Today’s Landing

This one was right up there with the famous Stocker landing that Bushy and I did in during a thunder storm year’s ago.

At 3000 feet there was 60 kts. from south-southwest. On the ground at my place I had a 20 plus direct cross wind and big turbulence. I don’t know what the gusts were, but I could not get down.

The corn field on north side of the runway was deep tilled last fall, but still has some fodder on the surface. And it has been really wet and muddy with rain every day for the last month. That was my choice, land as much sideways to the strip as I could.

The plan was to set down next to Rte 16 by our “Graham Farm” sign and head towards my hangar. The first try at down wind was 150 mph gs and I was bull riding (left hand on the stick and the right up in the air with the bucks) and I chickened out trying for base leg thinking that I was going to be smashed into the hill.

Second try, I did a long base leg and I couldn’t get gs that down below 97 mph, but I pulled off an ugly turn to final and hit the muddy corn field at a 45 degree angle to the rows with full right stick and still had the wing go up a couple times.

Once more, I am glad that I have Alaska BushWheels.

Good one!

Same here, just the other day, after taking the wheel skis off and putting the Airstreaks back on, I decided to take off on the wheels down the ski ramp, just for the heck of it as I was removing the ski ramp the next day. And, I figured I may as well land on the ski runway (slightly different heading then the summertime one, most important it's lined up straight with the hangar door so less screwing around when on the skis). When I hit the bottom of the ramp (got to keep some speed up), I felt a pretty good thump, and only after parking and walking back down the ramp did I remember that there was a pretty rough transition from the steel deck to the ground. During the winter this was feathered out with snow, making a smooth transition, now it was like running into a 6x6....no problem, up and over, REAL glad I had the Bushwheels!

3 inches of snow this AM!