14 Days to Alaska: Two Brothers in a 57-Year-Old Airplane Fly the Ultimate Cross Country Flight Training Adventure

Ride

FALLING FROM THE SKY

In which I introduce the story at its most dramatic moment

As we reached 800 feet above the surface of the earth over Heath, Ohio, the engine quit. Luckily we were flying at 80 mph at the time, and the air hitting the propeller caused it to windmill in front of the airplane as the nose pitched down and my brother, the flight instructor and expert pilot, took control.

My airplane.

Your airplane.

This had seemed like such a good idea. I wanted to learn to fly, and I wanted an airplane. I had bought the airplane and he was helping me learn to fly in it, then we were going to bring it back to Alaska together. But now, that plan was changing in moments, reduced to a simple mission of how to land without destroying both ourselves and the admittedly meager investment I had made in this ancient airframe.

I was assigned to change the fuel selector, in case the problem was related to the fuel tank we were operating on, while Quinn made sure we kept the airplane in the air as long as possible while he started looking for a place to make a safe emergency landing.

Below us were wooded areas and some congested streets. No good landing option was immediately apparent…

PRESSING AHEAD INTO SUBOPTIMAL CONDITIONS

In which I relate another of the pivotal moments of the adventure, when weather and time conspired against us, or at least made us sweat a bit

As we flew up the valley toward Haines Junction, the clouds got lower and lower. After having been stuck in Whitehorse by low ceilings and ice fog, we were running out of days. At the very least, we hoped to get Quinn to Anchorage so he could make his flight. It had crossed my mind a few times that this might involve leaving the airplane somewhere highly inconvenient. Like Canada. But we had what had appeared to be a window of opportunity to get into Alaska based on the weather reports along the route, so we had taken off and headed toward Northway. Now, however, we were dropping down, flying along at 1,000 feet above the ground, peering through the haze ahead at distances that looked deceptively small, but in reality might have been as much as five miles. But to my unaccustomed eye it looked like really poor visibility. And regardless of what the numbers were, I had been watching it get poorer and poorer.

Thinking about the clouds and visibility made me tense. And every time I got tense, I went up… which made the problem worse. As I climbed, I could see less, and Quinn would lean on the yoke over on the co-pilot side and tell me, yet again, to hold my altitude.

Okay…

When you climb up it makes it worse, not better.

Right, but I’m not climbing because I want to.

Well, don’t.

As we passed Haines Junction, Quinn illustrated the actual visibility to me, which was indeed well over three miles, but then as we turned north and followed the highway toward Silver City, the visibility continued to deteriorate. I was looking at the map, making sure we had room to turn around if need be. And Quinn was doing the same thing…

But perhaps we’d best start at the beginning, or even a little before…

PROLOGUE

In which I try to rationalize the craziness that causes a 38 year old male, successful but not wealthy, to decide to learn to fly an airplane

Major life changes come in all shapes and sizes. Some people buy fancy cars, others abandon their families, and many change occupations or move to a new location. It’s usually a good idea to limit the number of major life changes that you encounter at any one juncture. For example, when you are expecting your first child, it isn’t the best time to move, or to start a new job. Being a logical, rational person, when my wife Becky was expecting our first child and we were living in Seattle, I applied for a job in King Salmon, Alaska.

To complicate matters, I was hired, and we moved during the ninth month. That was complicated. So much for listening to the conventional wisdom. King Salmon was an adjustment for us, but we stuck it out and grew to enjoy it. Almost from the first winter we were there, some of our family members asked whether we were going to buy an airplane. Actually… the thought had never crossed our minds.

It had apparently crossed my brother Quinn’s mind though. After getting a degree in electrical engineering and looking around for jobs, he realized that the job he wanted wasn’t an engineering job. It was a flying job. So he went back to school, this time flight school, and worked his way through the various levels of flight training, then started moving into jobs of increasing seniority until now he is living in Columbus, Ohio, and is the chief pilot for a freight company that flies Lear Jets.

Through the years, I occasionally considered learning to fly, but my interest was more on being dropped off in the wilderness than on turning around and flying home. This meshed well with my work as a scientist for some of the most spectacular national parklands in the country, situated in remote Alaska.

But as the years passed, I began to be less and less satisfied to desert my children in order to spend time in the wilderness. And as I moved into more senior jobs, much of the fieldwork was being done by other people anyway. And where we live, pilots usually sleep at home. And, and, and. Hmm… let’s see…

Although I enjoy my work, and yes I still love fieldwork, I also enjoy the straightforward logistical side of the operation. As one of the boat operators for the park, I am occasionally responsible, as the boat operator, for getting people from one place to another. And I really enjoy doing that. I could get people and gear from one place to another for a living if I was a pilot, and I’d probably enjoy it. Hmmm.…

There are no airplanes for rent in King Salmon. In fact, every person I know here who has learned to fly has done it by purchasing an airplane to learn in. In the summer of 2007, I made a comment to Becky that I was interested in buying an airplane and learning to fly. This is the part of the story where her job is to tell me that it isn’t practical and we need to wait or save money or do something more logical.

But her response? That would be fun…

Excuse me? Like many conversations where we throw our thoughts out in order to have them kicked around and exposed for the foolishness they are, I was expecting to have this one quickly deconstructed into utter nonsense. Her response shocked me. After some discussion, it turned out that she also thought it might be good for me to look at other career opportunities. So there we were, apparently sharing a mid-life crisis in which we both thought I might be better off preparing for another occupation. But there were contributing factors…

King Salmon can only be reached by air. There are no roads connecting King Salmon to anything more than 15 miles away, so while we have vehicles for local use, we can’t actually go anywhere. No weekend road trips, or for that matter, road trips of any sort. In theory, with a really large boat (for safety) and an unearthly amount of fuel, you could get somewhere by sea. But to get to Anchorage (and any trip anywhere starts by getting to Anchorage, when you live where we do…) you would have to travel over 1,000 miles on the water. And that trip would take you to some of the most dangerous marine waters on earth.

The Bering Sea, down which we would need to travel to get to the end of the Alaska Peninsula, is the site of the infamous crab fisheries made even more famous by their depiction on Deadliest Catch, and is noteworthy for the danger of the deadly combination of cold water and horrible storms. False Pass, where we would pass from the Bering Sea to the Pacific Ocean, is one of the windiest places on earth (although, all of southwest Alaska probably qualifies for that distinction). On the other side of the peninsula, we would have to travel up Shelikof Strait, renowned for the number of vessels beneath the water. And then, we’d have to travel up Cook Inlet, which even Captain Cook himself hated, with its thirty-three feet of tidal action.

No thanks.

So finally, we arrive at the initial option… to get anywhere you have to fly. Of course, there are commercial flight services that fly us around out here. But as our family has grown from three to four, and the children have both long since passed that magic 24-month age where they must have their own seat on the airplane, the cost of purchasing seats has become a bit prohibitive.

Bush flights in Alaska are expensive. I don’t know whether they should be or not, but they certainly are. It often costs more for us to fly the round trip from King Salmon to Anchorage, which is less than 300 miles each way, than it does to fly round trip from Anchorage to most locations within the contiguous 48 states. Yes, you read that correctly. Our little 300 mile leg costs more than some of the multi-thousand mile legs between more major airports.

So one of the gradual effects of the costs of air travel on our little family has been that we don’t travel often. We try to make the trips long enough to make a difference when we do go, but it doesn’t happen often by any stretch. So my wife, it turns out, was partly just interested in something that allowed her to travel more… not more overall, just more often, even if the trips were shorter. Me learning to fly might help. Us owning an airplane and me learning to fly would certainly help.

I was so shocked and excited by the possibility of buying an airplane that I talked to practically every person who crossed my path about it. Many of them responded by asking the primary question. You’re buying an airplane? So are you a pilot then?

Well, no, not yet…

Most local people in King Salmon understand the situation, though. The people that I know who learned to fly here did so after buying an airplane. But at some point when I was sharing this wild new thought with Quinn, the professional pilot brother, he had something else to offer… buy it down south and he would help me fly it to Alaska.

Now, that sounded cool indeed. In fact, he had spent years in the training department at the company he worked for, had maintained his flight instructor credentials, and would be willing to instruct on the way. That sounded more than cool! And it meant I could look at planes in any region of the country, really.

GROUND SCHOOL

In which I study and enjoy it, and infect another soul with airplane mania

I tend to be a bit obsessive. At least, if you believe my wife. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that when I get interested in something I study it incessantly until I either get a grasp on the information or run out of new information to process or actually wear myself out. So I consulted a local flight instructor about what I needed to buy, and bought it. A textbook, flight computer, plotter, and assorted other stuff. And just to be thorough, I bought another textbook. I read the textbooks, both of them, all the way through… and thought maybe I was ready to take the test.

But you can’t take the test in King Salmon, and I didn’t get around to taking it over the winter. So I went ahead and took another look at the textbooks… except I couldn’t. The second time through was just too repetitive even for me.

So I bought a DVD course and watched that. Along the way I’d infected another poor soul, Paul, with flight mania, and he had an old VHS course. It turns out he had done most of the training for a private license but marriage and family caught up with him and he never finished. He was interested in learning to fly and sharing the cost of the plane. Actually, he works as an airframe and powerplant mechanic (A&P), so his contribution in terms of labor was more than equivalent to my contribution in terms of dollars.

Anyway, we watched his video course as well. Which turned out to be a bit painful… the teaching style didn’t really mesh with our personalities. But we got lots of dubious entertainment mocking the instructors!

After repeated studying, taking practice tests on my computer, and trying to brush up in areas that weren’t as familiar to me, Quinn sent me a logbook endorsement, because I had, on average, been scoring well over 80%. The minimum passing score for the FAA written exam is 70%, so I was reasonably certain I would pass.

When Quinn sent the logbook endorsement, he included a message. Since my name is now associated with this test, I expect a minimum of 90%! Okay… back to the books.

After some more practice tests, I arranged to stop in at Take Flight Alaska at Merrill Field on my way through Anchorage. My practice tests were usually about 40-50 minutes. I told my wife to come back in about an hour and I’d be ready. Luckily she knew better than to listen, and took the kids off for a longer sojourn.

First of all, there was some preparatory work involved in verifying that I was ready for the exam, preparing the exam computer, briefing me, the test-taker, on the test process, and generally settling in. Second, there was the fact that in my practice tests, I tended to hurry through and just see how I did. There would be no hurrying this time. I read every answer to every question. So when all was said and done, I took a bit longer.

But it was worth it. The lady preparing my exam results report smiled, You did very well. Oh? Good! Turns out I missed 3 questions. So my final score was 95%, which I immediately called and told Quinn about. He seemed to be satisfied, albeit somewhat grudgingly. That’ll do… I guess…

AIRPLANE SHOPPING

In which Paul and I end up settling on an airplane that isn’t really what either of us want

I had started airplane shopping in the fall, but all the airplanes I wanted cost too much. Often way too much. Airplanes I might be able to afford tended to be either so small that there was no potential use for them beyond training, or they were in such sorry shape that they weren’t airworthy. And many of the aircraft in question used a lot of fuel.

Becky was interested in a four-place airplane. Two-place aircraft use less fuel, a lot less in some cases. My initial interest was in a Maule, which is a great little Alaska plane with four seats. I’d flown in one once, and sat in the back seat. All 6’4" of me. If I could fit back there, it must be okay for a family. Paul was a little less excited about a Maule. Turns out he isn’t real fond of working on tube and fabric aircraft.

Aircraft come in a few different fundamental constructions. Many modern aircraft are being designed and built from composite materials, which allows sleek modern forms. Before the advent of the composite designs, most aircraft were being constructed from sheet metal designs in which the body of the aircraft is formed from sheets of metal that are much of the structural integrity of the aircraft. But before sheet metal aircraft, there was another phase…

Actually tube and fabric isn’t just from back in ancient history. There are still tube and fabric aircraft being made new, such as the Maule I still dream of. The basic structure is just like it sounds. The airplane is constructed from steel tubes that are welded into an airplane-shaped cage. Fabric is stretched over the cage, then tightened down by heat and chemicals and painted to form a strong exterior surface.

From an economy point of view, tube and fabric tend to be lighter weight, which reduces the engine size, which reduces fuel burn. At least in theory. I had downloaded a database of single-engine aircraft performance numbers and combed through it obsessively, and that was one of the conclusions I came to. However, Paul was definitely more in favor of metal, so I started looking at early version 172s.

I found a few that were perhaps affordable, though the lower end of the price bracket started to look like aircraft that would need lots of work. But they all flew Continental engines. Paul had primarily worked on Lycoming engines, and was more comfortable with that, so I went back to the drawing board.

I found an aircraft that was affordable, powered by Lycoming engines, with four seats. But it was a fabric aircraft. They were generally very affordable though, so we found ourselves looking at Piper PA-22 aircraft, commonly known as Tri-Pacers, or, somewhat mockingly, flying milkstools. Seems not everybody thinks they’re attractive. Not a particularly great airplane from a performance standpoint, but with careful planning we could haul our family of four a couple hundred miles safely. Until the kids put on weight, that is. Hard to stop that, though…

Still, it seemed worth starting out on the margin of too small given that the first year would see mostly just me or Paul and an instructor or me or Paul alone in the plane.

Buying old airplanes is a bit of a challenge. The primary problem being they’re… old. But we waited around and finally found one that had critical parts (fabric, engine) in good shape for a reasonable price and bought it. N624A. A very cute little white and red number that looked a little bit like a 50’s diner inside. My wife suggested we wear bobby socks and sip cherry Cokes while we flew. This was May. That’s when I requested time to make a training/ferry flight, and was given October.

October!? It’s busy in Alaska in summer, so that’s pretty much the best we could do.

We had a while to wait, so Quinn went to Texas and picked up the plane, then flew it to Columbus, Ohio, where he lived. In fact, our parents went to visit and he took them out to see the plane as well. Since it was originally in Texas, near the home of one of my three brothers, that brother saw it as well. So I had one brother that didn’t see it before me…but other than that I was the last one to see it from my family.

Quinn with N624A at KVTA. He flew it to Ohio from Texas.

Quinn and Dad with N624A at KVTA. Dad flew a PA-22-108 (also known as a Colt, a similar plane but with only two seats) as a student pilot in the 1950s. Quinn is demonstrating that he (and I, we’re the same height) is not taller than the airplane. Barely. Dad would probably fit a little better than we did…