"It's hard, especially living out here in the Bush. Planes are to us what cars are to people in the Lower 48. We rely on them heavily, for coming and going. They are just part of the way we do business and the way we live our lives," Moore said. "But the weather turns quickly and it's dangerous. Sometimes we don't think about the dangers."

All these good pilots killed this year, just a shame. The quote from the article made me think. Is it worth your life to fly in crap weather? It appears for to many the answer is yes.

I don't get it I guess.

Regards

Sounds like u picked a good year not to go to AK Rob............. 28 days of rain in a row

RobBurson wrote:"It's hard, especially living out here in the Bush. Planes are to us what cars are to people in the Lower 48. We rely on them heavily, for coming and going. They are just part of the way we do business and the way we live our lives," Moore said. "But the weather turns quickly and it's dangerous. Sometimes we don't think about the dangers."

All these good pilots killed this year, just a shame. The quote from the article made me think. Is it worth your life to fly in crap weather? It appears for to many the answer is yes.

I don't get it I guess.

Regards

No fly=No money...

Plus you do so much of it, that you get real comfortable in stuff that would have made you pee your pants when you first started. But... Sooner or later pushing your nose into stuff bites you when things snap shut, and Plan B is not well thought out.

Gump

Never had a plan B except a 180...guess that is why I quit

GumpAir wrote:No fly=No money...

Plus you do so much of it, that you get real comfortable in stuff that would have made you pee your pants when you first started. But... Sooner or later pushing your nose into stuff bites you when things snap shut, and Plan B is not well thought out.

Gump

Shit.. Sometimes you can't go back. It's worse.

Gump

GumpAir wrote:Shit.. Sometimes you can't go back. It's worse.

Gump

I know that feeling.....

MTV

Got trapped in the Beaver one day in a small bowl in the tundra.... fog dropped fast. Had to fly a tight circle for what seemed like a very long time. My heart rate was pegged. Thought very seriously of just sliding it onto the wet grass on the floats... but the bank angle meant I would catch a wing. Hope they find these guys alive. Too young to die.

Just got back from Juneau last week. Weather on the way up there wasn't a problem. It was the smoke. We were stuck at Williams Lake for 2 days. The smoke was so bad you couldn't see across the runway! On our way back We were down to 1 mile visibility and followed the Dean river into Anahim, and spent a few days in Nimpo Lake. There were over 300 fires burning when we were up there. Pine beetle has descimated the forests..

I think they are pushing the weather a little harder all the time. New navigation technology offering unprecedented situational awareness (maybe too good), further increases in costs thus furthering cost - cutting, and more bureaucracy drive operators to do things they might not do otherwise.

A fellow I know who has flown in the Yukon for decades once told me that there are a bunch of way better pilots than he who are dead up there on the hillsides.

If you are around the things long enough, they will bite you or someone you know or care about.

gb

gbflyer wrote:I think they are pushing the weather a little harder all the time. New navigation technology offering unprecedented situational awareness (maybe too good)

That is so true. When Capstone came out and we got the Apollo GPS and MX-20 with that great moving map, we flew in shit that we never would have otherwise.

Gump

Gump, I was the guy who got to introduce Capstone phase II, to the pilots in Southeast.
Synthetic vision and all that. Been wondering since then if it saves lives. Government says 40% accident reduction in SE. Most days I am not inclined to believe the Government. Hope it is at least helping, though a son of a friend was killed in a beaver out of Ketchikan recently. Don't know the details on that one. Have to agree that all the glass has made some guys more bold... and that can lead to a bad day.

flightlogic, now that you brought it up, do Synthetic vision and night vision goggles see through fog and rain??

Synthetic vision is simply the DOD public domain database of terrain... depicted in software. That worries me. When we were testing it... I flew lots of high terrain test flights in Colorado and Alaska. Sometimes big hard dangerous rocks were not in the right place...
All the manufacturers are creating higher definition renderings of the same old data. Bad trend, as it leads the pilot to think the data improved. Until DOD gives us the really good stuff (and they have it) we will be dependent on the current state of the art.
NVG's just gather light. If it is foggy.... no luck. An IR camera can get a pretty good image through some fog.

patrol guy wrote:flightlogic, now that you brought it up, do Synthetic vision and night vision goggles see through fog and rain??

Not sure about synthetic vision but NVG's will let you see through a slight amount of precipitation. Just enough to really suck you in to an IFR experience at low level you were not really ready for, speaking from experience there.

Yeah, the database in the Apollo/MX20 had some glaring errors in it, and we worked out our own trust levels with time and experience with the stuff. I had each runway end to each strip I flew as a specific waypoint, and knew the exact mag heading of each. With that CDI screwed down tight to 0.001 mile, even the skinny strips popped out of the gloom right on the centerline. Of course that won't show musk ox on the strip or kids on fourwheelers, or for you SE guys, cruise ships in the middle of the channel sticking up a couple hundred feet.

And Flightlogic, our Casa 212 did the first ever civilian ADS-B approach, on a run into Bethel in December 2000 using the first generation Capstone equipment... Never got to play with the 2nd generation boxes, but sure sounds like fun stuff.

http://www.caasd.org/work/project_detai ... tem_id=108


Gump

RobBurson wrote:"It's hard, especially living out here in the Bush. Planes are to us what cars are to people in the Lower 48. We rely on them heavily, for coming and going. They are just part of the way we do business and the way we live our lives," Moore said. "But the weather turns quickly and it's dangerous. Sometimes we don't think about the dangers."

All these good pilots killed this year, just a shame. The quote from the article made me think. Is it worth your life to fly in crap weather? It appears for to many the answer is yes.

I don't get it I guess.

Regards

Rob

The reality is that crap weather is the norm, not the exception.
For me if i don't fly=patients not seen. With weeks in a row of low ceilings and poor vis things sill need to get done. Even though you make the attemt to get a good briefing, weather varies GREATLY up here.
This weeks travel was a good case in point. Got the brief, ceiling 1500 scattered 2500 broken, 5000 OC and 10 miles vis at my destination in Unalakleet. Supposed to be better in-route. supposed to be stable to improving throughout the day. Departed White Mountain in rare severe-clear conditions, but as i flew SW down the Norton Sound coast the layers were building. In the 45 minutes it took me to get from White Mountain to Unalakleet the ceiling dropped to 700 feet, still had 6-7 miles vis. 120 miles from one point to another, no weather reporting station in route, Unalakleet's had gone down that morning. GAS available at unalakleet, next nearest in Nome 150 miles the direction i had just come from also under low celings and 3 vis or Galina 170 miles over the socked in Nulato hills. And just that quick, a routine flight becomes something else.
I have no doubt that pilots get somewhat immune to the risks, but for the most part, the pilots i know in this area that fly day in and day out do the best they can to balance the risks vs the need to get there.

Just my 2 cents

Chris

Like I said. No Fly = No Money. Also no mail to village post office, no food to the native stores, no people getting in and out of the middle of nowhere. I timed out most years at 1,400 hours on the books and really had to pace myself so it didn't happen sometime in November. And that doesn't count the few hundred more each year in my own airplanes that I never bothered to put in the log book.

You get to where you know every willow bush in every streambed, and every rock along the shore for hundreds of miles. And if I can make it to point X at 100 foot AGL, there's nothing in my way so I can get even lower for the run into runway Y at the village.

But, that's up places like Nome, Kotz, and Barrow. If the SE guys pushed like that they'd splatter into the rocks in five minutes. Apples and oranges. Down here in Nevada... Cool, sunny, and no wind or else I'm gonna sit here and have a glass of wine. Flying is dangerous down here.


Gump

Gump,
Exactly! Not part and parcel, but the main course of living up here. Especially for the guys (and gals) who fly every day that are the "life's blood" for these villages out here, nothing moves without them.

BTW ran into the Discovery Channel crew that is working on documenting some of the local air-taxi pilots this week while i've been down here in Unalakleet, looks like it should be pretty good stuff.

Chris

To bad they didn't get there a few months ago....they could have interviewed Stinky Hardy before he died.........

slowhawk wrote:Gump,
BTW ran into the Discovery Channel crew that is working on documenting some of the local air-taxi pilots this week while i've been down here in Unalakleet, looks like it should be pretty good stuff.

Chris