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May 2, 2016 By Blue Ice Aviation

Knik Picnic Strip Fly-in

Experimental 16Bravo threw an invite out on facebook for a May 2nd fly-in at the Picnic Strip up the Knik. It was a good time. We enjoyed a short hike, a stiff breeze, and a bunch of bull-shootin of course. I really should have spent more time taking pictures of all these tail draggers stacked up, but I was too busy running my mouth to play wanna-be photographer. This past Saturday and Sunday was the Airmen’s Expo in Anchorage, and this coming weekend is the Valdez STOL competition. So we are in the middle of a big aviation week in Alaska. It’s nice to be easing back into the Alaskan summer with some aviation gatherings. BIA_1329

16Bravo landing at the Picnic Strip.

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The man himself … late to his own fly-in.

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My daughter strutting her stuff. She only had one glove because her sister was using the other one.

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A small portion of the line up.

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It’s hard to take a bad picture in Alaska. So I just keep clicking the shutter.

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Playing at the lake.

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Family picture. Notice the shared gloves. Good problem solving.

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We had to leave early, but it was a good turnout. Good job 16bravo, good idea, thank you.

April 11, 2016 By Blue Ice Aviation

Cold Bay, Unimak Island, Pavlof Volcano, and Good Times

I am thankful for a great trip to South western Alaska. I am also thankful to be back home with my family. Scroll down to see 50 photos from the past week.

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Heading for Cold Bay Alaska in less than ideal conditions. It’s 350 miles from King Salmon to Cold Bay. Most of the trip was awesome … but there always seems to be a little bit of this along the way.

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There are a lot of things I have never seen … I had never seen a rain-shower rainbow hovering off shore.

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On the beach on Unimak Island at the mouth of the Pogromni River. It’s a rare day when Pogromni Volcano (in the back ground) is visible.

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We call it the “Thunder Dome” but it’s an old building on Unimak Island at Cape Sarichef. The link will tell you a little bit about this area. This structure was a military building from the WWII era.

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This is Scotch Cap. This is the first Costal Alaskan lighthouse, build in 1903. Here is a bit of the history of Scotch Cap. There was massive tsunami in 1946 that killed 5 men here.

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In the foreground is the arch on Unimak Island. Across the water (Unimak Pass) is Ugamak Island.

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The south end of Unimak Island.

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Fisher Caldera on Unimak Island.

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Fisher Caldera. There are three lakes in the Fisher Caldera area, I don’t know their individual names.

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A poor picture of a beautiful wolf on Unimak.

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Happy to be on the ground in Cold Bay on a beautiful evening. Using generators and electric heaters to keep the engines warm overnight.

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This picture shows Pavlof volcano on April 7th 2016. Visit my post from April 1st here to see a photo of Pavlof Volcano blowing it’s top on March 27th 2016. I was fortunate enough to be down here working near Pavlof in June of 2014 when Pavlof erupted last time. You can see those pictures from 2 years ago here BIA_0947 BIA_0936 BIA_0757

This is flying around the base of Pavlof’s sister you can see the obvious line where fresh snow has covered a fairly thick layer of ash.

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Another picture showing the contrast of fresh snow and ash.

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Looking out across Pavlof bay.

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Ash blowing in the wind at the base of Pavlof volcano.

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A thin ash cloud kicked up by the prop wash off Mike’s cub on the Sapsuck River.

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Old N7580Y headed for friendly skies, with Mike Meekin.

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A few legends who would probably rather not be named on a silly flying blog :o)

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Departing Black Hills airstrip.

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Looking down into Surprise Lake in the Aniakchak crater.

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Surprise Lake, Aniakchak crater.

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Port Moller.

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Ernie departing Port Moller.

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Mike Meekin departing Port Moller.

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The gang.

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Topping off in Port Moller on a beautiful afternoon.

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Landing at Port Moller. BIA_0966

If you look close near the bottom of the picture you can see Mike’s cub over the water headed for Deer Island. This is the crossing at Port Moller looking North East.

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Leaving Deer Island for the mud flats during the Port Moller crossing. We landed down there once just for grins. It’s good solid ground. This crossing is totally comfortable, legal, and safe … if the weather is good.

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A beautiful morning in Cold Bay with Frosty Peak in the background.

BIA_0958 Refueling at Frosty’s in Cold Bay.

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This is Cold Bay from the air. Bering Sea on the horizon and the Pacific ocean on the right.

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Leaving Black Hills airstrip.

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I had to post a picture of my new seats. They were built by Sport Aircraft Seats and installed one day before this job. Fair price, beautiful workmanship, extremely comfortable, and ZERO DOWN TIME! Oh ya, and in the back ground is Becharof Lake and the mouth of the Kejulik River…it was blowing 55mph down there.

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That feeling you get when you reach the West end of Lake Iliamna and you realize the pass is going to be rough…

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…And then you get to the East end of Lake Clark, near Current Creek, and see the dust rolling off the sand bar. Then you suck down your seat belt and slouch in your seat a little to give your head more clearance to the ceiling, proceed with caution.

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The End. It was a great trip. New adventures with good friends.

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April 1, 2016 By Blue Ice Aviation

Volcanic Ash, Wind, and Weather

I’ve been in Western Alaska for nearly 3 weeks. I’ve posted below 22 photos taken over the past 5 days. We’ve had a lot of fun but we are definitely butting heads with the elements. We’ve had a tremendous amount of poor weather, but we’ve also gotten a lot of work done. We are currently on our 3rd weather day sitting in bunkhouse watching the wind blow. Yesterday I saw 201 mph on my gps, thats a stiff little breeze.

BIA_0584 We were dodging around in the precip and found this knob to refuel on in the Goodnews drainage.

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Sunshine, clouds, precip and ash.

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My buddy Neil, gotta watch out for this guy.

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Running the coast between Cape Newenham and Togiak.

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And then Pavlof Volcano Blew. I did not take this picture, but this is the eruption on March 27th. It sent an ash cloud 37000 feet high. We were 281 miles away in Dillingham and the ash plume nailed us.

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All that grey stuff on the snow is ash.

My buddy Nick waiting on weather in the hangar. We’ve done a lot of this over the past two weeks.

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Mike Meekin on final to land on a knob on the Kweethluk River.

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Lots of Caribou around here.

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Refueling on the Kweethluk.

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Mike Meekin on the role for departure off the Kweethluk knob.

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Old N7580Y with Mike Meekin at the controls. He has more than 20,000 hours in the serial number cub.

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Nick and I enjoying the view on a beautiful afternoon south of Bethel.

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The Tikchik Mountains enroute from Eek Lake to Dillingham.

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This is some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever had the pleasure of flying over … on a nice day. We did not get off the ground until 1230 pm and this was taken at 7pm on the nicest evening of flight we’ve had in weeks.

It got breezy yesterday. I was in the Cessna 185 and the above photo shows my ground speed. 201 mph downwind and 48 mph on the upwind.

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My ol’ girl strapped down on the ramp waiting to play when the weather clears.

March 14, 2016 By Blue Ice Aviation

Blue Ice Aviation Heads For Balmy Western Alaska

Here I sit in a bunkhouse in Dillingham. I think I got sunburned today. The weather this Spring is totally ridiculous. In past years I have seen several sub zero March mornings in Dillingham, but today it was 45 degrees! And so was yesterday, and the day before. The weather has been totally amazing … just not very Alaskan. I’m trying not to whine, because it really is nice flying weather, but it just does not seem right. I did not even turn the heater on in my Super Cub all day today because it was so hot! Anyways, enough about the weather, it’s nice to be back to work after a really slow winter. It’s been slow BECAUSE OF THE EXTREMELY WARM WEATHER! Alaska relies on nasty, foul, snowy, windy, cold, nasty, foul winters. We actually like em’. Well, after all my whining about the nice weather I guess we did have some weather last Thursday, forcing us to stay grounded, and I expect more to come in the future. In the mean time enjoy a couple of photos taken over the last several days in Western Alaska. BIA_0140

We had a weather day (The weather was good in Dillingham but not at our destination) so I went out stomping around town with my camera and tried to act like a photographer. These are many of the 32′ commercial drift boats in winter storage.

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While acting like a photographer I took a picture of a motor grader…

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And an aptly named boat.

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…Then we went flying. This was taken in the village of Goodnews Bay.

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The next day we landed on this gravel bar on the Goodnews River.

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Yesterday we landed at this little spot on the Kulukak and ate some crackers and cheese. We were thankful to have such a pretty spot to stretch our legs, I love this country.

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Attempting to run project logistics out of Goodnews Bay.

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Goodnews bay this morning 3-14-16.

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This afternoon I landed alongside the Goodnews river and saw this little red fox checking us out. You can also see an eagle’s nest in that tree.

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She was really brave, and came right up to the plane.

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After many hours of sitting in the plane we let energy out by daring each other to cross thin ice. I lost $5 bucks on this one when Andy made it across!

November 10, 2015 By Blue Ice Aviation

Southwestern Alaska, Two Weeks, 80 hours, 40 Pictures

I recently returned from a couple of weeks in southwest Alaska. Oddly, the job required both my cub and my Cessna 185 so I had both of them parked in Dillingham. During the two weeks we flew more than 80 hours and I only had 1 day off due to weather. I was really thankful for two weeks with flyable weather. We were supposed spend about 5 days in Dillingham, about 5 days in King Salmon, and a couple of nights in Cold Bay. The weather was questionable enough that we never made it all the way to Cold Bay. The furthest south I went was the Meshik River at Port Heiden. We canceled the remainder of the Cold Bay run because of the forecast. I was bummed to miss the flight, but I was thankful we chickened out when I checked the weather and it blowing 32 gusts 44 knots, 2 miles visibility, and 1000′ overcast in freezing rain. Call me a weeny, but that is not the sort of weather this little princess flies his birds in. As always the best part of the trip was the people I get to work with. SO thankful for the team I get to work with. Here are a few photos from the big trip.