One of my friends likes to keep an empty pizza box in his airplane. He taxis up to ice fisherman, hops out and asks, "Did you guys order the sausage and mushroom pizza?" Does anyone else do anything like that?

Heck, everything about ski flying is humorous! I like the pizza thing... all I've come up with is asking sled heads I land near if they have a problem and need any help, that and not having any brakes pretty much keeps me amused.

courierguy wrote:Heck, everything about ski flying is humorous! I like the pizza thing... all I've come up with is asking sled heads I land near if they have a problem and need any help, that and not having any brakes pretty much keeps me amused.

My first ski lesson was in a C90 (under)powered and straight-ski equipped Aeronca Champ on a poker run from McGrath to Takotna. Never flew skis in my life (I was 21 at the time) and my buddy who owned the airplane just had a hip replacement and couldn't drive a snowmachine (the conventional transportation method on the poker run), so I selflessly volunteered to fly him to Takotna and we would pick up his cards...(and mine)

Anyhow, we followed the trail at no less than 500 feet AGL, and noticed that there was a group of people surrounding an incredibly high powered Arctic Cat snowmobile. From a distance, we could tell that there was apparent engine trouble, as the cowling was open. At that distance, it looked as though it may have been the new snowmobile my buddy's boss had recently purchased, having never owned an offroad vehicle before, and with none other than the owner riding it. Being the benevolent people we are, and using proper Crew Resource Management, we decided I should try to land in the clearing in the cluster-f*** of a swamp nearby and lend a hand. Somehow, instinct kicked in as the skis touched down, and I poured on the coals for a touch and go after laying some short and friggen deep tracks down in the endless powder. As the throttle went in, the engine went out, and soon we were buried in snow fuselage deep. Damn carburetors.

Right away, the snowmachine we landed nearby to assist appeared over the horizon and was on its way towards us lickety-split to render aid. Apparently Mr. Cheechako was simply showing off the big-ass engine he knew nothing about and was never in distress at all. I was standing in chest-deep snow hand propping the POS, both skis buried below the surface. When it finally fired up I had to run a racetrack circuit at full friggen throttle 6 times before wallowing the damned thing into the air.

After I got it in the air, I turned back and landed again. The big-ass Arctic Cat came cruising back with a new and more drunk driver this time, and she wondered why we landed again. My reply was because I knew we could get airborne now. Anyhow, we visited on the trail for a bit before flying to Takotna and picking up our cards, then flew back to McGrath and didn't win shit.

After I got it in the air, I turned back and landed again. The big-ass Arctic Cat came cruising back with a new and more drunk driver this time, and she wondered why we landed again. My reply was because I knew we could get airborne now.

YES!

Hahahaha. Well written, Devon.

Don't do that pizza box thing in parts of East Wisconsin !

Watching an old Champ go around a swamp 6 times at very slow speed and wide open throttle must have been quite a spectacle. There was a lot of cheering going on from the trail party after we finally got back in the air, so everyone was shocked to see us land again right away. The main drawback to flying a poker run rather than driving is that you can't be drinking beer with the rest of em until you get back to McGrath. And in any normal airplane with almost enough horsepower (300) it's a 10 minute flight. With the Champ it's closer to half an hour, but anyway you get to Joe's Bar in McGrath 6 hours ahead of the rest of them and may be pretty well schnockered before they show up to open the cards.

Awesome story. We have a local pilot who needs to post here. His story started when he landed on thin ice and ended with him wearing a pink robe.

My humorous ski flying story: part 1

I was coming home from a 50 mile late breakfast flight, that got extended a bit due to all the playing around on the way there and back. Lots of new sites, all on slopes, and I spotted this last one just a few miles from the home drome and figured one more wouldn't hurt. The sled heads had already been at it, so probably all right if played around there a little. I had no idea as I set up the approach that this would be my last ski flight of the season

The plan was to fly up the ravine, and then as it petered out in a grove of trees make a right angle turn and land up the side slope. All went as planned, and it wasn't until I got to the top and stopped that I realized I had neglected to leave enough room to get my turn around in, (note trees right in front, they were the problem) and the slope was going to make it trickier. I got out and carefully and gradually worked the tail around down the fall line, about 70 degrees from when this picture was taken. The only problem now was I couldn't let go of the tail, it wanted to leave without me. I thought of turning it back sideways and getting belayed to a tree, or putting some branches under one ski (I had over 100' of rope and a sharp axe), but that would have taken time and been too much work, so I came up with another idea. I turned the tailwheel/ski out of the detent, and with it sideways to the slope I stomped it down in the snow. That seemed to plant it well enough for me to work my way up to the cockpit, but every now and then it would creak and move just a fraction of an inch, so I knew I had to be careful getting in. Once I planted my ass on the door sill and lifted both feet, but before I swung them around to the rudder pedals and grabbed the stick, would be the tricky part, or not. Hesitating a few minutes, using the time to get a better feel for how well the plane was going to stand still (like mounting a skittish horse I guess) I finally went for it and as quick and smoothly as possible got behind the controls.

Part 2 tomorrow

I got both feet on the rudder pedals and right hand on the stick, now even if I started to move before startup, I'd have some semblance of control. I decided to take the few seconds to strap in, and put my headset on, two steps I was ready to neglect if need be. Heck, I even turned the sat radio back on and activated my ANR headset, still no signs of moving. Then I hit the starter and as usual the Rotax started instantly, and before the prop had even turned one RPM I started sliding, it was indeed that near of a thing, thanks to the immediate throttle response and the already warm engine all I had to do was hold some left rudder (to avoid the fall line toward a tree to the right) and keep on the spine of the downslope and make a pretty much normal takeoff, I was outa there!

Right about now, you all are going, WTF?? "I thought this was his last ski flight of the year, meaning he must of pranged it somehow". Don't get ahead of me, I wasn't home yet..... though now on very familiar terrain (above it anyway), all I had to was climb to the 8 K level, while checking out the back side/out of bounds sking action outside the local ski area and slip through the pass that got me on the "right" side of the Portnuef Range, the side my strip is on, fly by the front side of the in bounds ski area, making a couple more landings on the way on the usual slopes, and then land at my home strip. What could go wrong?

I did all that, with the usual splashy approach to my 400' 12% grade strip (if you can't buzz your own damn place, it's all over.....) touchdowned and maintained a head of steam in order to fast taxi the last 200' to The Ramp. This was a transition construct, from the level slab outside my hangar to the general sloping ground below. Made out of a 28' long flatbed that I got cheap and widened out to 10', which seemed PLENTY wide at the time. Not so, the next couple years of ski ops showed it to be like threading a needle, especially in a cross wind. I need to hit this with a certain amount of speed, in order to make it all the way up. Too slow is not the way to do it, about 8 MPH is right. Now I should mention I had had a problem earlier with one side of the ramp melting off to the rusty steel, while the other side was 12" deep in snow. This was caused by a combination of wind drifting and sun effect. My solution to this unevenness was, at the time, brilliant. I bought some high density polyethylene, in 4' rolls, and with some big headed pop rivets secured it to the steel ramp. This stuff was slippery, period, snow or no snow. This worked for all of last year, but I noticed that the pop rivets were working loose, and I started to replace many of them, which got old quick.

So, my next brilliant idea was to get some thin (1/8" by 1") flat bar, and secure it over the HDPE with some serious self tapping metal screws. The kind with a big raised head for the socket needed to install them. It did occur to me that running over one of these screw heads with the skis would not be a good thing, but they were only along the very edges, and that night it dumped 16" of snow and I pretty
much put grinding the heads down on my to do list. As a few weeks went by, and the snow blew off or melted, in between storms, I took my 8" grinder and hit the exposed screw heads, leaving others undisturbed by the deep snow. Now the day I last came back, it had warmed up, exposing some unground screw heads, and I had a cross wind and got off to one side a fair bit. And, one of the skegs, or wear bars, on the bottom of the skis, managed to engage one screw head just exactly right, to instantly stop my progress up the ramp.

At this point I was 6' from transitioning to the level area in front of the hangar, I had almost logged another exciting but damage free day of off airport ski fun, but now I had a real problem: further forward motion wasn’t happening, cutting the engine and coasting backwards out of control, while interesting aerodynamically, didn’t seem like the way to go. So, I hit on the idea of keeping the throttle where I had it, about a mid speed cruise position, in order to maintain my ramp position, while I bailed out and using a tie down rope secured the tail to the ramp, thus allowing me to finally cut the power without losing the plane down the hill. As I stepped out into the prop blast, my main thought was avoiding the prop and keeping the power up, both at the same time. What I forgot about was once stepped off of the no skid ski top surface, I was stepping on the ramps snow covered HDPE, and in a split second I found myself at the bottom of the 28' ramp, ass over tea kettle, while the plane continued to hold position above me. I sure wish I had that on video.

Once the tail was tied off, I made it back up the ramp, avoiding the HDPE, and killed the engine. Luckily just a few days earlier I had made up a cable bridle that engaged my inboard stub axles,(I drilled some 1/4" holes in them for some light chain) making for a great place to tow from without stressing anything too much. Good thing, as with the Kubota’s help, the plane would have been stuck there. After getting it up the final few feet, it was in the hangar, I was that damn close to being home free when all hell broke loose, some kind of lesson there I guess. The ski that got stopped so sudden, ended up with a tweaked attach bracket, enough so that I bagged it for the season as by the time I would have gotten it fixed properly, it would be over anyway. This summer the steep ramp will be recycled (4600 lbs so a good chunk of change at the scrap yard) and an earth ramp will be compacted and seeded. It won’t melt off like the elevated steel one, by the time it does all the snow will be gone anyways, plus it will be twice as wide. I can even spray it down and compact the snow to really make it last, NOW I thought of all this.