Editor's Note: Meig's Field, Chicago Illinois, is probably the best known small airport in the world. Why? Not for its unique location on Chicago's beautiful lakefront but because for almost ten years now it has served as the home airport for the most widely used computer flight simulator program in the world, Microsoft's Flight Simulator. Would-be pilots from New York to Tokyo have taken off and landed everything from a Piper Cub to a Boeing 727 at Chicago's Meigs Field.

Brrrring…Brrring, the phone rang early one morning at the beginning of August. I rolled over in bed and knocked the receiver off the nightstand at the side of my bed. When I blearily collected it from the floor I answered it "Hello?" "Hello, is this Vance Lorenzana?" "Yeah" "Hi, Mr. Lorenzana, this is Bill Gates." "Yeah, right" Click.

Brrrring…Brrrrinng…. Brrrrrrriiinnnng. The damn thing was never going to stop. "Hello?" "Mr. Lorenzana, this is really Bill Gates. From Microsoft. Please don't hang up." "Its six o'clock in the morning!" "Its three o'clock here in Redmond. I do my best browsing in the middle of the night when I'm not disturbed and I've just discovered your website, www.geocities.com/vanceboy." "Keep talking" "Well I must say I'm very impressed with your work with ultralights, for NASA and the U.S. Navy as detailed on your website. I never knew ultralight flying was so challenging and exciting!" Well by this time I was half awake and he seemed to be singing my tune so I decided to let him continue. "Anyway, after reading your stories I realized we have simulated everything from Cessnas to airliners to F16's in our Flight Simulator Series, but we have never done ultralight aircraft! That's where I need your help. Its obvious you're an expert on ultralight flying, so I want you to work with my engineers on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2001!"

Well it was obvious to me that he was legit and probably really was Bill Gates as he had instantly picked up on my expertise in ultralight flying. A high powered executive such as a Gates can usually sense a true expert from a pretender almost immediately.

He continued on that he wanted me and a group of personally selected ultralight pilot friends to fly their aircraft to Meigs field. There, his engineers would instrument the craft and collect performance data from them to model the computerized versions of the aircraft. He wanted a variety of different ultralight aircraft so users of Flight Simulator 2001 would have several aircraft to choose from. When I pointed out to him that Meigs Field was in controlled airspace and that ultralight aircraft had never been permitted there before, he assured me that he has many friends in government and would arrange a special FAA waiver allowing us to make the flight.

And so it was that a group of 20 ultralight pilots staged at the Lansing airport on Saturday September 16th for a flight to Chicago's Meig's field some 22 miles distant. Not only had I arraigned for a group of FVFC pilots flying every different ultralight we had, in attendance were a Rans S-12, Phantom, Beaver RX-550, Hyperlight, Kolb Flightstar, Team Minimax and three different kinds of flexwing trikes. But I also invited members of the Peotone Pegasus flying club who showed up with a Kolb twinstar, Team airbike and a Ridgerunner. As an added bonus I had invited pilots from The Greater Midwest Rotorcraft Club to fly in their gyrocopters for a complete mix of all types of ultralight aircraft. The only type of ultralight we didn't have were powered parachutes but it was decided that the sometimes tricky wind conditions off the lake would probably preclude them anyway.

At Lansing, we met with engineers from Microsoft who briefed us on what was expected of us. Photo 1 shows a Microsoft engineer briefing a group of FVFC pilots on the exact flight profile he needs us to fly. (The Microsoft man is the one in the suit with his back to the camera. Even though he is wearing a suit, you can still tell he's one of those computer programming "Guru's" by his ponytail!)

We departed Lansing in three flights depending on the cruising speed of the aircraft. The flight path took us over 11 miles of urban populated area and then an 11-mile flight over water up the shoreline to Meigs.

Photo 2 shows Ricky Anderson's phantom ultralight over Lake Michigan inbound to Chicago's Meigs Field. It was really exhilarating flying up the shoreline on a beautiful sunny day in September!

Photo 3 Final Approach to Meigs!

In photo 4 you can see the special instrumented pod that was attached to the upper leading edge of the wing of my Beaver RX-550 once we landed at Meigs. This pod transmitted rate of climb, airspeed, altitude and a wealth of other performance data to Microsoft engineers on the ground at Meigs so that they could form a baseline data set from which to evaluate the other ultralights.

Photo 5 shows Mick Pahnke standing alongside his Rans S-12 Airaile. Of interest is a special miniaturized digital video camera that Microsoft engineers mounted to the left wing strut on his plane. This camera is one of only three in the world and is worth over $50,000 dollars! It uses cutting edge CMOS technology instead of normal CCD like on most digital video cameras and has triple rastoring capability to render digital images for the simulator program that are more realistic than ever before thought possible! The camera was mounted on his plane for a "special flight" that he could only undertake from Meigs. (More on Mick's "special flight" at the end of this article).

Photo 6 shows Kevin, Donnie and myself standing in front of Donnies' Hyperlite at Meigs Field. Of special interest in this photograph is not so much ourselves but the absolutely HUGE yacht you can see anchored in the harbor just above Donnies right wingtip. This yacht was chartered by Bill Gates and housed him, his entourage and several project managers for the duration of the testing. No, we didn't get to go aboard and meet him, but I did see him several times standing out on the rear deck observing progress and conferring with his lieutenants via walkie talkie.

Photo 7 shows my wing over Chicago on one of the many data gathering flights I took out of Meigs that day. It was really beautiful flying over Chicago's lakefront! Something no other ultralight aircraft had ever done before!

While at Meigs, each pilot made five takeoffs and landings and flew in a specific 1-mile arc around the airport. I went first in my specially instrumented Beaver and had to fly a precise combination of airspeed, climb rate and altitude while engineers on the ground monitored the data that was being sent back from my plane. After that, each pilot took his turn flying roughly the same course while Microsoft technicians obtained their data with a laser rangefinder equipped with azimuth readout. Just about 2:00 o'clock as a few remaining pilots waited to take their turn, Mick took off with a young camera technician named Brad and disappeared off to the north without saying a word to anyone. He never did come back and we only saw him again when we got back to Clow Airport in Bolingbrook later that evening.

Finally about 2:30 everyone was finished and we all packed up for a delightful flight south along the shoreline home. Several of us stopped at the airport restaurant at Lansing and had a delicious meal while we swapped stories about our big adventure that day. The groups from the different airfields split up at Lansing and our group from Clow arrived home about 5:00 pm that evening. All in all a fantastic end to a fantastic day!

In an interesting side story, early on in the planning meetings for our flight, Microsoft programmers brought up the subject of modeling a crashing ultralight. After all, to make the program realistic, would-be pilots have to not only be able to fly an ultralight but also have it crash if they make a mistake. The power-off glide characteristics of a fixed wing ultralight are relatively well known and what isn't known can be easily extrapolated from the data we will collect. However, there is little data about the unique power-off autorotation characteristics of a gyrocopter.

The problem puzzled us all until Chuck Roberg; a Gyro pilot with the Greater Midwest Rotorcraft gyrocopter club in Lansing, Ill. stepped forward. An elaborate plan was devised to get us the data we needed. In the first part of the plan a plain white van was parked at a lakefront park about two miles south of Meigs Field. Inside the van were two expert aircraft mechanics. Chuck departed Meigs Field that day after the rest of the ultralights had already left. When he got over the park he purposely shut down his engine and declared an emergency engine out. When he safely landed in the park, the two mechanics sprang from the pre-positioned van and removed a perfectly functional cylinder from Chuck's Hirth engine and replaced it with a dummied-up "blown" cylinder. By the time the authorities arrived on the scene 10 minutes later, the required evidence was in place. Of course a technician masquerading as a "passenger" in Chuck's two seat Gyrocopter recorded the whole descent on video tape for later analysis by Microsoft programmers. Chuck deftly and coolly answered the questions from the authorities about his "emergency landing" and the ruse was complete. A flat bed trailer conveniently arrived on the scene a few minutes later and whisked the Gyrocopter away. It was an elaborate and expensive plan to be sure, but it was the only way to get the data Microsoft needed.

Later that evening (Saturday, Sept 16th) all of the Chicago news media breathlessly reported the story about the "emergency" Gyrocopter landing south of Meigs Field, much to the delight of the handful of us FVFC pilots "in the know". Photo 8 shows Chuck's gyrocopter with the "blown" cylinder in place. Knowledgeable engine experts would know that a real 2-stroke engine never fails in such a catastrophic manner and that usually there is not much to see from the outside when an engine seizes. Of course, that wouldn't have been very convincing to the news media that need "pictures at ten!" would it?

Editor's note: Now, about Mick's "Special Flight". The following information will not be in any of the manuals for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2001 so readers of this column are the first to hear of it. The software designers wanted to include a special "secret" (for obvious reasons) bonus flight in the program:

When you are playing the program and are in the pilot's ready room at Meigs, select Rans S-12 as your aircraft. Depart runway 36 and head northward toward Navy Pier. When you are over the Pier and in level flight, hit ALT, TAB and F7 simultaneously and you will be instantly transported to the mouth of the Chicago River for a low-level flight through the heart of Chicago. The action is much like the Death Star fight sequences in the movie "Star Wars". If the flight becomes too challenging, hit CONTROL and UP ARROW and you can raise all the drawbridges along the river for more clearance.

Of course… Mick didn't have that option.