Still riding the high of a week flying in Alaska... Was going thru some of my pics and I thought this might be a fun thread. Lets see some pics of your non-traditional fuel stops. F-the pump-


LurkerLarry fueling up the C170 on the beach. Whidbey Bay, AK


Fueling on the roadside from the back of a pick-up. Cordova, AK

Best paint scheme I've seen in a long time. So classic, that tasteful patina. I'm pretty jealous of you and LL Cool J's little sojourn.

I like this concept. Let's see your best plastic gas cans!

Why is oil so pricey in the State that has the most and the least amount of people? Alaska?

Sorry for the thread drift. But, time to ask.

8GCBC wrote:Sorry for the thread drift. But, time to ask.

Not really. You could easily start a thread where people like to talk about that instead of seeing photos of unconventional fueling.

Check out the fuel forum.

Zzz wrote:

8GCBC wrote:Sorry for the thread drift. But, time to ask.

Not really. You could easy start a thread where people like to talk about that instead of seeing photos of unconventional fueling.

Sorry about that. Did not not want to kill the concept. Please delete the garbage posts.

One of these babies twist locks on to your fuel tanks.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_SPM6179184401?hlSellerId=22023&ci_src=184425893&ci_sku=SPM6021951405&sid=IDx20130125xMPTLSx025

Use heavy spring paper clips to drape one of these inside it, and any water magically rides on the surface of the chamois and stays out of the tank:

http://www.amazon.com/Tanners-Premium-Zealand-Sheepskin-Chamois/dp/B001TY76PS

You can usually find both at your local farm store.

Alternative fuel stop in Utah when the local airport was out of go juice. I decided against taxiing up to the pumps.

Heck, all these look traditional to me, non traditional would be a shot of my plane at an FBO's Avgas pump. Man, I could post pictures here all day long on this thread, but I have a life and got to get to it

This shot, seen before here I know, shows a small town fillup in my Pterodactyl ultralight in North Dakota circa 1981 or so. Right before I launched out of the field next to the Holiday Inn we were staying at, photographer Chuck O'Rear told me to keep my eyes open for just such a photo op. It took about 1/2 hr until I found a landing site, and a way to get from it to the gas pumps. According to Chuck, the Old Boy in the bib overalls AND the sport jacket made the shot. The Kid on the bike in the foreground was the icing on the cake. Another shot from a couple weeks earlier, outside of Gimli Manitoba, I was pictured stepping over a fence, fuel jugs in hand, after landing at a golf course (not on a fairway or god forbid a green, a dead area where I sneaked in) and walking over to the gas station, the local paper's caption was "he just decided to drop in". The big challenge of these unconventional landings and subsequent fuel stops, isn't so much the usual off airport considerations (power lines, badger holes, fences, etc.) is and was doing it without getting arrested, ratted out to the FEDS, or pissing people off. I'm talking about fuel stops where this is not the norm. Doing it in a politically correct fashion in other words, is half the battle, that and not screwing up the landing.

In re-reading the pictures caption, I see the reference to "5 gallons of fuel maximum", being the limit for ultralights back then. As the 'dac used 2.5 gallon white poly fuel jugs, it was a simple matter to hit the quick disconnect and now you had a way to fetch your fuel, complete with handles! Savvy pilots quickly realized that the same tanks were available in 5 gallon sizes, and would of course offer greater range. The key was to placard these 5 gallon jugs in big letters with a marker pen, 2 1/2 gallons, keeping it all legal, sort of.

Mike Stratman, founder of California Power Systems, was selling medical equipment for a living and flying 'dacs on the weekends. He recognized a trick little fitting used in the medical field would be perfect for the 'dac refueling quick disconnect thing. This lead to him founding the company, and big bucks I'm guessing when he recently bagged it and sold out to Spruce.

During the 2012 Caveman fly-in Highroad needed a few gallons so I let him borrow some from the 170 out at Happy Canyon. This would come back to haunt me later in the day, along with some other unfortunate circumstances, and lead to a night time landing back at Caveman! Luckily I got a hold of Pops on the radio and everyone went out to their planes and lit the place up like a christmas tree, alowing for a safe landing. But flying into the canyon at night was a little nerve racking!

I was on a SAR and got stuck in Molokai with a C172, low on fuel. George Hanzawa from "George's Aviation" flew his Piper Chieftain over from Honolulu and he siphoned 10gals into containers for us.

This breaks my record for the longest fuel delivery to date (55 NM).

Note: photographs unavailable.

A couple of folk from BCP getting shakes and go-juice at Fields Station.



Gump

GumpAir wrote:A couple of folk from BCP getting shakes and go-juice at Fields Station.



Gump

I understand that the guy that owns that dog makes best crepes north of Burbank

Tim

So, what's so non traditional about five gallon cans??? Back in the day, Alaskan aviators lived and breathed five gallon cans......actually, five gallon rectangular metal ones, two of which came in a wooden box. Here's a pic from the internet of a couple of cans:



Those are the only photos of the cans I could find....and they are Blazo cans. Blazo was Chevron's brand name for white gas. Because white gas was so widely used in the bush, the boxes they came in, labeled Blazo, became known as "Blazo boxes", even though they may have contained unleaded gas, avgas, or Blazo cans. Some gas boxes from my stash:





Now, since materials were difficult and expensive to ship to the bush, the boxes themselves (which were there only to protect the thin walled cans during shipment) were turned into all sorts of useful things.....many a cabin in the bush still has furniture made from Blazo boxes, cabinets, bookshelves, etc....and this is a unique application, a toolbox made from a box:



And, not to be wasteful, the after they were emptied, the cans were saved, the bottoms and tops cut out, and the sides flattened, and many a cabin in the bush has a roof shingled with these cans even today.

Almost every pilot in the country back then carried a tractor funnel, which adapted nicely to the filler neck on most airplanes, and the funnel was fitted with a (natural) chamois, to filter out water and crud, when fueling from cans. The cans used then were steel, and I've used some that were cached for a long time in a remote cache...the cans were pretty rusty.

The boxes in the above photos I salvaged when one of my bosses decided to burn the rather large cache of boxes stashed at one of our remote camps......I grabbed these and have held onto them since. But, a bunch of them burned.....the result of importing a fellow from Louisiana...who actually turned out to be one of the best bosses I ever worked for....after a little training

Thanks, Zane, for the photo tutorial.....You DA MAN!!

MTV

Hey, I just saw some of those... in the Alaska Aviation Museum.

Great photos and history, MTV!

Darn! I wish I had pictures from the atolls in the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. 50 gallon drums from a barge that left Seattle 3 months ago. Hand and electric pumps WWII style.

The female passengers on some islands were even topless, ie. Yap Is. Unreal.

Nothing to exciting here, but when I flew to Caveman in my Pacer a couple of years ago, I made it a point to visit as few established landing strips as possible. I carried 4 bushwheel bags (20gal) and landed where ever it looked interesting to camp/fuel. This spot was east of the Steen's and was really a spectacular camp spot in the middle of nowhere. Got up in the morning and threw the bags up on the wing to empty as I made coffee.

Mike,

I remember those gas cans and boxes from my childhood. My dad and uncle had them all over the place, they would haul cases of fuel to camps when they were working the Hiller's in and around Fairbanks. Those boxes were great stacked, they were instant storage shelves. I remember my Godfather Sam White making a complete stove that would store a survival tent out of an empty can. Wish I still had the one he made for me when I was a kid growing up in Fairbanks. Oh those were the days!

Kurt

the 40 liters of fuel on the back seat makes for some bloody expensive cargo these days! most valuable passenger Ive had in a while!