Blue Ice Aviation

Exposing Real Alaska

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Photo of the Day — Landing on the Beach

If you look close you can see the client I was flying in to pick up. The beach can be a great landing option, but it hides some nasty traps that can do damage if not careful. The side slope can be a problem if you are not used to dancing on the rudder pedals. Mud, fine sand, and hidden ridges lend them selves nicely to sudden stoppage. Not to mention that the wind almost always blows perpendicular to your landing course. This beach landing was a no-brainer, but there are others that will give you a run for your money.

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Photos of the Day — Super Cub Carrier Landing

OK so today I am so sore from running down mountains chasing sheep that I can barely walk.  The biologist got 5 more lambs today so the project is well on its way.  If you are wondering what the heck I am talking about visit here.

Today was a pretty long day I started by flying 4 hours for Fish and Game, and then I moved a couple of bear hunters, a gold miner, a resident, and then 3 loads of freight to the glacier.  This photo shows only half the team that is currently headed out on a month long expedition.  I hauled more than 400 pounds of equipment and supplies onto this gravel pad for 15 climbers.  These are some tough guys and gals and they have a real challenge awaiting them as they lug their gear to the top of the Chugach range, and then all the way back out to the road system.  I will see them twice more during the month long expedition.

You can see my tracks on the gravel.  This strip is about 290 feet long unless you dive right and take your chances with the boulders.  I now those rocks don’t look like much, but when you are loaded up with freight, and braking hard, it’s not all that fun to hit watermelon sized rocks.  Even if it was fun, it’s doggone hard on equipment.  I consider this a high-stakes landing simply because of the aircraft-carrier characteristics.  The approach end is as vertical as the side viewed above.  You can’t land short and you really don’t want to go long.

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Photo of the Day — Hauling Climbers into the Chugach

We put a team of 12 people up on the glacier today. It was a gorgeous morning but got uglier as the day went on. I took this picture just before landing on my sixth trip. You can see how it looks like the people are just floating in a white backdrop. You can also see that we had them line the runway with snow shoes so that we had something to aim for. These conditions are totally reasonable as long as there are objects on the ground to aim for.

I flew several hours this morning on Bush wheels, then I swapped the plane onto wheel skis and made six trips to the glacier and then I swapped back to Bushwheels for tomorrows flights. It was a good day, but the morning may be marginal. It is pouring down rain and the wind is blowing, we will see if the morning brings fog …

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Photo of the Day — Bouncing the Fillings Out of Your Head

If you are thinking that looks pretty smooth you are wrong.  It rattled the fillings out of my head when I landed.  Mike has an awesome eye for land-able areas thanks to his 20,000 hours of Super Cub time.  He chose that line because it was the best thing going for this area, although our tires paid the price (Dec 15).  Many of those ribbons of ice are deep enough that if a tire dropped into it you could hit a wing or have a prop strike.  Glaciers are horribly deceiving and it takes time and experience to know what the airplane can handle.  I grew up running around on glaciers so I had a pretty good feel for the odd characteristics of glacial ice, plus I had the advantage of running around with Mike before testing out spots on my own.  You can teach yourself a lot of stuff but glacier flying is something that has some real idiosyncrasies that are better learned through instruction than the standard crash test dummy approach.  Like Mike always says, “If it looks like it might be a little rough … IT IS!  This is where the Alpha Omega suspension system, and 35” bush wheels are priceless.

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Photo of the Day — Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. — Oh, and by the way, “freaky skeleton thing” is a Cat of some sort.

I don’t remember where I was going, or what I was doing in this image, but when I look at this picture I can feel that knot in my gut.  I just know from looking at this picture that I was processing what I was seeing out the window and trying to make a decision.  More than likely I was headed up onto the glacier to drop off supplies. Conditions like this are tough because it’s not a no-brainer choice.  The light is flat, but not totally flat, and I can see the wind blowing.  I am sure I was trying to do some wheel-ski work and somebody was probably waiting for the food and fuel stacked high behind my seat.  It’s easier to turn-around and head for nachos and coffee-time early-on so that you don’t have to go through the difficult work of making a decision.  On the other hand, you never know until you go and look at the spot in the prevailing conditions.  Many times I have proceeded to a landing spot, even though things were looking very grim, and have been pleasantly surprised.  

When pilots fly instrument approaches in gnarly weather they have black and white, cut and dried rules that determine whether or not to proceed.  I don’t have that luxury.  Dozens of factors weigh into a marginal conditions landing: How bad is the lighting, how sloped is it, how much gas do I have, what’s the forecast,  have I landed here before, how am I loaded, how urgent is this operation, what’s the elevation, what is the snow like, am I flying out empty or full, do I have other options, am I pushing this, what are the consequences, how confident do I “feel”, is the runway marked, are there obstacles that could be hidden, how much time do I have,  how big are the crevasses in this area, do I trust the folks on the ground to pick a good spot, will I be able to take off into the wind, If I get stuck in the snow is the weather stable, am I 100% confident of success, on and on the questions can go.  

I ask my-self lots of questions when it gets nitty gritty because it is absolutely necessary that I am totally comfortable with the scenario.  Most of them are easily answered yes or no, but others provide the gray area.  I quickly become uncomfortable if I am making rash decisions so that I don’t have to do the hard work of processing all the factors.  I realize that comfort is a suggestive factor, but if you know yourself well, it is one heck of a tool.  If I am not comfortable with a situation I fly like a 12 year old driving a stick shift Volvo.  Ultimately, at the end of the day, this job is about making good decisions.  I’ve also learned to block issues motivated by the elusive green-back.  I just remind myself to balance the cost of my airplane and insurance against the possible revenue gain … i.e. “If I land successfully I make $100 If I land unsuccessfully I spend $75,000” … that’s what I call a NO-BRAINER !  No “ifs” allowed.

On another totally separate note, you will be happy to know that it was not an alien found on the glacier or even a mini t-rex, but rather a cat of some sort.  Probably a lynx.  Fish and Game emailed me back along with numerous other opinions and they all agreed it is a cat, and it is very old.  I thought an alien would be more news worthy.  For those of you that don’t have a freaking clue what I am talking about check out the posts from Feb 24th and Jan 8th.

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Photo of the Day — Downhill Landing Technique

My buddy Gar took this while I was coming in to land at the house. The house and hangar are on the side of Sheep Mt., so the whole piece of property is on a slope. There are two runways, the long one that heads downhill rather rapidly, and the short one that is more-or-less of flat. This photo shows me landing downhill on the long strip. I do this occasionally just to see if I can get stopped by the hangar. I have gotten within 15′, but never quite totally stopped. I am not the shortest landing pilot this side of the Mississippi. In fact I’m pretty bad at it. I watch those guys down at the Valdez STOL competition, and am thoroughly impressed … most of the time. Of course there is no financial or physical consequence for landing a few feet short so they can operate right on the edge of the gnats patootie. I don’t ever practice the short landings on a long flat surface with a light Super Cub. My Super Cub is generally loaded to the gills, and I am landing on some airstrip with consequences on both ends, so it’s more of a working mentality I guess, but those 100′ landings with no wind really impress me.

I have a technique for landing downhill that is a bit odd. I will occasionally dump my flaps while I am still 8 inches off the ground. I don’t know if other guys do this, but it’s really rather sub-conscious. Here is the reasoning; Whenever I am landing on a steep down hill it is tough to get the tires on the ground because the ground is falling away from my tires. I apply the airborne flap-dump most aggressively on downhill landings with gusty wind. Ultimately the only reason to do this is because of excessive airspeed, by dumping the flaps lift is lost, and I get on the ground so the braking can begin. The reason I am landing “too fast” is because it is gusty, and I need the added airspeed to maintain positive control. So really dumping the flaps is more of a relief-valve than a technique, but it comes in really handy sometimes. You can see in the second image that my flaps are up, and I am standing on the brakes because I am pulling hard on the stick.

We usually have to land down hill in the afternoons because the warm winds typically blow up valley after 10 am. Most of the strips we use are not land-able downhill without at least 10 mph of wind to hold us back. The most common “bad scenario” we run into is the 5 mph breeze blowing up valley. It’s too much wind to land with on my tail, when I am fully loaded, and it’s not enough to hold me back for a landing down hill. I should clarify, it’s not that I “can’t” land with the tail-wind, but simply it’s not worth risking the hard landing. This is a very common way to bend metal. Heavily loaded Super Cub, sinker on short final (that sinker is a gust of tailwind), loss of lift, smack the ground 15′ short of the strip, and bend a landing gear if you’re lucky. This job is not about being the best Cub-Jock to ever walk the face of the earth, it’s about being the best decision maker. This is a drum you will hear me beat often on this blog.

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Photo of the Day — Can you Spot the Super Cub Taking-Off ?

Can you see the Super Cub ? The Cub is taking off, but is still on the ground, and rather small. I had just gotten airborne, and winged around to get this picture of Mike taking off. On this particular morning the glacier was so slippery that it took one person dragging and pushing on each wing to maintain control while I turned around. At one point the plane started sliding sideways and my panties got all up in a bundle trying to stop it.

Taking-off of steep, slippery terrain is a potential hazard. You know how taildraggers respond during takeoff. A little rudder dance takes place during each take off and landing in order to maintain directional control. If the plane wanders during the rudder dance, a touch of opposite brake will immediately regain directional control. On mornings as slippery as the one pictured above I might-as-well forget that the plane even has brakes, because they are completely and utterly worthless. I don’t use brakes often on takeoff because of the obvious adverse effects, but it’s nice to know I have the option. Brakes are especially nice with the ever-present downhill, glacial tailwind, because for several seconds the only air flow over the rudder is the air caused by the prop wash. The third, and most adverse, effect to directional stability are the ribs of ice running diagonally across this particular glacier. Those ribs pull on my bush wheels like asphalt grooves on a motorcycle tire. It is controllable, but you better have your poop-in-a-group before you apply full power.  You can see similar glacial grooves at the end of this video.

During scenarios like this I generally accelerate rather slowly, sort of like when I was first learning to fly. I just ease the throttle forward so nothing happens too fast, because the consequences of loosing directional control would be … unfortunate. As you can see, the terrain below the strip is less than forgiving. With the momentum earned from a botched take off I could easily make it right out the bottom of this picture. I am not claiming that taking off of steep slippery slopes is difficult, I am just suggesting that your mental “potential hazard” alarm be blaring while you do it.  If you want to ride along on a glacial landing and go for a short hike, you can with Blue Ice Aviation for just $250 bucks.  Check out my website.  (All new website coming soon with detailed pricing).

If you still have not located the Super Cub, it is on the left side of the main ice-field, about half way up the glacier, and within a couple hundred feet of the medium sized snow-patch. Look for two black specks … those are the 35″ bushwheels :o) I love em’, so many uses.

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Photo of the Day — Invisible Air-strips

This is somewhere in the Talkeetna Mts. Do you see that ditch the left tire of the Super Cub is sitting in ? Notice the rocks behind the left tire. If the airplane was not sitting at an angle you would barely be able to tell if that was flat or if that was a bank. This airstrip washes out on a yearly basis and leaves us scrambling for a place to land. The rocks, grass, and mud, confuse the eyeballs so texture is very difficult to determine and the ground is doing it’s best to deceive. Just staring at the picture you may be thinking, “what is he talking about?” … Imagine flying over that at 45 mph trying determine the size of that bump, the rock next door, and everything else necessary to make an intelligent decision.

Those are 35″ tires, so that ditch is about 12″ deep. How would you like to hit that bump right after touchdown on a 450′ strip? You would bounce like a rabbit on steroids. The 35″ tires and rugged Super Cub landing gear can take the abuse, but it would tear the landing gear off of most aircraft. You are probably wondering if I smacked it when I landed….. The truth is I pushed the Super Cub into this position because I did not see the ditch. Mike was on final for landing and I was in a hurry to get out of his way. I just find it interesting how these little factors can all add up into a problem if you are not paying close attention.

The airstrip has not gotten washed out for the last 3 years because we finally found a pretty good spot for it. I have landed here many many times and I still have to do an occasional go-around because I cannot see the airstrip, even on short short final. I have learned to simply drive the cub to the general area of the strip, and then make necessary changes at the last second to hit the proper spot once my brain separates it out. Occasionally I miss the airstrip all-together and see it passing beneath the plane off to one side or the other, and I have to come back around to try again. Seeing an airstrip is a bigger part of the challenge than people realize. On most runways around the world that is not the primary concern, but in bush flying it is one of the many factors. The good thing about having invisible airstrips is that nobody else can see them either.

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