Well good folks, I damaged my plane last fall. Not very bad in the larger sense, but when I added up the cost of the repairs, the things that I felt needed to be done over the next few years, and the overall value of the plane, we elected to sell ours as an easily fixed project and get a slight upgrade within the model.

So my son and I are leaving this evening to go to Clintonville, Wisconsin. We will be picking up our new (to us) Tri-Pacer and flying it back home to Alaska. We hope to visit some friends on the way, experience beautiful and perfect flying weather throughout the voyage, and get familiar with the new bird.

The new plane is a 1959 model with a 150 hp O-320 engine. We're looking forward to a few extra horsepower, greater useful load, and a baggage area, which was missing from our other PA-22. I will endeavor to post photos of the journey.

I'm thinking that maybe this time my son should write the book. Or maybe he can help me write one. It should be fun.

Troy
Have fun.
Doug

That should be a fun trip. At least now, with GPS, you might have less paper in the Tri.
I remember an early flight to Nome, from AZ. My sectionals stretched out twenty feet, end to end.
Take a bunch of photos and post. I think everyone will enjoy them.
And don't push the WX !

Have fun, be safe and upload thousands of photos but don't crash the delicate BCP server please..

Enjoy that Tri-pacer too

Troy,
Sorry to hear of the damage. Always looking forward to some stories and photos and I'm sure you will have invites from members along the way. My strip is snowed under and more forecast to come. Should be a sloppy mess in the next few weeks. You are headed out shortly so no time for this question now but when there is time I was wondering how the insurance role played or didn't play out in your decision. Have a great trip.

dirtstrip,

The short answer is that we aren't really in a position to afford one of the fancy bush planes unless we just paid to own it and never intended to afford to fly it...the PA-22 is still a bit of a stretch but we can make it work. The fact that I've become familiar enough with the plane to feel as though I have a really good handle on what we can do with it, and that it is sufficient for many of the flights I make, helped me elect not to go on a wallet-busting adventure into another plane. My choice to stay with the tricycle gear instead of a Pacer is simply that the nosewheel airplanes are less expensive, even within PA-22's, the insurance is substantially less (but I didn't research that in detail, just pretty aware that it is true), and if I get excited to start doing more bush work there are ways to get fat tires approved on PA-22's with nosegear. At least it's been done a number of times up here.

I also don't have to worry about the wind as much as the taildragger guys, and we get storms to 80+ mph pretty much every year. The level parking attitude is a bonus in those conditions.

We made it to Anchortown on this adventure, next stop America. Though we are spending a quality 8 hours in the airport here first...

Met a BCP lurker, read this thread and rode in from King Salmon on the same plane as us. Pretty fun, small world.

The flights were a bit nuts because we got to Anchorage at 9 pm then left at 5:45 am. Just the kind of timing where nothing really makes sense. Including staying at the airport. But staying at the airport is the least complicated not-making-sense thing we could do, so that is what we did. Thankfully they let us check our bags immediately, so we didn't have to lug them around until 4 hours before the flight or whatever the rule I had heard some time in the distant past.

We ended up so tired that we actually had some of that most uncomfortable sleep in the world kind of sleep on the flight to Minneapolis, then on to Milwaukee, run around and shop real quick, and get up the road to Clintonville arriving 10 pm and going straight to sleep.

We were camping at the airport in Clintonville last night, had a semi-heated room we threw our sleeping pads and bags in, and this morning we met our new girlfriend. The sides of the plane say she is, "Island Girl." I hope my wife doesn't mind me adding a girlfriend to the mix.


Saturday in the morning before I finished packing, my wife asked me whether I was going to visit my brother in Kansas City, he who flew up with me last time. I responded that of course I was not, it was out of the way. But then I ran a quick flight plan and it added less that 3 hours of flight time...so here we are in Kansas City. It looks like the next few days are pretty good, so we may hang out one day since I haven't seen his family in years, but we're launching for Buffalo, WY early on Wednesday.

On the way down, DS got some quality stick (okay, yoke) time. I showed him where the heading indicator is and how to maintain a heading. Here he is fixating on the heading indicator and flying straighter than I did when I was flying.

Troy,

Are you going to be around the airport at all today? I'm over at Fort Leavenworth and I was thinking about taking a flight after class today. If you're going to be around the airport, shoot me a PM. I'd love to check out the new girl.

Brett

Will let you know as soon as we have a plan.

THAT is a sweet looking Pacer!! Congratulations, and have a safe flight, whatever route you ultimately choose.

Stop in at Toad River BC if you wind up going up the highway. Little cafe and motel right across the highway from the strip. No gas, but a good overnight or stop for coffee/bathroom break. And friendly people.

MTV

MTV's right Toad River is a good stop to eat and I have taxied accrosed the Hwy and filled up with mogas.
Looks like you've got a good man in the right seat. He'll remember this all his life.
Keep the post comeing.
Doug

Troy,

you are everywhere!

By your spot it looks like you are heading south...which makes sense seeing as it was near 20 below this morning in King Salmon!

Oh, if you get weathered in some where it might be a good idea to change your avatar...you wouldn't want your new girlfriend to get...green... with envy.

Rocket

Rocket...I will get a good photo for the avatar...maybe in the next couple days.

Today we took my brother's family to the airport and got a little flight time for the whole crew. First I took my brother and his daughter for a trip around the pattern. We only talked his son into letting us go by promising him that if he waited he could ride in the front. Then my sister-in-law decided that since her husband is a pilot he may as well give her a ride, which meant that instead of me giving rides he needed to get passenger current. Since he is not current in singles, he went out and played around for a bit to get the required takeoffs and landings, then took his whole family for a pattern. Here they are, smiling in the Tri-Pacer.


Then we went down to his work at Kansas City Downtown, and Cedric and I got to take an up close tour of an Embraer Phenom 100 and a whole lot of other cool planes at hangar 10.














Shiny slick go-fast machines.

Tomorrow we blast off for Buffalo, Wyoming.

Very cool, and the son, yes he will have memories.

I did a trip from nothern Main to Oregon with the 108 and took my dad. Had a great time. The US is very cool at 1000 AGL.

Once or so in a life time. Have fun.

So we made it from Clintonville to Kansas City to Buffalo, WY to Wenatchee. I had a hard time getting connectivity and time and energy to coincide, but now we are stuck waiting for a flywire, so I'm catching up.

So here we go: First stop a few hours in the Anchorage Airport:




It was cold in Clintonville and we jetted out pretty quick, but first we got to be part of a shortwing piper event...okay we both just got fuel, but still there were two of us there.


My son was pretty stoked and ready to go see his uncle, aunt, and cousins in KC, especially since we had no phone or data service at the Clintonville Airport and were living in a connectivity vacuum that defies the rhythm of our modern existence.


Not sure who this bozo is.


Wisconsin didn't get the memo about it being spring...but at least the river was not frozen. Love the little sand bars.


Does this look cold? It was.




Every once in a while my glasses start hurting underneath the headset, or it gets too dark and ominous outside. This time it was sort of both...so the glasses took up residence on the glareshield.


The storm that dropped all that snow was on the way out, but was leaving with some angst, so we were in some turbulence between Clintonville and Vinton, Iowa as we neared Vinton. With the new experience of having an aviation GPS to deal with in the plane, I was sorting out how to make it work to my advantage. Among my challenges now is to sort out whether I can update the data or not.

As we neared Vinton, there were a bunch of towers and I was inspecting my charts and the towers to make sure I knew where to look, and where to avoid, and I looked at the GPS and it claimed we were flying right over Vinton Airport. I banked left and looked around, then right, looked back at the GPS, and it showed us directly over the airport. So I banked hard, looked straight down, and what do you know, I flew smack over the airport without seeing it. A little embarrassing. The wind was pretty stiff, but the airplane lands like a Tri-Pacer and we had a break to get fuel while I sorted out the weather.

It was all improving, so we took off for Kansas City where we flew into Midwest National Airport and met my brother, where we took a day to visit and look at his cool go-fast machines I posted in the previous entry. The weather in Kansas City when we were on the ground at Vinton was not great, but the radar returns suggested it was all mostly moving south so off we went. In fact, the weather was good, and the turbulence was dying down as we went so it was a little more enjoyable. Out ahead, there was a bright spot beneath the clouds in our direction of travel, so I figured we'd soon fly past the dark clouds and have a little sunlight.

It was not to be. As we neared KC, the bright mirage evaporated and it started looking pretty hazy ahead. At 20 miles out, I called up the unicom to ask for a weather update. The reply was scratchy, but I gathered enough to hear that it didn't seem to be too bad, so we headed on that way and when we got closer got better reception to verify. Finally at about 5 miles we picked up the airport. The wind was moderate at a 70 degree angle to the runway, so a little crosswind practice was in the offing. Landed good, taxied off, and tied down.

I have to tell you, I loved this airport. The FBO is seriously friendly and service oriented, and are looking to get you fuel at a price that is hard to beat. Highly recommended.

The next day when my brother and his family came to the airport with us, Quinn and I took his daughter up while we went around the pattern. She was happy to ride in the airplane, but she couldn't see anything, so he got her up so she could see a bit. That wasn't really what she had in mind, as it interrupted her snack pack of M&M's, so back in the seat for her, and we came in to land. I came in a little steep, floated 50 feet or so, missed the centerline by a couple feet, and generally gave a performance that would not have satisfied my original instructor. And there he was in the plane with me.

But he said I could take his son for a flight, which his son was begging for. The son had to be in the front seat though...otherwise it would have been a big issue.

So I guess I didn't do too bad. My brother is a picky guy.

But then again...when he came back out from the FBO he asked if it would be okay with me if he took the plane up and got current. Turns out his wife wanted him to take them all flying, as they had only ever done that once. He flies for a living, but is not current in singles, so off he went to buzz around the pattern a few times.

When he came back, I asked him how he did. He said he did three landings, and they all stunk. But he took his family up and they all came back in good shape and his landing with the family was better. He said he would need a few more landings to sort it out again. In looking over his logs, we realized that he has never flown any one plane that much. Being a working pilot in jobs with multiple planes and pilots, he has a lot of different tail numbers in his logbook. He figured he could have used a little more brushup time.

Maybe he will decide to get a plane someday, but after as many years as he's been flying, I have a hard time imagining he will launch into ownership. But you never know.

Kansas City to Buffalo coming tomorrow.

After a lovely day in Kansas City that involved getting my brother and his family some Tri-Pacer time, wandering around looking at the shiny go-fast planes he flies, and eating some really good food, we blasted off the following morning for Buffalo, Wyoming. Quinn and I had stopped there on our initial adventure, visiting a couple that we met through their son, who worked out in our corner of Alaska for a few years. Now there are a lot of ways of getting from Wisconsin, or Kansas City, to Washington that don't involve necessarily stopping at Buffalo. But between the stories from their son, as well as from Quinn and I after our other trip, my son was bound and determined he was going to see Albert and Sherri because he wanted to see their house.

It isn't that the house is the most amazing custom home in history. Well, it is pretty amazing, but Cedric wouldn't have really cared about that. No, Albert is a hunter. An amazing hunter, one that combines the ethic of feeding his family, feeding the village, and an awesome respect for the game. And he has a few, a very few, mounts on his walls. It may look like a lot of mounts, but in relation to the number of animals he did not mount, it is few. There aren't really that many men I know who for part of their adult life made a living hunting animals, but Albert did exactly that for many years when the local economy around Buffalo was poor, selling furs for a living. He really is a storehouse of knowledge on animals. And Cedric couldn't wait to see him again.

When we checked the weather, it was pretty good after getting out of Kansas City, but the morning weather near KC was not great. Not bad, but not great. It didn't look like there would be much wind, but there was an area with restricted visibility that was mostly south of us but would be somewhat in our route of flight. Kansas City has a major Class B airport, a few miles west of Midwest National Airport. I had tried the nifty AirNav fuel planning site, and was destined for Minden, Nebraska, which would take me straight through beneath the approach for the pair of primary runways in use at Kansas City International. I could have held beneath 2400 feet, but with terrain at 1100, that gave me pretty much 300 feet to maintain between adequate clearance for a congested area and the Class B airspace, and I was pretty sure that the controllers wouldn't be falling all over themselves to help me save 5 minutes by making a mess of their arrival queue.

So we took off and skirted north, holding under the 4000 foot floor of the outer shelf of their airspace, where we had lots more leeway. We headed up to the upper end of Smithville Lake before turning direct toward Minden. But we hadn't been in the air too long when the forecasts for occasional reduced visibility in the KC area started to concern me. We found there was a bit of precipitation hitting the windshield, then a little later it got more. Visibility, while restricted, was never less than 5 miles, but when I noticed the precipitation I looked at the outside air temperature gauge and it said...32 degrees. Uh oh.

I started dialing in nearest on the GPS and found St. Joseph 25 miles away. I dialed in their ATIS frequency on 125.05 and they were reporting clear skies and visibility 10 miles. That definitely sounded better than where I was. As we flew along, I kept watching the drops to make sure they kept moving, and I kept an eye on the distance to St. Joseph so I would know what I was dealing with in case the water drops stopped moving...

Before I even had a chance to decide whether I could remember ever seeing water on my windshield and 32 degree temperatures, and before I was in that long enough to decide I ought to turn around, we broke out into fantastic weather that held for the rest of the flight.

Whew.

The snow was still holding, and the patterns of snow in the farms below was mesmerizing.


Cedric had long since started his morning nap. He isn't a morning person in general, and he certainly wasn't going to be up early for these flights without some help. And after getting in the plane, he was down for the count. He didn't even last until the first raindrop.


He says that he doesn't want to move the seat up even though it would help him see better. The reason? He says he likes my shoulder...

As we went, the air got a little burbly in keeping with the clouds, but it was a beautiful day.


Finally, we arrived at Minden, Nebraska, having completely skipped Kansas by flying over without stopping.

Minden is a funny airport. A fine little runway, with traffic patterns designed to keep the airplanes away from town. There is no automated weather reporting, so I entered a downwind for runway 16, which gave me a good view of the windsock. Flying past, it was clear that the wind was not ideal for 16, though it also wasn't ideal for 34. But the cross runway was turf, which I wasn't excited about since we had just finally flown out of the snow and I didn't know how long the ground had been frozen or how mushy it was, so we landed on 34. It was a little sporty feeling, and we ended up well down the runway past where I thought we should be, but still with plenty of room. We taxied over to the fuel tanks and I looked at the flag. Hmm. That didn't make any sense. Looked back at the windsock. The winsock and the flag were indicating 180 degrees opposite. Very odd.

Minden has about the most affordable fuel anywhere, but there was no place to pay for fuel on a self serve, so I went in the office and there were signs with numbers to call for fuel. Called a couple of them until I got an answer and a helpful gentleman showed up to run my credit card and we were on our way again. Walking out of the office, I looked at the flag, then the windsock. Still complete disagreement. Huh. I guess you just take your pick and take your chances.

Forgot to mention, after we left the crummy weather behind, I spent most of the rest of the flight to Minden dodging huge flocks of huge birds. My impression is they were swans. They were flying south in huge numbers, and all imaginable altitudes. I found myself peering into the distance with a laser focus, trying to see the next flock in time to identify whether I needed to turn. I probably only altered course a couple times, but it was exhausting knowing they were all over the place and we couldn't afford to miss seeing any group that was going to be at our altitude. Cedric was asleep, so no help from the passenger on that one.

After leaving Minden, our selected AirNav route had us going to Torrington, Wyoming for fuel next. The line took us right up a major highway, which was fun as it gives a good set of visual references. It also yields up one airport after another. So we flew along, crossing airports from high above, and then as I looked at the next one on the map, I grabbed the camera and took a picture.

And here it is, in all its glory: Quinn Field.


Named after my brother, I'm sure. Well, okay, probably not. But pretty cool. Looks like a nice field, and that is a huge turf runway.

The terrain then started looking more like desert, and Cedric, who was alert now that he had slept in by dozing through the entire first flight, remarked that it reminded him of the Alaska countryside where the tundra flats stretch for miles in the Bristol Bay lowlands.


On toward Torrington, we got a great view of Scott's Bluff.


Torrington is not long after, but there is a lovely river that we flew up as we went from Scott's Bluff to Torrington, the Platte River.


I said we'd get to Buffalo tonight, but I've run out of steam. Maybe tomorrow. Right now we are nearing Torrington.

Toad River shows prior permission required or some such. Anybody ever have an issue with them not wanting people to land? I'd love to taxi across the highway to fuel at the pump...going to make the route accomodate that stop.

My last time at Toad River was about ten years ago. Don't remember any particulars about prior permission. I taxied over the highway and fueled at the car pumps. No biggie at all.

Thanks for the great trip report. I'm really enjoying it.

P.s. wonder if you may have been seeing flocks of snow geese. They get pretty large, and can be everywhere in that area, and they are white like swans. Not as large as swans, but still big.

Tailwinds,

-DP