Ok now we're just being picky... accurate but picky

If anyone tells you it's "fuzzy" you should interpret it to mean that the visibility, ceiling, or both are below VFR minimums. "Fuzzy" seems to be a commonly understood code word in SW Alaska.

When the weather is low it's better to not ask flying pilots for pireps. They'll tell you 500 and 2 whether it's true or not. The most scared I've ever been in an airplane was the result of such a pirep. I heard a plane in the soup so I asked and made my decision based on the report. If he was sending me a signal I didn't pick up on it. I launched into solid IFR at the treetops. I couldn't see my wingtips. Not a good feeling for a VFR pilot with minimum instruments. I could write a short story about the 2 or 3 minutes that followed that takeoff. Those were very long minutes. A few months later I told an FAA friend , who was then the FSDO Safety Program Manager, about my experience. He asked me why I bothered to ask for a pirep. His exact words we're "What did you expect him to say?" The 135 pilot had no choice but to report legal weather even if he was in and out of the crud. Bottom line, I had been unwilling to go until a stranger told me what I wanted to hear. Lesson learned.

stewartb wrote: The 135 pilot had no choice but to report legal weather even if he was in and out of the crud. Bottom line, I had been unwilling to go until a stranger told me what I wanted to hear. Lesson learned.

Whoever did that to you was wrong. We used our "codes" for weather, figuring Big Brother was listening, but only among ourselves. Lot of times if I got a wx request on the radio and didn't know who I was talking to when coming out of a crap area, I'd just flat out tell them, "It's rotten up there, you don't want to go." Or, "Ceiling and vis are dropping fast and it's snapping shut." Not telling the truth is a good way to hurt someone.

And a lot depended on who was giving the report. One guys "tight" or "fuzzy" was another guy's CAVU.

Gump

PA12_Pilot wrote:Did you notice the Caravan departing "Marshall" was really leaving some other strip, maybe Newtok? The Marshall strip is wide and flat, while the strip shown was much narrower. How about the mountains in the background of the "Bethel" shots?

Got a good chuckle out of that one. Kinda like the movie "Insomnia" supposedly set in Nightmute, with mountain, trees, paved roads and a real town....

Gump

stewartb wrote:and yet you guys still watch it. It seems the producers have achieved their objective.

Exactly. It's better than 99.999999% of tv programming.

Quit yer bitchin' Joey

I'll have to take your word on that. I haven't seen television programming for weeks. The dish blew down almost a month ago. Haven't missed it. You guys have too much free time.

No TV at my house is fine by me but I might have to go someplace to see the BCS game tonight. Roll Tide.

They just took a lesson form "AIRPLANE" One of the great parts of that movie was the airliner sounding like a WWII bomber

I just really have to chuckle while watching almost every episode of this series. This last was worse than most, so I think I'm done watching this garbage. I really got a kick out of all the drama about hauling the propane. I lost count a long time ago of the number of propane bottles I've flown - if you fly commercially in Alaska they're just routine Hazmat. I am glad to see that they're sticking to the 500 and 2 miles reg, but of course they'd be a bit foolish to be caught on camera breaking it.

dhdriver wrote:I just really have to chuckle while watching almost every episode of this series. This last was worse than most, so I think I'm done watching this garbage. I really got a kick out of all the drama about hauling the propane. I lost count a long time ago of the number of propane bottles I've flown - if you fly commercially in Alaska they're just routine Hazmat. I am glad to see that they're sticking to the 500 and 2 miles reg, but of course they'd be a bit foolish to be caught on camera breaking it.

I agree with you...seems like it's all about the group of people, and very little actual flying.

The other day I got a request from a friend who's going to give a mountain flying seminar. She asked if I had any photos of flying in bad weather in the mountains. My response was that I don't take pictures when flying in lousy weather.....no point in making the FAA/NTSB's job any easier by leaving evidence

MTV

mtv wrote:
I agree with you...seems like it's all about the group of people, and very little actual flying.

Surprise...that's what makes TV interesting for most people-- Relating to other people. Otherwise, they're just watching documentaries. Nothing wrong with documentary style, in fact that's how Discovery started off, but I think they've found that the reality tv format has brought them MANY more viewers. I'd pretty sure that the majority of viewers of FWA are not pilots.

Zane wrote:

mtv wrote:
I agree with you...seems like it's all about the group of people, and very little actual flying.

Surprise...that's what makes TV interesting for most people-- Relating to other people. Otherwise, they're just watching documentaries. Nothing wrong with documentary style, in fact that's how Discovery started off, but I think they've found that the reality tv format has brought them MANY more viewers. I'd pretty sure that the majority of viewers of FWA are not pilots.

Yeah, if they relied on pilots as viewers, the thing wouldn't last half of one season.

MTV

I've been watching back episodes of this show. (Which is pretty much the sum total of my TV viewing in the past 25 years or so)

I don't care about the fake drama, and there's not really much flying-related content that you can learn anything from. What I like is the snippets of villages, airstrips, and the land. Some of those places I've been fortunate to get to. Many I may never get to. Like my friend's village of Tuntutuliak, which was featured in one of the episodes from the first season. I enjoy this little window on my home state. I also enjoy that some of those folks are neighbors of mine- in the Alaska sense of the word. Last spring I was standing next to Jim and Ferno at the trade show. Didn't know who they were at the time- just a couple strangers ahead of me in line. Next time, they won't be total strangers. In Alaska that's worth something right there.

Does kind of seem like they're starting to scrape bottom for new material, though.

-DP

denalipilot wrote:I don't care about the fake drama, and there's not really much flying-related content that you can learn anything from. What I like is the snippets of villages, airstrips, and the land.

Yuppers!!!! The little shots of home, and the old airplanes I used to know... Kinda cool.

Gump