Sat May 05, 2018 4:35 pm
#1609929
I was in the US for work and wanted to do some flying whilst there, so I decided to go for the Bush Pilot course at Alaska Floats & Skis. I wanted to go to Alaska anyway, and decided on the bush course as for the ones that result in a rating it makes more sense (to me) to do it in Europe where I can get the rating added to my EASA licence. Here's a bit of a write-up in case anyone else is interested in doing the same.
TL;DR: awesome fun, doing stuff in a plane that you can't (legally) do in the UK or probably Europe, that may ruin normal flying for you forevermore
The long version
Arriving in Anchorage on Thursday evening, I spent the night in Anchorage before travelling to Talkeetna, where AF&S are based, the next morning. With hindsight I wish I'd gone straight to Talkeetna so we could have got started earlier the next day.
Arrived AF&S on the Friday morning to find the place deserted as I was a bit earlier than planning, but a quick phone call later I was installed in the lodge and I had time for a quick nap as the jet lag had messed up my sleep and I was fairly tired
A couple of hours later people started turning up and the instructor did the initial briefing. Because they have a bunch of new instructors these also attending the briefing to get an idea of what it entails. He covered all the stuff that we were (hopefully) going to do over the next few days, including
- road landings (legal in Alaska and planes have right of way, although you do need to carry your driving licence!)
- canyon flying
- bush strip and gravel bar landings
- mountain flying
- briefing on the 'plane
- some stuff on risk/risk management
They emphasised that although there is a certain degree of increased risk with this kind of flying, the stuff that they do with clients needs to be repeatable day-in day-out and so although the clients wouldn't be familiar with the activities and sites chosen, the instructors are very familiar with the area and we wouldn't be doing any proper pioneering i.e. going in to completely untested strips/roads etc.
After this is was off to the airfield for the first flight. The plane is a PA-22 converted to tailwheel. It's the 150hp version (I think), and is running on 31in bush tyres. They have about 7 planes in total (again, IIRC) with different setups i.e. floats, skis and bush tyres.
Instructor checking out the plane
Note bear defence device for use in the event of emergency landings! The planes are also loaded up with survival gear for such an eventuality.
The flight started with some general handling to get used to the Pacer. I only have about 5 hours tailwheel time from about 6 months ago and that's all on a SuperCub, so this was interesting to say the least. The Pacer has quite a "wriggly" tail and you really do need to be in top of your rudder usage. We flew along the frozen river initially trying to following the channel as an exercise in improving turn coordination.
This (on QNH) is pretty much the highest we went over the whole flying experience except when up in the mountains. It was politely suggested that I drop down a bit as the instructor didn't like to be so far from the ground
Next was road landings. This entails finding a straight section of road, doing at least one pass to check for obstacles, then looping back, finding a gap in the traffic and getting down. As said above road landings are legal in Alaska and planes have right of way, although every effort was made to avoid disrupting traffic. The roads are actually designed with this in mind and so there are regular long straight sections, nothing down the centreline of the road, and there is a minimum distance between the roadside furniture at either side of the road. There are cables however, both along the road and crossing the road, so you need to have a good look for these on the first pass. The technique is then to fly along at tree-top hight until you get to a bit that is clear of cables, then dive down to about 5 foot above the ground, level off and continue the landing from there. The theory being that this gets you through the risky zone where the cables will be as quickly as possible in case you missed any whilst doing the recon.
We did 3 or 4 road landings in total - these were actually my first landings in the Pacer so it was interesting to say the least! Unfortunately the GoPro didn't record so I don't have any footage or photos of this
After this we headed back to Talkeetna via a river canyon. This involves flying along a fairly narrow twisty bit of river, between the walls of the gorge, and under some cables. The video will show what's like more effectively than I can convey with words
After this we headed back to Talkeetna for another squirrelly landing, although we did have to fly through a snowstorm on the way.
Unfortunately the next couple of days were a complete washout due to the weather, with mist, low cloud, rain and snow. It really wasn't flying weather so I spent a couple of days hanging out in Talkeetna, chatting with locals, working my way through the selection of local ales and doing what any good Alaskan does when the weather's not suitable for flying - shooting stuff and blowing stuff up
With Saturday and Sunday having been grounded I was really hoping for good weather on Monday morning as this was my contingency day but I was still going to need to leave by about 5pm. As it was we had broken/overcast at about 2000 feet, which was more then enough to fly but unfortunately not enough to get up in the mountains properly, so we started with a flight up the glacier. This was one of the strangest experiences I've had whilst flying - the glacier is boulder- and crevasse-strewn so there are plenty of visual references there, and you can see the surrounding hills as well, but I found I had absolutely no sense of scale so could not tell how high I was at all. The rocks below could be the size of pebbles or the size of houses, so without knowing it's very difficult to judge. It was somewhat disconcerting to be flying towards rising terrain and not being sure if it's 100' or 1000' below
Having survived the glacier we then headed south down the river to find some bush strips to practise on. One of the things we were supposed to cover in the course was landing on gravel bars, but because of the late thaw they were mostly still covered in snow and ice and there were few that the instructor felt comfortable landing on. We did a couple of practise approaches so simulate what we would have done, followed by low-level go-arounds
Next came some landings at unmade strips. Again the ice and snow made finding usable ones a challenge so we didn't go into some of the more challenging ones, but what we did do was good handling practise for the Pacer.
In the afternoon it had become rather more windy & bumpy. We flew up in to the hills to get some practise in visualising and experiencing what the wind does when it's flowing over, round and between hills which was very interesting. We then did another river run back down towards the town, but it had become bumpy enough that we'd both banged heads on the roof of the plane a couple of times, and coupled with a couple of times where the turbulence had us rolling to the right even with full left aileron applied, it was decided that we'd abandon the really low level stuff and head back to the airport and do a few circuits to take up the last 30 minutes of flying time.
After this it was time for a quick post-flight beer, then off to Anchorage to begin the epic journey back to the UK.
TL;DR: awesome fun, doing stuff in a plane that you can't (legally) do in the UK or probably Europe, that may ruin normal flying for you forevermore
The long version
Arriving in Anchorage on Thursday evening, I spent the night in Anchorage before travelling to Talkeetna, where AF&S are based, the next morning. With hindsight I wish I'd gone straight to Talkeetna so we could have got started earlier the next day.
Arrived AF&S on the Friday morning to find the place deserted as I was a bit earlier than planning, but a quick phone call later I was installed in the lodge and I had time for a quick nap as the jet lag had messed up my sleep and I was fairly tired
A couple of hours later people started turning up and the instructor did the initial briefing. Because they have a bunch of new instructors these also attending the briefing to get an idea of what it entails. He covered all the stuff that we were (hopefully) going to do over the next few days, including
- road landings (legal in Alaska and planes have right of way, although you do need to carry your driving licence!)
- canyon flying
- bush strip and gravel bar landings
- mountain flying
- briefing on the 'plane
- some stuff on risk/risk management
They emphasised that although there is a certain degree of increased risk with this kind of flying, the stuff that they do with clients needs to be repeatable day-in day-out and so although the clients wouldn't be familiar with the activities and sites chosen, the instructors are very familiar with the area and we wouldn't be doing any proper pioneering i.e. going in to completely untested strips/roads etc.
After this is was off to the airfield for the first flight. The plane is a PA-22 converted to tailwheel. It's the 150hp version (I think), and is running on 31in bush tyres. They have about 7 planes in total (again, IIRC) with different setups i.e. floats, skis and bush tyres.
Instructor checking out the plane
Note bear defence device for use in the event of emergency landings! The planes are also loaded up with survival gear for such an eventuality.
The flight started with some general handling to get used to the Pacer. I only have about 5 hours tailwheel time from about 6 months ago and that's all on a SuperCub, so this was interesting to say the least. The Pacer has quite a "wriggly" tail and you really do need to be in top of your rudder usage. We flew along the frozen river initially trying to following the channel as an exercise in improving turn coordination.
This (on QNH) is pretty much the highest we went over the whole flying experience except when up in the mountains. It was politely suggested that I drop down a bit as the instructor didn't like to be so far from the ground
Next was road landings. This entails finding a straight section of road, doing at least one pass to check for obstacles, then looping back, finding a gap in the traffic and getting down. As said above road landings are legal in Alaska and planes have right of way, although every effort was made to avoid disrupting traffic. The roads are actually designed with this in mind and so there are regular long straight sections, nothing down the centreline of the road, and there is a minimum distance between the roadside furniture at either side of the road. There are cables however, both along the road and crossing the road, so you need to have a good look for these on the first pass. The technique is then to fly along at tree-top hight until you get to a bit that is clear of cables, then dive down to about 5 foot above the ground, level off and continue the landing from there. The theory being that this gets you through the risky zone where the cables will be as quickly as possible in case you missed any whilst doing the recon.
We did 3 or 4 road landings in total - these were actually my first landings in the Pacer so it was interesting to say the least! Unfortunately the GoPro didn't record so I don't have any footage or photos of this
After this we headed back to Talkeetna via a river canyon. This involves flying along a fairly narrow twisty bit of river, between the walls of the gorge, and under some cables. The video will show what's like more effectively than I can convey with words
After this we headed back to Talkeetna for another squirrelly landing, although we did have to fly through a snowstorm on the way.
Unfortunately the next couple of days were a complete washout due to the weather, with mist, low cloud, rain and snow. It really wasn't flying weather so I spent a couple of days hanging out in Talkeetna, chatting with locals, working my way through the selection of local ales and doing what any good Alaskan does when the weather's not suitable for flying - shooting stuff and blowing stuff up
With Saturday and Sunday having been grounded I was really hoping for good weather on Monday morning as this was my contingency day but I was still going to need to leave by about 5pm. As it was we had broken/overcast at about 2000 feet, which was more then enough to fly but unfortunately not enough to get up in the mountains properly, so we started with a flight up the glacier. This was one of the strangest experiences I've had whilst flying - the glacier is boulder- and crevasse-strewn so there are plenty of visual references there, and you can see the surrounding hills as well, but I found I had absolutely no sense of scale so could not tell how high I was at all. The rocks below could be the size of pebbles or the size of houses, so without knowing it's very difficult to judge. It was somewhat disconcerting to be flying towards rising terrain and not being sure if it's 100' or 1000' below
Having survived the glacier we then headed south down the river to find some bush strips to practise on. One of the things we were supposed to cover in the course was landing on gravel bars, but because of the late thaw they were mostly still covered in snow and ice and there were few that the instructor felt comfortable landing on. We did a couple of practise approaches so simulate what we would have done, followed by low-level go-arounds
Next came some landings at unmade strips. Again the ice and snow made finding usable ones a challenge so we didn't go into some of the more challenging ones, but what we did do was good handling practise for the Pacer.
In the afternoon it had become rather more windy & bumpy. We flew up in to the hills to get some practise in visualising and experiencing what the wind does when it's flowing over, round and between hills which was very interesting. We then did another river run back down towards the town, but it had become bumpy enough that we'd both banged heads on the roof of the plane a couple of times, and coupled with a couple of times where the turbulence had us rolling to the right even with full left aileron applied, it was decided that we'd abandon the really low level stuff and head back to the airport and do a few circuits to take up the last 30 minutes of flying time.
After this it was time for a quick post-flight beer, then off to Anchorage to begin the epic journey back to the UK.
FLYER Club Member
