Cheechako
Well-Known Member
Here's something I got off the SuperCub.org forums:
http://www.supercub.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10230&sid=e977154d0b37c0c869583db1256562ef
http://www.supercub.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10230&sid=e977154d0b37c0c869583db1256562ef
-35F. 11am in November. Pitch black with only a little lightening in the sky to the south. Not dawn, but maybe all we'll get today. A cold wind blowing out of the east. 20 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Ice fog everywhere, crystallizing on all the metal objects outdoors, even radio antennas looking like squirrel's tails. Visibility sucks, again, still, as it has since the last 0 degree warm spell came through. At least its better than 40 below, our temperature cutoff point where everything in the aircraft, trusty as the old 207s (18,000 hrs on this one) still operating can be, subject to sudden and sometimes catastrophic breakage in temperatures where steel breaks like wood and spit freezes before it hits the ground.
Waited all morning for the weather to get up to the point where a guy can file a special to get out on the first village run, only to discover that things outside the zone were a heck of a lot worse (inevitably) than home base, which was ALREADY below VFR minimums. (Why do I do this? the BIG money of course. About $15 and hour if you figure duty time vs flight time.)
Climbing out, flaps, cowl flaps, power, mixture, in cruise at 500, both AGL and MSL, east from the Chukchi Sea village that has been my almost-home for over three years now... 500 feet because its an odd altitude for eastbound flight and keeps me in some form of ground contact. I can plainly see the ice of the inlet and then the tundra and an occasional 15 foot tall toothbrush-like black spruce tree straight down under the wing. Forward visibility is nil, mostly because there is nothing to see....ice and snow all white blotches now as the sun reaches its highest point for the day, but behind a cloud. When I flip on the landing light, the air is filled with ice crystals reflecting all around me like a self perpetuating halo.........on course now cruising in the slight light, seeing the Coleman lantern at Nelson's cabin, sliding past, where everyone just got up for the day and is sitting around the potbelly drinking tea, while I drone past eastbound on the gages.... The cabin temperature heat full on, I see my breath when I exhale toward the instrument post lights, my ballpoint pen, tip in my mouth, hanging from the corner of my lip like a long dead cigarette, because its the only place I can get at it where it won't freeze in the zero degree aircraft temperatures. Ruined everyone of my shirts before I learned that trick.
I sit in the warmest seat, because it's behind the engine. I wonder how bad it is three or four rows back, where we have the bypass mail netted down. We're in Eskimo country, and they're used to it and are always surprised that I am used to it too, and no one complains, because that's the way it is and always will be, even with global warming ( which wasn't discovered yet)
No way to climb for visibility, whiteout everywhere still, getting close now.... and the village agent MUST have lied to the dispatcher about current conditions on the river, (or the dispatcher fibbed to me to get me to go) and what the heck is wrong with the darn horizon anyway, it never tumbled like that before?
Let's see now: five out for landing, flaps 20, been flying the river bank at 400 agl now in light to moderate snow or ice crystals flurries for about ten minutes, running the right wingtip along the brushline and the agent STILL doesn't answer the company frequency, the lady in back just pounded on my seat back demanding to know if I could call her son to come pick her up and why were we going the long way?
There it is! First approach blown when the state snowplow was spotted parked sideways across the approach end of the runway, lights off, where it looks like they are trying to jump it with an old pickup truck, also without lights. ( nobody has lights the kids bust them right out. Windshields too) The other end of the runway only plowed one blade wide, lights covered, guys with shovels stepping off to the side when they hear me go overhead . They NEED that runway to stay open, plow or no plow.
Bank of ice fog/snow coming in as I touch down, the strip really only plowed about 16 feet wide, working hard to keep it straight. Luckily not enough sastrugi drifts to pull me into the lights beneath the deeper drifts on either side. Taxiing into the ramp-everybody out, 12 cases of triple mailer soda pop and 9 cases of Pampers and the mail bag unloaded. Agent shows up.... 5 strapping guys and a little old lady in tow on a hickory and rawhide basket sled pulled by his 4 wheeler. Quick weight and balance in my head....what do these guys weigh?
Weights on an old envelope.. nobody over 165 lbs, only two boxes for baggage....... ok close enough. Load'em up. Quick briefing.... guy in the coplilot seat biggest of the bunch, looks screwed up somehow, Is he drunk? That's all I need. Last week another drunk decided to help me land by dumping the flaps for me on short final......
Taxing to the turnaround, snow plow mounted grader in the middle still, shut it down, get out, notice that it only take two fingers to push down the tail of the old 207.....hip against the fucelage to spin it in place, then get in and fire it up.
Quick check-GUMP+T for trim- the stuff that'll kill 'ya.....BANG BANG Bang...what the hell??? Lady under the wing pounding on my side window, prop blast blowing her hair and parky hood in her face as she hollers. How did she get there without running into the prop? Quick shut down. Open the door....WHAT? PLEASE!!! DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!! YOU COULD GET KILLED!!!
"Oh. Hand-carry for my niece in Kotzebue...Taiku" and walks away.
Completely unsettled now, Start over. I close the door, look all around, Fire it up. Gyro tumbles.... put sticky pad on gyro. (Get me in trouble if I can see it. I HATE vertigo, and get it ALL the time!) Check EVERYTHING else. OK Launch......oh jeez, full forward trim... Guys in back HAD to have lied about their weights.....(and I put the 90 lb box of muktuk in the nose baggage too)..... flaps off as soon as possible. Still holding forward pressure on the wheel. a lot. Got about a mile vis, now turning over the river, got over 110 indicated, can quit with the wheel pressure. Getting solid pitch now, two finger solid anyway.
Set up for cruise, cowl flaps, power, mixture, westbound at 400 feet, mile to mile and a 1/4 vis. Call off on the frequency. "Scare'em Air 207 outa Podunk for Kotz 400 feet".... Stay along the river edge where the alder scrubs mostly straight down are the only visible things up, down, or sideways in the whiteout outrunning my visiility about every 10 or 20 seconds now or less in the white world outside, and it doesn't matter, because there's not much to see anyway, an occasional willow or alder branch sticking up, snow on the tundra, snow on the lakes, snow on the sea pack when I get there..... even snow on the hills to the north and back east if I get mixed up and screw up, and fly right into their gentle slopes as some have done not so long ago ......and died with their airplane....Not me.....yet... and I Pay Attention to the Job At Hand.
Guy in the right seat slumped over against the door frame, sound asleep. "Nice compliment", I think, even if he is possibly drunk, or maybe just afllicted by " sudden-stoppage-of-the-Honda", as my friend Scott used to say about village cowboys careening around town without helmets.
Thank god he fell asleep, didn't want to have to deal with him. The rest of the passengers are quiet now, used to entrusting their lives to a "Gussuck" pilot from the lower 48. ( Heck, I got a baby named after me on my first medivac after two weeks in the region. A bush pilot honor I never took lightly.... I bet he's a good looking guy too!)
Coming up on the inlet now 11 miles across...White out still and now absolutely NOTHING to see...Ease it up to 600...radio call to company, inbound with 5 pax..... Damn horizon. Feet on the floor, two fingers on the yoke: needle, ball, DG, ADF and airspeed. Compasses don't work up here.....just window dressing...... just keep the Adf needle centered and the airplane won't be turning.... four looooong minutes.. There! A faint skinny smear of brush establishing the horizon and the edge of the "lake" itself. Check the DME. To low for it to work before this.. How about that.... 2 miles vis!
FSS freq. Lotta chatter... Call in position "for landing..."
" below VFR minimums. What are your intentions?"
Gotta be TORCH (to myself), He KNOWS what I want......but we gotta play the game...
" Scare'em 207'd like a SPECIAL."
Scare'em Air 207, Do not enter the zone until cleared. Maintain VFR (gee thanks) You are number 5 for clearance, behind a DC-6 on short approach, a Company 206, a 402, a skybox, and another 207.
( Great- 4 of us out here boring circles in the sky between 3 and 500 feet trying to maintain ground contact and trying real hard not to run into each other)
" Roger Kotz"
"We'll be holding on the east shore on the 090". ..... the other two guys and the new girl (we all know each other on the radio from Barrow to Nome, and we are now scattered to all points of the compass, hopefully (we tersely establish radials on the channel) all of us hoping we can get in before:
1. We run out of gas ( not likely, cause we're all paranoid, and therefore maybe just a teeney-weeny bit over gross what with the extra hour I always pack above the 30 minute VFR reserve requirement.
2. Alaska Airlines shows up and as a much bigger threat, we all have to get AT LEAST the legal five miles out and be sure to Stay-outa-his-way, knowing that they are at LEAST as big an outlaw as most of us, and it is real disconcerting to see a 737 out your side window at 400 feet on a drag-it-in approach that MIGHT be just a smidge below their MDA.
or
3. The weather might get REALLY BAD where a guy might find himself somewhere on the Noatak or Kobuk River in a village full of curious and friendly tan folks eating Caribou stew for about three days. Not all bad. Sometimes there are Gussuck SCHOOLTEACHERS of the lonely feminine variety!
Find the radial, little bit lower, getting up in the soup there.... 400 ft now, vis deteriorating, flaps 10... trim, ease back power...little more, needing forward yoke pressure now, flaps up, keep up the airspeed.
Darn, the Lady in back must've upchucked on the first turn..... quiet, nervous chuckles from the rest of the passengers.... Lady embarrassed, trying to clean it up I guess from the sounds.
Concentrate now-good vis.. straight down. Anywhere else just a grey smudge, two got in ahead of me now, #3 cleared in.....radio call...." hey number four how'bout we make it a flight of two????
" Affirmative....where are you? I'm just east of the NDB."
" Hm,,,,So am I. I'll go to 450 why don't you go to 350?"
"Roger, willl do. I'm white and grey color"
"Great! I'm looking for a white and grey airplane turning within a half mile of me in a whiteout........ it's not easy.....Gotcha" he appears off my right wing going away from me in a turn. Keep my eye on him, turn HARD, VSI VSI VSI don't loose any altitude....... There, about a 1/4 mile in trail. Hey Torch is calling.
"....flight of 2 cleared into the zone...." that's nice....we were on our way anyway, Daammit, where is the radio station tower??? guy ran into that not long ago.... there.....the red blinking slides past about 50 feet above me about a 1/4 mile off my right wing.
Fly right over town, turn left above front street, power, flaps20, power again, push in on the yoke dammit not to fast,,,,,,the company hangar slide underneath as I set up, the 207 ahead touching down rolling out long so I can get in behind... Down, Cancel clearance, clear of the runway. Taxi to the company terminal. Call the company, Tell the charming youg high school dispatcher: "got a mechanical- Horizon" .
" Roger" 207. Charley's right here,......... says eat something. put in horizon, and then you got Ambler run".
All the passengers out.. Nice Old Lady smiles,,,,"Taiku, Nice flight", echoed by the drunk.
Engine cover on, run out the extension cord. Mechanic on his way out with the gyro...Not happy to be changing a gyro on the ramp at -35 F and a fresh 15 kn breeze blowing down from the east...maybe it'll warm up and snow...
Eat a cold sandwich, strong black airport coffee,
Ready to do it again.
Then do it again and again. 5 or 6 times a day, 80 or 85 days a quarter, 120 to 150 flight hours a month.
That's stress.
And I've got to add: My hat's off to those few who were there when I was, and those who are still there, doing the job.
