If you are a pilot then you have to post in this thread. Post your experiences or whatever. If you are not a pilot then please do not post in this thread.

I am a pilot.....one time i see clouds up close.

Wow, you don't say ;)

I'm one :)

Flying 737-800 now, part time charter.

Nordic

Got alot of them :)

Bush Pilot in Alaska, fly mainly Super Cubs, Cessna 172's and Cessna 185s

My 172 has a Franklin 220 hp (normal 172s have a 150 / 180 hp engine) so i can carry a bigger load :)


Last flight out of our windy moose camp, I had to pick up our crew, the wind was blowing about 10-20 mph and bang, right after I land, the wind disappears, so I had to make a choice, and the only choice was to take as much water up as possible, so I get going, both guys are face forward into the windshield so we can get on step faster.......

Coming around the first turn, lift one float up, no go, so I put it back down, go into the step turn, my body going one way, the plane the other....get out of the step turn, full throttle again, half way down, I lift up, no go, start dragging my heels....put her back down....3/4 of the way down, I lift one float out, and then the other, and she gets off, so I go into ground effect for about 3 seconds and point her directly between 50' x-mas trees, right over some low lying brush...why not just do another step turn? because the next turn was a dead end....

so im going, enter a 20* degree turn and semi-follow the river, after I loose my flaps, the guy sitting next to me says "Gary...my azz cheeks starting to squeeze there for a minute" HAHAHA

Moral of the story? Dont do something you don't think you can handle.

The reason why I knew my plane could get off with a full load and no wind was mainly because I spent 3 weeks flying the airplane from Maine to Alaska, in every situation possible. I know the limits of myself and my airplane.

What is there was even 5 knots of wind that day? I would have gotten off before the first turn no problem......
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now lets go back 2 weeks, to the start of moose hunting, lifting out a old freezer in the back yard with my dad, my back went out, literally in 5 minutes, couldn't walk, couldn't do anything, but not to let my dad down (I was the only pilot this year) I decided to go on the next trip with him to bring him, 2 other guys and some gear to camp, the day before hunting starts

The wind in bethel was about 15-20 mph, gusts to about 25, we didn't want to reland at the river because of the large waves, so we loaded up, and barely took off the lake, my dad has over 40k hours of flying, so he knew what he was doing.

We get to moosecamp, and my dad wants me to make one more trip, so I get in the plane, and about 20 minutes out, I know its bad in bethel, the winds went up to 30 to 40 gusting to 50 miles an hour, small plane, no load = bad turbulence

SO, I seen my gas was going to go out soon if I didn't land and take a break, just then a ugly front crossed Bethel, so I landed in a lake in the middle of the tundra, sat there for 15 minutes while the winds helped the low clouds move across bethel, so I took off again, but they were still there, so I landed in Akiachak, about 10 minutes out side of bethel (this is what you call puddle jumping)

I am getting thrown left, right up down, you name it, I was all over the sky. When I would take off, all I would need to do is go full throttle and 2 seconds later I was airborne! (my rotate speed is about 45, so if it was blowing 40, all indeed was an extra 5 knots :) )

finally get to bethel and pick up my passenger and then go to another village and pick my other passenger up. Finally got into Moose camp about 8pm, just when it was turning dark, damn iburprofen really works when you got a bad back, and they taste like candy :) hehe

Moral of the story: Don't fly when you got a bad back and its windy out :)
hope you had fun reading

Quite an Adventure, I enjoyed reading.

SHIZNITT, I'm not a pilot! Sorry for posting netsolutions :dgrin:

Has anyone ever heard of 30,000 Island Air or 1,000 Island Air?

this? http://www.islandair.ca/

nope

Yep, how'd you know it was www.islandair.ca and not www.islandair.com? Anyway, that's our company.

Originally posted by netsolutions
Has anyone ever heard of 30,000 Island Air or 1,000 Island Air?

Yup, been on a flight tour with them twice in Parry Sound, once last summer and once several years ago. Fun stuff :)

Originally posted by netsolutions
Yep, how'd you know it was www.islandair.ca and not www.islandair.com? Anyway, that's our company.

:cool: Simple :) google :cool:

Originally posted by Shawn (GEcom)


Yup, been on a flight tour with them twice in Parry Sound, once last summer and once several years ago. Fun stuff :)
Who was your pilot? Did you fly in the C-180 or the DeHaviland Beaver? Was I the dock hand or was it Don?

Aviation is actually where I got our company name from. echo-lima from the phonetic alphabet.

My uncle is a retired captain from us airs
and is big into stunt flying <-- thinks thats what it is called

Ne ways i forget what planes he has,

he has like 4-5
i know one is called a cubby

he let me fly that one

well not really let me fly he took it off and once we were up let me take the stick and fly it for about 10 minutes was one of the best experiences of my life

The one I think you are talking about is a Super Cub

I actually worked for about a year for a
small FBO just north of Boston. It was the
most fun ive had at a job! I would wash planes
in the morning and in the afternoon go and fly for
free! Not bad ;)

== Brad

Has anyone here flown with 30,000 Island Air? I'm the dock hand there. I get the planes ready, like gas them, pump the floats, stuff like that.

Originally posted by netsolutions

Who was your pilot? Did you fly in the C-180 or the DeHaviland Beaver? Was I the dock hand or was it Don?

It was an older Cesna that we flew in, and the pilot was the "owner" of the business. That's all I remember.

-Shawn

In my younger, wilder years I was fortunate enough to not only spend time as a controller at the Atlanta ARTCC. Many of the controllers there flew charters and instructed on their days off. I was one of those, eventually leaving the Friendly Aviation Administration to open my own flight school.

We had a couple of Cessna 150's, Cessna 172's, a Piper Arrow, a Cessna Cardinal RG, a Piper Apache (1959, 160 hp), and my favorite, a 1946 Aeronca 7AC. At various times we leased a Cessna Turbo 210, a Cessna 206, a Piper Lance, a Seneca III (in which I fell victim to the old upside down bolt in the nose gear shimmy dampner), Piper Tomahawk (and yes, I've spun it and am here to tell about it), and had regular students with a Twin Comanche, Bellanca Viking, a Roberston STOL Cherokee 235 and an old Travel Air.

I spent 5 years and 3,000 mostly happy hours chartering and instructing until the economy in the area tanked when the local military base was rumored to be closing. I've not regretted it, made many friends, and visited places that I'd have never otherwise been able to do.

Oh, before you ask about the bolt in the shimmy dampner on the Seneca's... the attach bolt goes in "upside down" in that the bolt is in the vertical position and the head is on the underside - exactly opposite from your natural inclination. If you retract the gear with the bolt in a "natural" head up position, it takes approximately 6 G's to dislodge the nose gear from the up position because the head of the bolt, pushed by hydraulics when retracted, is pushed over a support structure cross member. Needless to say you aren't going to get the nose gear down and keep the tail and/or wings on the aircraft.

When this occurred to me, I reasoned that since almost everything forward of the cockpit is fiberglass, I'd just pull the mains back up and belly it in...which worked fine. In fact it was classified by the FAA Inspector as an incident. Seems the owner had asked a maintenance shop to look at the "squirrelly" landing gear while they were working on the left turbo. Of course nobody told me they worked on the gear (nor did they tell me they forgot to jack it and swing the gear after working on it...).

I've also seen electrical failure in IFR, and 2 times C172's have swallowed valves on me on departure - once at 1500 AGL and once at 400 AGL. On runway landings both times. Several planes refused to lower their landing gear by the usual method, autopilots wanting to do slow rolls (one flap was misaligned). Then there was the reversed trim tab on a C210 right after getting painted. And above all the thrill of instructing in a 65 h.p. taildragger!

And the money I lost has kept me out of the air for 5 years. That is why I got into hosting. Make enought to fly again.

David Unthank
Commercial ASMEL-IA
Former CFII

My dad has a cessna cardinal that he flies frequently. We were going flying tomorrow, but President Bush is in town and the airport is in the restricted airspace, so thats a no go.