1) all visual. Go to airport and put the plane on runway 27R at O'hare. after takeoff and the runway is
cleared make a right turn to heading 90. remember we flew inbounds on the 270 radial, the reciprocal (or opposite) of 270 is 90, 270 being west, 90 being east.. Aquick way to figure reciprocals is if the
number is 180 or higher, subtract 180 ie; 220 reciprocal =40, if the number is 179 or lower add 180 ie; 60 reciprocal =240. Since we're flying VFR we won't really be using our gauges except for the
altimeter, airspeed and compass.. Hold your heading of 90 till you cross the lakefront.. Since we know you took off from Meigs on runway 360, the reciprocal of that would be 180 so we' d be landing on runway
18, the other end of the runway from which we took off. When you get over the lake, make a right turn to heading 180.. There won't be any glide slope so your on your own with altititude.. A good way to
figure what altitude you should be is a 3:1 ratio. if you're 8 miles out from the runway, no more than 2400 feet, 6 miles 1800 feet, now keep in mind that Meigs elevation is about 650 ft so you want to add
650 to these figures..When you make your turn to heading 180, you're on a visual approach..No gauges to assist you.The majority of flying is actually done this way, at least in the single engine planes..Just
do the best you can and line up the runway and try and land.. #2) and this probably won't make sense to you right now but as you learn more it will.. same scenario as #1.. runway 27R at Ohare.look in your
book at the Chicago map. south of Meigs is the Chicago Heights VOR (CGT) it has a frequency of 114.2 set NAV2 to 114.20, Now this will still be a visual approach but with some nav aids. After takeoff
we're going to make a left turn to heading 143. if you look in your book, you'll see that The CGT VOR is appx 143 degrees southeast of Ohare, you can adjust the top # on OBI gauge 2 till the needle centers,
[FS98 users can turn the OBS knob till the compass needles center, but keep in mind you will have to be at least 2000 feet up for the VOR to be received] If you like you can fly that heading
instead towards the VOR..It will be close to 143...Since we really don't want to fly all the way to the VOR, because that would take us farther south than we should be we will intercept a radial from the
VOR.. look at where Meigs is on the map, if you go directly south you'll see it intercepts the CGT VOR circle somewhere around the 350 radial. So even though you'll be flying on a heading of 143 towards the
VOR, we want to intecept the 350 radial being sent out from the VOR, so we want to set the top # in OBI gauge #2 to 350.. before you depart. [FS98 users must climb to around 2000 feet to receive
signal from the VOR]
You'll continue flying the 143 heading till you see the needle on OBI gauge #2 start to center. This means you are intercepting the 350 radial from the CGT VOR. When that happens make a left turn to heading 360..This should then put you in a pretty good line with the runway 36 at meigs, the same runway you left from. Again, the approach is visual so no glideslope or localizer, just line up with the runway and follow the 3 to 1 ratio for your own glideslope and try to land on the runway. You'll find it difficult at first.. but After a while it's really simple.
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