Shortly after taking this picture, I got back in the plane, started it, and looking out the windshield realized I was unable to ascertain the surface of the snow exactly. I had a horizon, and good viz in clear air, but looking at the rolling slope I was going to takeoff on, there was no depth perception. Thinking back to the landing, I had scoped it out pretty good, but had used the building to eyeball off of, to give me some sense of depth. I opened her up and started the takeoff, and after a while I wiggled the stick, nope, still on the snow, couldn't really tell from looking at it. A short time later the same stick wiggle showed I was in the air. The soft snow was so cushy it felt like flying while still on it.

Not even close to being whited out in the conventional sense, it was more a flat light/lack of definition thing. When this happens up at the ski area (often) I slow down, not an option for takeoff! I am just glad I knew for a fact I had a 1/2 mile or so of even enough terrain prior to starting the takeoff, and that only took 500' or so. Most of my other landings have had more "stuff" around, trees, fences etc, SOMETHING to eyeball. Good to experience this in a non critical takeoff. At least this next landing had a lot of that. I used the ramp for the first time(an old, like 70 year old, truck bed made out of 3/16" steel, bought below scrap price, widened 2 feet in width, and set into place with my crane just for the winter, warm weather it will be stashed behind an outbuilding as the area it is in passes for my front yard), this allows me to push the plane straight out the hangar and go, meaning a lot less prior snow removal. It worked fine, but since I had to "go to skis" while still on the level area, it meant I had to slide down the steel (smooth but pitted a bit) deck on the ski wear bars, not a good long term option. So, getting out my FARMTEK catalog (farm and ranch supplies) I found they offer 50' rolls of HDPE in various thicknesses, so I got some coming, and will install it this week on the ramp, enough so the main gear will be sliding on plastic anyway, that should slick things up, I'll get a video of the ramp in use and post it at some point.

delete

Spruce boughs spaced out along the intended runway was a common trick in the old days. Nowadays most glacier pilots in my area favor black plastic trash bags filled with snow. I chartered a beaver into an untracked portion of the Don Sheldon amphitheater in the Alaska Range once, when the pilot was debating whether to have us open a door and start pitching our gear out for ground reference for landing.

Looks like you're still ahead in the fun column

Looks like a wheel irrigation line in the distance. Could you taxi to it and take off parallel to it, watching out for risers?

Flat light is the single biggest lurking danger in ski flying. As you noted, it doesn't have to be 1/4 mile vis for flat light to really create some issues.

Overcast days on skis can get really sporty. Be careful out there.
MTV

Second using amber lenses.
It helps alot snowmobiling.

SE6601KF wrote:Second using amber lenses.
It helps alot snowmobiling.

I'll try the amber lenses, I'm pretty sure I can get some for my Smith sunglasses. Thanks for the tip. I usually wear dark lenses so if I fall asleep running the crane, no one can tell

I also got whited out a week earlier, snowboarding out of bounds of the ski area, on the way down the mountain to my place. A fog bank moved in and that was all she wrote, 10 or 20' viz, I ended up hitting the road to my place about 1/2 mile north of where I was supposed to be. A few times I thought I was moving, and was not, other times I thought I was stopped and I was moving. Fell over once just due to spatial disorientation, not the first time this has happened, but it sure is a good reminder of why I never want to get whited out flying!

Almost all the places I go into have a reference of some kind, if not sagebrush, a treeline or something to eyeball, this big old spud field was a rare wide open place for me. Good experience and no harm no foul this time, but I sure want to avoid ever landing in conditions like the takeoff, up to me I guess to make sure I don't!

Yet another day of 20 to 30+ winds, 3 rd or 4th in a row!

When I was flying on skis I frequently encountered the whiteout conditions on cloudy days when there are no shadows to give you depth perception. I learned to land near a shoreline for visual reference and to land using the glassy water technique that I use when flying on floats.

courierguy wrote:I sure want to avoid ever landing in conditions like the takeoff, up to me I guess to make sure I don't!

Best treated as a glassy water landing, if you ever find yourself needing to do so

courierguy wrote:I'll try the amber lenses, I'm pretty sure I can get some for my Smith sunglasses. Thanks for the tip. I usually wear dark lenses so if I fall asleep running the crane, no one can tell

Suggestion- take more than one pair. It's really easy in winter to fog them up- usually because you've just gotten all sweated up shoveling, or snowshoeing, or stuffing wingcovers which are frosted up twice their size into a bag that was optimistically sized to begin with, all while wearing your insulated winter flying suit/ balaclava/ fur hat, etc. Pretty soon foggy lenses are frosted, and you're better off without them. Much easier to reach for the spare pair, then to successfully defrost the first pair.

courierguy wrote:..... I usually wear dark lenses so if I fall asleep running the crane, no one can tell .........

Didn't you set some HVAC equipment for me once?
Actually, I'd rather the crane operator fall asleep than ignore my signalling.

courierguy wrote:

SE6601KF wrote:Second using amber lenses.
It helps alot snowmobiling.

I'll try the amber lenses, I'm pretty sure I can get some for my Smith sunglasses.

I've found through my years of enthusiastic storm skiing, that yellow lenses work best for flat light in low light conditions. If the day is very bright, they overload the eyes, but something about yellow really helps enhance the depth perception.

Courierguy, if your ramp isn't big enough, here is an old trick to get you going.

I know I sound like a broken record, but that flat light and white-out conditions are probably the biggest eater of airplanes in western and northwest Alaska. It is absolutely brutal flying, and until you've experienced it, you have no clue as to how hard it is to keep an airplane upright. It is NOT the same as punching into the clouds and going on the gauges. If you're not trained and prepared, it is one of the most terrifying things there is to experience in an airplane.

I gots lots and lots of hours in that muck, but there were still days I had the leans so bad I couldn't force my head upright if my life depended on it. All I could do was pull my hat down low, slump way down in my seat so I couldn't see anything outside the airplane, and fixate on the panel.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 018&akey=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 047&akey=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 046&akey=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_ ... 029&akey=1

On the last NTSB report listed here, I had landed a few minutes ahead of Mark in the Caravan. It was Special VFR like Big Time Wrassling is a real sport. NOT...

Gump

courierguy wrote:

SE6601KF wrote:Second using amber lenses.
It helps alot snowmobiling.

I'll try the amber lenses, I'm pretty sure I can get some for my Smith sunglasses. Thanks for the tip. I usually wear dark lenses so if I fall asleep running the crane, no one can tell
!

Smith came out with goggles in the last couple years that are polarized rose copper...AMAZING for flat-light conditions when skiing..granted they aren't cheap but well worth it if you have a need for goggles in flatlight conditions. I have seen a couple other brands also come out with a polarized flatlight lense (granted polarized is not good for looking at the instruments)

I got my roll of 4' wide 1/8" HDPE today, and it took only about 3 hours to unroll, cut to 2 lengths, and pop rivet (large diameter head rivets) into place on the ramp bed. This stuff is SLICK. With the rusty steel deck, even with snow packed boot soles I could walk down it, now with the smallest trace of snow it is like greased lightning! My skis have two wear bars, on the inboard of eack ski it is a tapered/rounded chunk of HPDE. outboard it is 1/2" aluminum sq. rod. I am sure that the different wear bar, or skeg is probably a better term, material and shape is there for a reason, I'll have to ask Jean Luc, the designer, the next time we talk.

I've decided that when doing no snow ski down takeoffs on the HDPE ramp it won't hurt a thing to give the skegs a swipe with a bar of paraffin to possibly further lessen friction. Good old canning type paraffin wax is nowadays somewhat overlooked as a good cheap and effective slicker upper, I first used it when building cabinet drawers, the old style way, with no hardware sliders, good stuff.

courierguy wrote:....it won't hurt a thing to give the skegs a swipe with a bar of paraffin to possibly further lessen friction. Good old canning type paraffin wax is nowadays somewhat overlooked as a good cheap and effective slicker upper....

Back when I lived in SoCal, I used to see stickers on surfer's rigs for "Doctor Zog's Sex Wax" . For some reason that came to mind when reading your post.