Twisted Metal

The Bent, Folded, Spindled and Mutilated. Via Dry Roasted Blend

The improbable flight of the one winged F-15.

The Iditarod Airforce

The mushers and the dogs get all the press while the people that make the race possible toil passionately in the background. Be it the veterinarians, check point workers, or officials. For most of the villages the race becomes an annual celebration and the town turns out to make sure that every musher is fed and cared for along the trail.
Landing in Shaktoolik

One group that is vital to the success of the race is the Iditarod Airforce. Volunteer pilots that donate their time and planes to the race to ensure that the teams are supplied with everything from food to straw for every dog team at every checkpoint. The Pilots are required to have 1000 hrs of flight time, 500 hrs of Alaska time and 100 hrs of winter and ski operations.

Hauling dropped dogs.

This year they will move over 169,000 lbs of dog food, 1950 bales of straw, enough for each team to have fresh straw at every checkpoint, 14500 lathes to remote checkpoints for the trail breaks to mark the trail, distribute 1500 cases of Heet, fly 48 veterinarians that monitor the athletes, fly 101 race judges, the Director of Competition and logistics, photographers, insider personnel and dog handlers continually up the trail who support the race. It is a tremendous undertaking but is performed with the skill and precision of a military operation.

Hauling food and supplies

Rohn River landing strip.

How do you fuel a team of dogs from Anchorage to Nome?
Heet, lots and lots of Heet!!!


Pictures and statistics courtesy of : The Iditarod Airforce

Jet Man.

The Swiss Batman, Yves Rossy, has achieved mans quest to fly like a bird. Amazing!

Video Here

The Worlds Smallest Twin Engine Aircraft

The French designed Cri-Cri (cricket) has been a home built favorite in Europe for over 30 years. Some intrepid builders have even powered this ultralight, aerobatic, aircraft with twin jet engines.

More Oshkosh.

Unfortuntely we were not the winners of this new Aviat Husky.
The Murphy Moose. A homebuit kit. It looks like a scaled version of
the De Havilland Beaver

L-19 Birddog New Cessna 172..... And its new panel.
182 on amphibs.
Bush Hawk

Awestruck in Oshkosh

The crew and I arrived late Friday morning and were greeted at by a pair of A -10 Thunderbolts burning up the sky over Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh Wisconsin. Living up to its motto as the worlds greatest avaiation celebration we were overwhelmed with the size and scope of all there was to see and do.

We spent the day on the flightline, filled with every type of plane imaginable, while we watched flight demonstrations of aircrafts from homebuilts to the B1 Bomber

The day ended with the daily airshow.

Saturday was a full day of wandering the exibits, the new aircraft of every manufacturer, and admiring the myriad of lovingly restored vintage warbirds. We finished the day with a trip to the EAA museum at Pioneer Field.

What was most impressive, besides how well the show was organized, was the work of the air traffic controllers. From the ground it looked like controlled chaos as the tower managed the hundreds of arrivals and departures at the same time that flight demonstrations and helicopter tours filled the skys.

We are already making plans for next years show and plan to see all that we missed this year.

Flying Alaska: Part 2

I started flight training with an instructor named Mike. We flew in an old Cessna 152, a little 2 seater with a hundred-horse engine that when loaded with fuel and 2 adults struggled to get off the runway. The interior was threadbare from all the students that had flown her before me.
The first few lessons had gone very well. It was on my 5th flight that Mike took over the controls and decided that it was time to introduce me to stalls.
For the non-pilot there is often a misconception of what it means when they hear that a plane stalls, often assuming that the engine has died and the plane subsequently crash’s. A stall actually occurs when the pilot lets the angle of the wings get too steep and airflow stops flowing over the wings reducing lift. It is dangerous due to the fact it usually happens close to the ground, such as when your making the turn to final approach during landing or while circling low and slow over a moose during hunting season. The plane often goes into a spin and there is not enough altitude to recover.
Mike didn’t really take the time to prepare me for what he was about to do. Before I realized what was happening, he had pulled back on the throttle and pulled the nose up above the horizon. When the stall occurred, the little plane seemed to shake and buck as it struggled to continue flying.
My stomach moved up into my throat. "What was that?" I asked as he returned the control of the plane back to me. He walked me though the stall procedure, but I had a big problem with the whole concept of intentionally causing a plane to stop flying.
For the next week I pondered and read and performed the stall recovery in my head dozens of times. I was confident that I knew the procedure. I can do this.
On our next flight we started the lesson as usual with turns, climbs, and descents until finally it was time for stalls. Pull back the power. Get her slowed down. The airspeed is bleeding off. Ease in the flaps. Ease back on the elevators. Keep that nose up. Keep those wings level with the rudder. The stall warning horn is wailing in my ear. With our nose pointed at the sky I waited. Flawless!
At the instant that plane stalled and the nose began to drop I started the recovery procedure that I had perfected in my mind. I quickly pushed the yoke all the way forward, slammed the throttle all the way to the firewall, and what happened next would just about end my flying career before it even began. The nose of the plane pitched violently toward the ground. I let go of the controls as I came out of my seat, hitting my head on the ceiling despite the seat belt. All I could see out the front window was the ground racing up to meet us. Mike was furiously working to pull us out of the dive. When he finally returned us to straight and level flight he calmly turned the plane back toward the airport, and his only comment being "I’ve never had a student do that to me before". He was obviously as surprised as I was by the whole event. Instructors will tell you that students have invented a hundred ways to kill them and I had just added one more.

Flying Alaska: Part 1

I had always felt flying was just a necessary evil that one endured to get to some far off destination. I never dreamed that flying an airplane was something I was capable of doing. When Gray and I first met, he had been a pilot for several years. He and his father owned a single engine Cessna 172 based at Merrill Field in Anchorage, Alaska. Shortly after we met, Gray offered to take me for a sightseeing tour through the mountains surrounding the Anchorage area. Having never flown in a small plane before I was curious, but not really too enthused about going along for the ride. However, one can’t really say no to an invitation like that.
Gray and his dad eventually sold the 172 and had completely rebuilt a Cessna 180. This was the ultimate Alaska Bush plane. It had the room and the power to haul anything you needed, and the range to really go places. We would load up the plane with camping and fishing gear, or our mountain bikes and head out across Alaska, Gray, occasionally letting me take the controls. It was probably the time that he flew us up the Knik Glacier Gorge, 100 feet off the ground with a wall of blue ice off one wing tip and a sheer rock wall off the other, that I thought, this is too cool. I have got to do this!

I came across a video the other day of some intrepid flyer running the Knik gorge. See it here.
If you should go. Flight Advisory

Next time. Flight training.

OSHKOSH !

In three days, what is billed as the largest air celebration in the country begins in Oshkosh Wisconsin. Airventure 2006 is an annual flying / aircraft extravaganza hosted by the Experimental Aircraft Assosiation.
I have intended to go to Oshkosh every year since we returned to the lower 48 but other obligations seemed to get in the way. But not this year! By this time next week the crew and me will be on the way to a weekend of exhibits, air-shows, and thousands of airplanes of every description all gathered in one place.