Test flight in Danville Il. Plane checks out OK, got biannual check ride OK. All set to leave in the AM.
Day one, planned to depart Danville just slightly north of due West. Hit snow squalls and stiff head winds. Ground speed around 65 mph. outside air temp 10f.
Ran into snow at Milan Ill. Tried to edge North to get out of the snow. I ran into a snow squall and saw an airport and was circling around it keeping it in sight as visibility was failing. I was not sure where I was at and while looking at charts and phone nav and trying to get a radio frequency to call the airport I got a green light from the tower. Still with no radio I set up and landed, rolled up to the gas stop and got word to talk to the tower. I had landed at the only class C airport in the entire region so had done an inadvertent incursion into restricted airspace. Tower guy was nice, took my information and said FAA may want to talk to me and may not.
Got gas and bought a bright red sweatshirt, called weather and was advised to go due North to Dubuque and get out of the weather front. I told him what I was flying and how slow I was with headwinds, so he said go 50 miles North of Dubuque before I turned West. I called the tower and got permission to leave and did so.
Next leg I flew well North of Dubuque and started turning West again.
I had a direct head wind and at one point was down to 38 mph! Made gas stop at Pocahontas Ne. Where I found I was having trouble with the left main tire losing air.
Landed in Vermillion, spoke with very nice man that was the airport manager, he was out of town doing a flight check and told me to take the airport car, go to town and meet later and he could get me into a hangar.
Met him at 9:30, went to move plane and found the tire flat. We managed to get it into the hangar, and I spent most of the next day trying to get a new tube. I finally put in some stop leak, aired the tire up and took off. The tire had been holding air for 4 hours or more and I was stopping every two so it should have been OK.
My next stop was Valentine NE. I went in for gas and when I landed the valve stem broke off of the tube. I limped on into the FBO and found the mechanic. He looked around and found a used tube that would work. We worked together and changed out the tube. P.O.S. jack I had bought at Vermillion broke on the first attempt to use it. Rented a heated hangar for the night and got airport car. I was handed the keys to the hangar as well and told that I could leave whenever I wanted so I was out there at daylight and headed West again.
Still facing terrible headwinds, ground speed ranging from 40 to 60.
My next stop was Lusk, got gas, checked plane and headed out. I think it was here that I put in some oil and left off the fill cap. When I took off, I had oil vapor on the windshield right away, I circled back, landed and got to spend an hour trying to clean up the mess. Put in some more oil and took off. I had lost about a half quart.
I was now being pushed South by weather and high mountains. I chose to go to Riverton Wy. And then through South Pass. It was still very cold and bad head winds. I had another terrible landing and a worse take off from Riverton.
In retrospect I had found that the knob that was labeled as ‘parking brake’ that I had traced and was sure was cab heat for the left side, was indeed the parking brake lock. The really bad landings and bad take offs were a direct result of the fact that when the brake lock knob was out, whenever I applied the brake, it held the pedal down. The left master cylinder had developed a bypass issue so it would bleed off and roll free while the right brake stayed applied. No wonder I had some real exciting ground handling.
After leaving Riverton, I had been advised to not attempt the due West pass, too high and too windy. So, I went Due South, then more Easterly to get over the mountain. I had to make a big turning circle to climb more before I was clear to cross into South Pass.
I was traveling a little South of West toward Kemmerer Wy, the terrain was lower that way, so I was being forced South again.
I was about 8 miles North of Farson when the engine suddenly lost power. Not a complete failure just enough to scare me good. I tried carb heat, changing mags, fuel selector, everything and nothing helped at all.
I saw reflection of sunlight off of buildings to my left, so I turned that direction. I soon came over a highway and was still losing altitude. I figured to get as close to the town as I could and then land on the highway if possible or on the scrubland next to the highway.
I was down to about 800 feet AGL and was counting semi-trucks to try to land in between them when I spotted a dirt landing strip off my right wing.
I made an abrupt left turn and then several violent zigzags to lose altitude and came in. It was a very poor landing, I bounced really bad but I got it down and rolled up beside a large hangar.
I shut down, got out and taking my bags I walked up to the house. I knocked on the door and met Betty Applequist, 96 years old, friendly, spry, generous and sweet. She invited me in, asked if I was OK, let me use her restroom, gave me a drink of water and a chance to warm up. She called her son Trip, he came over and gave me a truck and access to his shop and tools, another son Darrel showed up at the hangar and we managed to move one of the planes inside to get room to put mine in.
I worked on the plane that afternoon trying to find the problem, another man was called who was an A&P named Butch Grandby, he, his wife and son stopped by after feeding cattle and he looked and poked and asked questions and said he would be back in the morning.
I was invited to stay in the home of Betty, got fed dinner and invited to join Betty’s 96 birthday party where I met about a dozen of the very nicest people.
In the morning I removed the primer pump, the seals had shrunk in the cold. I removed the gascolator, flushed and cleaned all the fuel lines, put everything back together and started the engine, it seemed to be idling OK, I taxied down the runway and tried some power, the engine balked and ran poorly so I taxied back to the hangar. When I stopped and shut down there was an immediate run of engine oil from the breather tube onto the ground.
We put it back into the hangar and returned to trouble shooting. When we began to remove the spark plugs from the left mag, which testing had shown had a miss, we found a plug wire that had been kinked sharply and was nearly touching the cowling. The insulation had cracked, and the wire was arcing to the cowl killing that spark plug. We ran a complete compression test, visual check and found no other issues. The oil spillage was a concern. It took some ingenuity to shorten and repair the plug wire, but we were successful, we sand blasted the plugs and when everything was reinstalled, I tested it.
The engine ran smooth, it had full power, I made two taxi runs and then took off and flew for twenty minutes. The engine was fine, only failing to make full power when I was testing mixture and went too lean. The leaking oil was still a question, but we couldn’t make it do it again. After the test flight the oil had dried up and it had not used any more.
We cleaned up and I went back to the house for another nice meal and night of sleep. In the morning I got up, showered, dressed, stripped the bed and folded the blankets. I made a cup of tea and was just ready to leave when Betty came out of her room. She insisted on me having some breakfast so the least I could talk her into was a bowl of strawberries and a bagel.
I finally got going and saw my plane was outside of the hangar! As I got closer, I could see that it had a fairly good layer of frost on it.
Apparently, Darren had needed to go fly and had taken my plane out so he could get his out. Had I been down earlier I could have helped him, and my plane would not have developed frost.
I moved it to angle the sun onto the windshield, took a clean cloth and wiped it down, then found a broom and lightly swept the wings and tail.
For the first time I had difficulty starting the engine, I managed to over prime it and flooded it. I climbed out of the plane to check things over again and found I had a gas fire on the ground under the motor. I had flooded it so badly that it leaked gas onto the ground, soaked into the sand and caught on fire. I moved the plane back about ten feet, opened the cowl and made sure the engine was not on fire, opened the throttle wide open and hand propped the engine backwards about six blades to clear it out. I got back in and with the throttle wide open hit the starter and it fired right up and ran clean. After a warmup I shut it down to allow the heat to spread throughout the engine, went behind the hangar and peed again then climbed in, taxied to the end of the runway and with fingers crossed, gave it the gas and took off. I thought at one point I was going to still have a problem because the RPMs dropped a little just after I took off, not wanting to mess with the mixture or anything and still climbing I waited a few seconds and got full RPMs back. I climbed out with the engine making more power than before and was able to go right up to 8000 quite easily.
I was low on fuel at this point, so I went to Kemmerer, topped off the tanks and took off again. Kemmerer was the highest airport I used 7700 ft.
I climbed from there and went to 9550, I turned North and got to Bear Lake, I followed the East shore and proceeded past Montpelier and then to Paris Id.
My last obstacle as a 9300 ft peak to the West, I went around that and was looking down into the area around Pocatello. I stopped for gas at American falls. I was communicating with Janis by text and told Heather to go outside and look up.
She had already left for the airport but saw me fly over. I landed at Twin Falls, parked the plane at Reeder FBO and left it while we went for lunch. Later we returned, met with JP and put the plane in his hangar.
I have identified several items that I will repair or replace before the next section of flight. The spark plugs are old so I will replace them all, the wires are old, and I will replace them. I will replace the o rings on the primer pump and will rebuild the left master cylinder.
If I can, I will adjust the aileron cables to get the yoke straight and finally I will replace both inner tubes with new ones.
After having the issues with navigation, I will come up with some sort of a much better solution. I will buy paper charts for the trip and will have either a moving map like a Garmin or will have an E book with fore flight on it or something like that.
I had planned to come and get the plane and fly on North, but the FAA had not cleared my medical yet, We ended up coming South and visited family, went to Harley’s wedding and flew back home.
It was several more weeks and I had arranged for a man to fly up with me, he has had lots of experience doing the trip and could help fly and navigate. I flew down and got to the plane, I found it had a bad miss in the engine, lots of looking finally ended up being a stuck exhaust valve on number six cylinder. I had to remove the prop, the nose bowl and all that to get room but was able to ‘stake’ the valve and it came free. Put everything back and a test flight and all was OK.
I flew up to Challis to help clear out dad’s shop and flew back to Twin Falls, all ran just fine. I determined to use mo-gas as much as possible and was able to locate a jug of Alcor to put in when I had to use 100ll.
I met Ted Waltman and after spending the night at H&C we took off headed for Alaska. We had flight planned as well as possible, but the weather conditions still made changes for us.
We made it into Montana on the first leg, gassed up and continued on. We planned a gas stop at Shelby and a border crossing at Sweet Grass. As we got closer, we found wind at 48 knots crossways to the runway so went for our alternate. CutBank had wind at 46 but it was right down the grass runway in the middle of the infield area.
I came in too fast, not wanting to have the wind drop me, then I bounced it really bad and finally got it on the ground. I had to taxi way out and around to get back onto pavement because I couldn’t turn away from the wind, the tire would just We finally were able to taxi back to the parking area and get into the wind shadow of a building enough for my co-pilot to jump out and grab onto a wing strut and hold us down until I could get a rope on it.
The next day we flew into SweetGrass, or Coutes international to clear customs, I had spent a lot of time gathering paperwork and had a whole book of it, we landed on the grass runway, back taxied and found a parking area, shut down and called customs. “We are on the ground here in Coutes to clear customs” I said. “Has anything changed since you filed your paperwork this morning” the lady asked me. “No, nothing has changed”, “OK, your code number is such and such, you are cleared, have a nice day.”
We were back in the air and on the way in a few minutes. Our next stop was at Fort Nelson, the weather had been getting worse and worse as we came North and by the time we got here we were in the middle of a full on lighting storm, wind rain and fire all around us. Heavy lightning especially right over the airport. We circled around the town for fifteen or twenty minutes waiting for things to clear up a bit and finally had an opening where one storm cell moved off and the next wasn’t quite in yet and managed to land and get tied down.
We got a motel, and a courtesy car came and picked us up. We had a good dinner and nights rest. The next morning the weather looked to be pretty good, forecasts were OK and conditions on the route of flight were improving.
We took off and about forty miles out ran into rising terrain and lowering cloud cover. We climbed and looked at it to see if it was just a small area of ground fog we could go over and didn’t like that. We tried to go up the hill and under and ran right into solid cover, made a sharp turn around and got the hell out. We then decided to look to the West and see if we could get around the clouds and stay in lower terrain. It got better the further West we flew but at a certain point we had to decide if we could get through Ok or if we needed to go back and get fuel again.
We arrived at our decision point and could see way out ahead so elected to proceed. Our next point of interest was at Watson Lake, flying conditions had been improving steadily, the plane was working fine. My landings had been improving somewhat. We landed at Watson, fueled up and rested while visiting with some other travelers. After an hour or so we loaded up and took off. The plane ran fine, the take off was fine. We needed to cross over the lake to continue on and as it was warm, we were not climbing fast. We made it across the lake OK and suddenly the engine began to miss badly, I tried to clear the mags, no help, I checked the fuel selector, no help. I reached for the carb heat, but we were so low that I didn’t think we could still fly if we lost any more power and I knew pulling carb heat would make us lose power for at least a short time until it cleared if that was the issue. I made a real gentle turn, we didn’t want to cross the water again, so we followed the shoreline back to the airport and landed, all the while still running badly.
Once on the ground I checked all the fuel system, even to the point of pulling the carb inlet screen and found no problem except for some sand or dirt in the left tank. After doing all I could I fired the engine back up and it ran just fine. After some discussion we figured the only thing it could have been was carb ice. I never noticed any water dripping from the inlet but I wasn’t really looking for that.
We took off again and circled the airport, climbed to four thousand feet, everything was just fine. We headed North instead of West to keep over the road and the engine ran just fine.
Because we had to follow the road, we needed to stop at Carcross for fuel, there we were told that US Customs in Skagway was closing at 3:00, we called and spoke with the station captain and he said if we could get there before then he would wait and clear us so we gobbled a piece of pizza, got ten gallons of gas and took off for Skagway.
The plane ran fine and from here it was all level or downhill, we made good time and got to Skagway ahead of schedule. The customs agent was very friendly and kind, he checked our paperwork and cleared us through. We climbed back into the plane for the last leg of fourteen miles to Haines and home.
Two days later I flew my co-pilot to Juneau to catch a jet for his home.
I have always wanted to do some long cross-country flights, this trip gave me lots of ‘firsts’
My first time East of the Mississippi, first time navigating over extensive flatlands, highest airport ever, first in flight engine failure, and so on.
It took just about double the fuel cost I had budgeted, not because I figured wrong but because the price of fuel went nuts on me. All told I flew about fifty hours from the time I bought the plane until I was home with it. Some of that time was not necessarily part of the trip but it all occured on the trip. I made a side trip to Challis from Twin and back, did some test flights after service work and so on.
Would I do it again, yes, was it the best way, probably not. I probably could have hired a ferry pilot for the entire trip and had it done a lot faster and for a lot less cost. But, maybe not, a ferry pilot would not have been able to diagnose and repair the issue in Wyoming nor the issue in Twin Falls so I would have had to hire a mechanic or flown down and fixed it myself and then had the pilot continue or found another one.
All in all, it was very scary, very hard on my wife, very frustrating and very satisfying.
