Three flying to the far north

16 January 09

The three of us left for Los Angeles on December 15 to buy a plane and fly it back home to Fairbanks Alaska. We had hoped to be home by Christmas. Due to complications caused by not really knowing how to buy a plane, doing so far from home, flying through one of the worst winters in recent history, and trying to keep a 3 year old from going stir crazy during the delays, we didn’t get to open our presents until almost a month later. Fortunately our dependence on the kindness of strangers paid off, and despite all of the problems we encountered our faith in human nature and general aviation remain intact. Here I described our saga and a few of the lessons learned.

Our involvement with buying a plane was largely motivated by my work. I am a professor studying climate change impacts on glaciers and other arctic stuff. So my work requires me to spend months per year in some of the most remote regions of our country – places with no towns or people, let alone airstrips. It has become increasingly difficult to find qualified pilots and air taxis to provide air support for this research, and even harder to find ones who have the availability and flexibility to meet my needs, which are hard to predict in advance due to the nature of the work. My wife Kristin has been a commercial pilot in Alaska for the past 6 years and was at a stage in her career where she was ready to make a move into true bush flying. So she hired on with a small air taxi operation that we had flown with in the past and who was willing to buy another plane to support my work – with the constraint that we did the purchasing leg work. (Some necessary fine print to appease those that read and write fine print. Technically being a State employee, I am also constrained to obey a number of State rules, which arent important to the rest of this story, but may help me keep my job: all of my involvement in this project was during personal time and leave and did not interfere with my normal work duties, Kristin is an employee of the air taxi company not an owner, she will make less than $5000 per year from my contracts, my air taxi contracts will go out to bid in open competition, my position will not convey any special advantage to the company she works for, and we can use this plane for my funded research only if her company wins the bid. But given all of this and the fact that there is literally no one else willing to do this work at a price that my projects can afford (which is why we are doing this), it seems a reasonably safe bet that our plan will succeed. I'm not sure if others can appreciate this, but the Alaskan Arctic is roughly the size of New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland, and West Virginia combined, yet there is only one air taxi company based within it -- the one Kristin works for. It really doesnt get more remote than this in the U.S. And when it comes to flying in such remote areas, you cant pay me enough to fly with the low bidder, unless it is someone I already trust.).

I've been fortunate that Kristin has been able to accompany me on nearly all of my field work since we met eight years ago or so by creatively juggling her schedule (and creatively getting around the University regulations which attempt to prohibit this). Between the two of us, we have managed to schlep our son Turner with us the past 3 years. But as he gets bigger, it has become increasingly harder to carry him on our back, so an airplane would also give the three of us a bit easier access to the remote locations we spend time in.

One of our typical tundra landing strips. This one has 600' of useable distance, though unless it was flagged you'd hardly notice it. That's a Cessna 206.

When Turner was little, it was easy to pack him around. We spend months per year at this glacier, which is 60 miles from the nearest town or road, in arctic Alaska.

Have baby backpack, will travel. To get from the glacier to the nearest 600' air strip, we have to hike about 10 miles, across trail-less terrain. It would be much easier on our backs to land on the glacier...

As Turner got bigger, we relied more on sleds. When he turned three and weighed 45 pounds, we decided that was the last time we could carry him any distance in the backpack.


As long as we're together, any structure can be a home. Here we're waiting several days for a pickup, because in between calling the air taxi and getting picked up, it snowed. This was just after his first birthday. If we were using our own plane, we would have been in Fairbanks drinking black russians already...

We thought about all of the small planes we had used over the years, weighed the options, and decided that the Helio Courier was the optimum combination of plusses and minuses. Its main advantages are that it has outstanding STOL performance (we routinely take off from 600’ tundra strips with people and gear, and the Helios only use half of that), it has no wing struts to interfere with oblique photography, it was designed with safety as its highest priority, and it easily accepts skis and floats. (Here's a neat video, lots more will turn up in a search). The major downsides compared with deHavilland or Cessna alternatives is that they are relatively rare, the company has essentially been out of business for decades, and spare parts and qualified mechanics can be an issue. But we found a plane that seemed to be in great shape in southern California, had a pre-purchase inspection done, and made an offer – what could go wrong?

I guess our first clue about the mistakes we were about to make should have been the unanimous and vociferous feedback we received from our aviation friends -- “DO NOT BUY THIS PLANE”. The plane spent most of its life in the Philipenes and was brought over in pieces about 10 years ago, minus any log books. The owner, who is not a certified mechanic, claimed to have gone through aircraft with a fine-toothed comb and replaced or overhauled nearly everything, down to the nuts and bolts. The restoration was only finished a few months earlier, he had only flown it a few hours, and he had no prior experience with Helio Couriers. But the inspection showed that the new log books were in order, that the plane appeared to be in great shape, and that it should pass a Part 135 inspection. We negotiated a price that still left a little wiggle room to fix what might come up, so we bought one-way tickets to California and told our neighbors to save our seats at Christmas dinner. The major lesson we learned over the next two weeks was Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware!

Not being a pilot and having never bought a plane before, we were of course little intimidated by the amount of new things to learn. But we had done a fair amount of homework and one thing I was insistent on with the seller was Part 135 commercial compliance. We already knew the engine had not been overhauled in the past 12 years and so was budgeting for that, but the propeller, governor, and hub were advertised as new and I made Type Certificate compliance part of the purchase agreement. As it turned out, the wrong governor had been installed – the first assault on my naïve view that aviation mechanics are all of equal competence – but fortunately the broker Gary scrambled to get this replaced by the time we arrived a day or two later, paying for it out of his own commission. This was my first clue that all brokers are not alike, and not all like the horror stories one can find filling books on buying planes.

Another condition of the purchase agreement was passing our personal inspection, including a test flight. Our first impression of the plane in person was positive – cosmetically it seemed in fantastic shape (compared to the workhorses we were used to) and mechanically everything seemed neat and tidy (as if whoever worked on it actually cared about doing a good job). Insurance, however, complicated the test flying. Both the seller’s insurance and Kristin's required the PIC to have 10 hours of dual instructor time before soloing, and neither of them had that. Fortunately the broker also ran a flight school and the chief pilot Ralph passed the insurance company’s criteria (having something like 30,000 hours of flight time) and had time to help us out, but for his own liability he wanted to fly with yet another instructor pilot with more Helio experience so that he could become current in them before instructing. Lining up schedules on short notice and dealing with LA’s one-week-per-year of bad weather created several days of delay – Christmas in Alaska was starting to look doubtful.

It's a pretty plane. And an even prettier hangar...

It's got a big tail and big wings, which is part of what gives it such good performance.

The delays continued as the second instructor, apparently a ringleader in Air America back in the day, noticed a few anomalies with the airframe. Helios are different than other aircraft. They have Handley-Page leading edge slats which pop out and retract automatically based on airspeed. It is these slats that largely give the Helios their tremendous short take off rolls and allow it to fly under control at only 40 mph, along with enormous rear flaps and an interconnected airleron/interceptor combination. Having flown these extensively overseas for Air America, the pilot noticed that these slats were unusually sticky. I noticed this too, but assumed that since they had recently been overhauled, that all that was needed was a shot of WD-40 or something. Fortunately Gary also ran a maintenance facility which was able to take a look at them right away. As it turned out, the slats hadn’t been lubed or maintained in a decade and the new paint job seemed to be interfering with the bearings. It turned out to be a two-day job for two people to take them off, clean them up, and get them sliding freely. What was that advice our friends had given us? In any case, we had yet to go for our test flight, so the bills weren’t coming to us. Yet.

Keith and Jim removing the slats, while Kristin and Ralph discuss flying stuff.

One of the slats, recently minus some paint on the arms. Stegosaurus stands guard.

By now it was Friday, having arrived on Monday, and all this time we were hearing the clock ticking loudly. Not only was our schedule being squeezed, but our instructor Ralph was leaving for a two week vacation the next day and we really had no back-up plan since CFI’s with Helio time are so hard to find anywhere, let alone 3000 miles from our home. If we didn’t knock out the 10 hours of dual time before then, we’d have to fly it home without insurance or wait around for two weeks!

Fortunately by mid-morning the plane was ready, and shortly thereafter I watched Kristin and Ralph take off – it looked like we had a winner now! As we were still hoping to begin flying home over the weekend, I called Kristin's boss to wire transfer the funds while they were still airborne, so as not to be stuck in LA until Monday.

On their return, they reported that the plane flew great but there were still a few glitches. The most important was that the electric flaps were not functional. My heart sunk as I thought of the complication of trying to find a new motor during the Holidays. Fortunately a little hot-wiring demonstrated that the motor was still functional, but it took several hours to figure out that a plug within the wing-root had shook loose. By now it was late-afternoon, so the crew lost no time in firing it back up for more dual-time. But before they left the ramp, they shut down the engine and began pushing it back. This time the oil pressure gage was pegged high. By now it was 5 PM. Fortunately, the mechanics here were first rate and were willing to stay after hours to troubleshoot – by now we had become friends and they knew if they couldn’t fix it tonight, we couldn’t find parts or fly tomorrow, and then what would we do once Ralph left? Since we still hadn’t finished a test flight successfully, we still weren’t paying the bills, but how long could we stay here? If flew home commercially, would we still come back to buy this plane? Will they save us any eggnog back home? As it turned out, it was a relatively minor fix, turning a screw a bit on some doo-dad. But by now it was dark. A plan was made to fuel the plane now, meet at dawn, complete a test flight, and then knock out the dual time.

That night Kristin and I thought about the past week, and about the advice our friends had given us to not buy this plane. I called the broker and explained our fears – it seemed like there were a lot of little things going wrong that shouldn’t, we still hadn’t had a successful test flight, and we had already paid them (with someone else’s money). What if something major went wrong mechanically tomorrow? Who would be responsible? The broker and seller agreed that we were still not on the hook financially until we were sure this was the plane for us, so we slept a little better that night, and this call turned out to be very well timed.

The next morning I stayed in the hotel room with our three-year old son, Turner, who by now was being driven a little crazy by spending so much time in a hangar but not allowed to climb on the planes and swing from the pitot tubes. On the flip side, we don’t have TV at home so he was able to get his fill in the hotel. By the time we had breakfast, we still hadn’t heard anything and I knew that no news was likely good news. But before lunch, the phone rang -- they had to return to the airport prematurely. The plane had flown great, but at some point there were some engine sputters which got their immediate attention. They decided to land in an expedited way, with engine symptoms which kept their heart rates up. Once safely on the ground and back at the hangar, they noticed both the cowl dripping oil and the wing dripping fuel in copious amounts. They were lucky to land where they intended, but was our airplane deal sunk? Would we be able to pull off our field work this summer?

Despite all of the problems, we were all still in relatively good spirits. After years of field work in the Arctic, Kristin and I have become quite accustomed to things not going as planned and needing to be flexible and creative with alternatives. Monday was going to be decision day – stay or go, buy or not buy – and all we could do was wait. Lucky for us that the Gary and his staff were all first rate, else we probably would have bailed at this point or even sooner. I guess not having any experience with brokers, I probably still havent appreciated how first rate they are -- it would be tough to be any better and stay in business. We even got invited to the office Christmas party that night, where everyone was eager to hear the story of the Helio’s “expedited landing”. And Turner was by now in love with the office manager Annie, who graciously listen to him discuss dinosaur dynamics and looked the other way while he made castles out of the empty coffee cups. We took Sunday off and went to the zoo, finally giving Turner some kid time. While waiting, I realized my naïve faith in pilots’ preflighting abilities had been tested a bit too – here were two pilots with tons of experience, yet due to the circumstances they skipped checking the flaps a few days earlier and today they had even noticed fuel dripping from the wing before flying, but chalked it up to a sloppy fueler the night before since the idea of a fuel leak seemed so unlikely as to not even consider.

Monday brought interesting news. The fuel and oil leaks, though serious in terms of their impact on staying airborne, were caused by poorly connected lines and were minor fixes. But the engine was the big worry as one of the rocker arms was no longer rocking – a bent or broken push rod has the potential to ruin an engine. They made us a new offer – if we still wanted to hang in there, the seller would buy us round trip tickets home, pay for the shipping of the new engine we were going to put in it anyway, and give the plane a new annual with the broker’s mechanics. It seemed like a reasonable solution, though they didn’t realize at the time that tickets to Alaska leaving the day before Christmas were $2500 each! We took the deal, but decided to wait another day to see whether the engine was still functional before committing to purchase, both because we still wanted to fly it home and because a plane without a functional engine is not worth as much as we had previously agreed on. Here’s where things really started getting interesting.

It turns out that the push rod was not damaged at all, because it had never been installed! There was no metal in the oil, no rod in the intake valve rocker tube, no marring on the cylinder walls – the engine had been running on five cylinders all along! This is the point at which I realized that not only are there variations in aircraft mechanic competency, but that when buying a plane one should not feel shy about requesting any type of inspection – things like this don’t get caught in a standard inspection because the general assumption is that all of the parts are installed. Fortunately the broker had a great attitude and they completely inspected the engine and found no other missing parts or issues. At this point Christmas was only two days away, and there seemed no way that the annual could be completed beforehand. It may seem a bit crazy that the more things that went wrong, the more we wanted to the plane, but in our minds, the more things that broke now and were fixed at someone else’s expense, the better for us. We paid, however, in the loss of our time and productivity, as well as spending the Holidays away from home. But we found some cheap tickets and headed to Denver for nearly a week, spending the time with Kristin’s extended family over Christmas.

The engine, minus the culprit piston.

Turner got to spend Christmas with his cousins, and was the official present opener.

Opening presents is fun!

Turner: "I sit here, Papa sits here, Mama sits here, and Spike sits here."

Playing with cousins is fun!

My favorite story about the side trip to Denver was buying a battery for my watch. My watch is a bit unique and takes a strange battery that most stores dont carry. We found a store in town that carried them and so went to have it replaced. Turns out this was quite the fancy watch store. White getting the battery replaced, I got a call from Gregg, who we were buying a new engine from for the plane, since the current one is out of time and it was just as cheap to buy a new one as to overhaul the old one. In any case, the staff must have overheard me talking about buying planes and engines and flying etc, as after I hung up they swarmed me showing off their fanciest new watches, trying to convince me that mine was now out of fashion. So I got to play bigshot for 10 minutes and try on the latest baubles until my watch was ready and Kristin dragged me out of the store.

Back in California, the annual inspection revealed no major flaws, other than a failing alternator that cost $2000 to replace and some normal, little things like gaskets and lubes. By Wednesday morning, two days before the end of the year, the plane was ready to fly again and presumably in better shape than ever. Being such a great guy, Kristin’s instructor Ralph returned from his vacation in the desert for the day and they were able to complete the dual time and complete a successful test flight – we were now the new pseudo-owners of a used plane and ready to head home! The next phase of this project had now begun!

Well, not so fast. During the flight, they discovered the VOR was not functional and we wanted to get at least four headset jacks functional. So this took the better part of the next morning to resolve, now at our expense. Our plan was to fly to San Francisco that day, both as a warm up flight and to spend New Year’s Eve with friends there. We decided that our cut-off time was 3PM, so as not to fly at night in unfamiliar, complicated airspace with a plane we barely new. At 2PM we were finally loaded up, had said our goodbyes, and started the engine. Before taxiing though, Kristin noticed the oil pressure was really high again. I jumped out to have Jim the mechanic have a look while Kristin idled, and by the time we returned, oil was spraying out of the cowl flaps. We were ever going to leave? Were we going to go broke before we even began?

The leak was caused by a gasket that had been changed that morning. They came across it during the annual and decided to change it, but the part didn’t come in until after our test flight. Turns out that the new gasket was a little thinner than the old one, and the piece it was sealing had a slight warp due to prior overtightening, leading to leakage. So they put the old gasket back in and let the engine run for a while. The oil pressure turned out to be a non-issue, after a bit of warm up it came within normal limits and has acted this way ever since. So it seemed like we were once again ready to go, but by now it was 4PM and we decided to play it safe and wait for more daylight. The hotel by now was used to us checking out every morning and checking in again every night, so we settled into our old room again, trying not to look forward to the next day too much, just in case.

New Years Day we woke up to thick fog, unlike we any we had seen in the past two weeks. (Two weeks! Is that how long we had been here?) But by late morning it seemed to be lifting and the weather not too bad to the north, so we headed back out and kept our fingers crossed. Just as we were about the start the engine, Jim the mechanic howed up – he couldn’t bear the thought of us not getting out today and came by just to help us on his own time. It was a good thing too. After getting the engine started and waiting for the oil pressure to settle down, Kristin was unable to communicate with the tower – we never tested the radios after they had done all that work the day before! The avionics shop was of course closed until Monday – were we going to be stuck here another four days? Groan. Fortunately after 10 minutes of our fumbling, Jim discovered that a knob on the radio wasn’t fully clicked into position – problem solved and minutes later we were airborne! Now, finally, we were on our way home!

Jim couldnt resist not coming in on New Years' Day to make sure we got off alright.

Ah, so this is what a real runway looks like...

Turner: "What do you mean I have to pay $5 for the inflight meal?"

Jim is sitting on the red cart by the yellow line in front of the open hangar, waving.

Our first leg of the trip was a bit stressful, though went largely as planned. It was a bit hard to believe that we were actually on our way. There’s something about waiting for extended periods of time that feeds on itself, making waiting the norm and making activity the enemy. It’s counterintuitive, but a dynamic I’ve experienced many times. But now airborne and heading for home we were anxious to get there. Given how many mechanical issues we had so far, we were feeling especially cautious about what might break next, so in that sense having so many issues early on was likely a good thing in terms of keep us humble. Flying across LA airspace was also no walk in the park. Constantly getting passed off from tower to tower, trying avoid the jets, mountains, and buildings in the area – it was a little hectic for folks from the middle of nowhere. At one point we got the latest altimeter reading which Kristin promptly dialed in, then the same voice came back – ‘Uh, maam, you just set your transponder to 3-0-0-1’. The high pressure was felt by more the just the altimeter…

Not you typical view of LAX. I guess the safest place to fly over a major airport is directly above it, since all the planes are landing or taking off near ground level.

The concrete jungle.

The Pacific Ocean.

Light fog coming off the water onto land.


Heavier fog on the ocean.

Floodplains make good farmland. But not necessarily good places to build houses...

Snow? In Los Angeles? Yep.

Fog encrouching into the foothills.

Have dinosaurs, will travel.

We passed a surprising amount of undeveloped land between LA and San Francisco.

Ultimately I need to have the windows modified so that they open, as nice photos like this are spoiled by aberations in the plexiglass.

Despite the implications that such sprawl has, the patterns that cities make can be quite interesting and beautiful.

Not really sure what these are. Desalinization lagoons?

But soon enough we landed at our destination. I was a bit surprised how poor the cell phone reception was from the air, as I expected to hit plenty of towers from so high up. By now we had promised a number of people that we would stay in touch on our progress, and having recently figured out how to send text messages I had a growing list of recipients. But we also traveled across long stretches of seeming wilderness, or at least it wasn’t all paved and subdivided as I had expected. In any case, Scott got the message and met us at the San Carlos airport. His son Davis was with him, and Turner got to show off his new plane to him. We met Kate back at the house and had a relaxing dinner at home. Though we made a lot of new friends who helped us out tremendously, we were glad to be enroute and with old friends rather than new.

Turner: "See Davis, big planes make big shadows"

Turner: "We're looking for Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

The next day we had hoped to all go for a flight to Napa or some nearby attraction, but the weather was poor. So we drove down towards San Jose to find a kids museum. Along the way we stopped at the San Jose FSDO. I had spent that morning on the phone trying to find someone at FAA that wasn’t on vacation the day after New Years, because I discovered the day before we left that our airworthiness certificate had the wrong serial number on it. In most circumstances this is not a big deal, but considering we were flying internationally, we didn’t want to take any chances. Fortunately it was clear within the FAA database where the mistake was made and they were able to issue us a new one without major delay. The major delays came at the museum, where a rainy holiday apparently gave every parent in California the same idea – go to the kids museum. As chaotic as it was, the kids still had a good time and that made the parents happy.

It was a busy day at the museum.

But as long as the kids were happy, the parents were happy.

Davis: "I want to be a fireman!" Turner: "I just want to wear the coat!"

There were too many kids to bring strollers inside...

Turner: "If we had these tires on the plane, we could land anywhere!"

Turner had a little too much fun in the water physics section...

The next morning we were still unsure whether we would try for another local fun flight or continue on north. We decided make use of the good weather and head north. It was nearly noon before we were on our way, but the plane was still functional and we were glad to continue onwards. We made good time, bee-lining up the Sacramento valley. We thought briefly about stopping in Chico to see Cliff, who we visited a few months earlier when thinking about buying his Helio, but given our delays we decided to press on. It wasn’t long before we began seeing snow on the ground, and not long after that before it was pervasive. The cabin temp began to drop as well, with cold outside air streaming in around the door frame. I hadn’t expected to see snow until we up into Canada, but I hadn’t really checked into it much. Our goal was to make it to Spokane that night, but after a fuel stop at 3PM, we realized we werent going to make it that far and even as it was we landed in Redmond in the dark.

They grow stuff in California.

This is one reason why we bought this plane -- no wing struts!

Looks like lava taking over the valley...

Natural and unnatural stream channels...

Kristin: "Pay no attention to those flashing red lights..."

We passed a lot of volcanoes.

I'm still not sure what happened here. Those hills are all terraced. Seems too neat for logging activity.

Not much rice growing today.

The days were too short...

Doesnt take much to keep Turner happy.

We taxied into one of the FBOs there that we had randomly picked, and were surprised to find not only another Helio parked there but a Helio pilot from Alaska. The plane wasnt even his, it was just purchased in Alaska and being flown down to another location – these two planes had just randomly landed there the same night! It also turned out that we had many mutual friends in Alaska with Chuck, the Helio pilot and mechanic working at this FBO, and that I knew the person that had sold that plane. So we spent the evening with Chuck and talked about planes and flying in Alaska.

The next morning we were at the hangar near dawn ready to get an early start and make it into Canada. Unfortunately the engine was being uncooperative. Despite being hangared overnight, thanks to Chuck, the engine just wouldn’t idle and kept wanting to quit. After fooling with it for a while, we discovered that the gascolater was completely gummed up. This thing is a metal strainer within a glass jar that filters the gasoline. It is straightforward enough to clean, but it does take some time. Given how hard the engine was to start, it was a little frightening to wonder how we were getting any fuel at all during our flight.

Chuck shows us the gascolator.

It's tough to tell how gunked up this really is until you see it clean, but that mesh should be shiny silver with nothing blocking the holes. This filter is completely clogged by that brownish stuff.

Chuck keeps an eye on us until we're airborne.

In any case, it was after noon before we were airborne again. We had been watching the weather closely because another storm was entering the northwest and we didn’t want to get caught in it. Weather stations all around us were reporting low clouds and no visibility, but it was nice enough where we were, so we decided to at least go up and have a look to see if we could outrun the storm and stay to the north of it. As it turned out, the only cloud cover was fog clinging in the valleys, such that the low hills were clear up to 10,000 feet or more. So we just kept visible ground beneath us and kept picking our way North as best we could. Our plan was to head straight North, following Chuck’s suggestions, but the large Yakima valley was in the fog and in the process of going around it we ended up close enough to Spokane near sunset that we decided to head there for the night, especially considering it was Sunday and Canadian customs were technically closed anyway. We landed uneventfully and taxied into a random FBO. There the rampers told us that the latest forecast was for 12 inches of snow that night. So we found a nearby hotel with a pool, and hoped for the best while it was Turner’s turn to have some fun.

Geomorphology. There is no limit to the patterns of nature.

Low clouds like these were covering most of the major airports, because most airports were in the low valleys.

But the foothills were all in the clear, though covered by snow. So we traded one white for another.

Downwind into Spokane.

On final.

It turned out that the big storm never really materialized the next where we were, but it was snowy and foggy enough that it was clear that we probably were not going to leave that day. So we had the local maintenance guys take care of some miscellaneous tasks that we didn’t have time to fix in Los Angeles and spent the day largely on hold and taking care of some errands. FBOs in the states are nothing like in Alaska – here they have cars you can borrow for the day and all kinds of other minor luxuries. I think most of their customers land in jets and spend lots of money with them; I think they just assumed we must be rich to be crazy enough to fly to Alaska in winter with a 3 year old, so they let us blend in with the crowd.

We checked out of the hotel early the next morning in hopes of leaving and spent the whole day in the FBO wondering if the fog would lift enough so that we could at least see the top of the tower. It never happened, so we checked back into the hotel and went swimming. The story was basically the same the next day too. Fortunately the FBO had an unused office in the back which we could take over and give Turner some dedicated play space.

Finally we caught a break the next day. The engine was still a little sluggish starting, but we were able to launch and make our way to Canada. We didn’t really know what to expect from customs there, but we decided to land at a smaller airport, Penticton, that was just over the border in case we couldn’t make it any further, as they seem a little picky about sticking to a schedule. We were a little later than the appointment we had set with them as it was, due to having to pick our way around the clouds. Kristin called from her cell phone after we had landed and they didn’t even bother to come out of the building to meet us, they just welcomed us to Canada and gave us a validation number. If only getting back into the states could be that easy!

We found clouds everywhere, but fortunately found ways around them too. Most of the time.

There's a ski area in the distance, but we were on wheels...

We refueled and headed north, trying to make the most of the daylight. We had hoped to make it to Prince George that day, which would then put us within a day of Whitehorse, then a day to Fairbanks. But the next leg of the trip was awful. We came across some turbulence that kept us airborne within the plane for what seemed like an eternity. It wasn’t real wind shear that threatened to slam us into the ground, but it certainly shook up the plane and its contents to the point where we kept our eyes looking at the wings whenever our heads passed by a window. I was sitting next to Turner in the middle seats as I normally had been, but kept my left hand gripped under his sit in between his legs, both to give him something to hold on to and to keep me from bumping my head so hard on the roof. My other hand tried to hold on to the gear in the front passenger seat to keep it from landing on Kristin or the controls. Our beanbag GPS mount, which had been so stable up until now, spent much of the time in the air or the floor, so Kristin had her hands full with things to do too. It settled down as we approached Kamloops and we decided that we had had enough that day, despite there still being a lot of day light left.

Forget twin Otters, let's get one of these.

After landing we checked the gascolator, and it was again pretty gunked up so we decided to taxi over to a local repair shop and have them clean it up. Mountaire Services turned out to a group of three mechanics who were a pleasure to work with. While there we also noticed the fuel vent on top of the wing had been knocked over, so we asked them to take a look at that too. The owner was heading back into town about that point, so he gave us a lift to the local motel, which was also across the street from a shopping mall. So we took the opportunity to stock up on supplies, as well buy a few new movies for Turner. He was itching to see Jurassic Park two and three, as we had seen bits of them on TV in one of the previous hotels. He had been a real trooper on the trip and in the evenings we tried to give him as much special treatment as we could, in between checking weather, dealing with the plane, schlepping luggage, etc.

The next morning we were at the hangar at 8 AM hoping to head off as soon as possible. By then they had completely rebuilt the fuel vent, which had previously been broken and kluged back together, and cleaned the gascolator. It was a little unclear which way the fuel vent was supposed to point, but looking at some photos and making some phone calls we decided that the vent was to face forward to keep pressure on the fuel. We took off mid-morning, hoping to pick our way through the clouds to Prince George.

The trip did not go as planned. Our planned route took us towards a pass that was still in the clouds. So we skirted around it to the west, hoping to poke our way up another valley. Then another valley, and another. Finally we approached a large valley with a low pass that was clear. As we approached this, the turbulence picked up some. Then as we entered it we started getting slammed around again. Though I was eager to return to Fairbanks, I expressed my willingness to spend the evening in the pool in our last motel and the family agreed. Flying in such conditions is difficult enough, but turning in it in a reasonably tight valley with low ceilings is something that takes some skill. Fortunately we had hired the right pilot and in a few minutes were on our way back to Kamloops, having only to fly through a rainstorm to get there, requiring Kristin to keep a handful of paper towels on the upper windshield to keep the instruments from getting drenched.

Once back on the ground, we sat inside the plane near the hangar as the rain squall blew over, then got out and noticed that the gascolator was once again building up a residue, so since we were done for the day we decided to open up the gas tanks and figure out what was generating all of this gunk. These were brand new bladders and I was thinking that maybe someone dropped a paper towel into one of them during installation. I called the manufacturer to see if there were any known issues, like delamination or something, and they said as far as they knew they were as reliable as always. Our big fear here was that if we ruined one of the gaskets on the access hatches that we would have to have a new one shipped. It being Friday this could once again be problematic for our schedule. But it turned out that the resourceful team here had a supply of cork gasket material that we could fashion a new one from, so we decided to go for it.

In the first tank we found that some sealant had been applied to the gasket, contrary to manufacturer suggestions. We thought perhaps this goo might be leaching off and into the fuel. In the second tank we found something more likely to be the problem – an entire roll of what appeared to be masking tape, complete with cardboard spool. This roll was too big to have been dropped into the tank, it could only have gotten there during installation. The glue from the tape was delaminating in strips, and this was entering our fuel lines and gumming up the gascolator. The tape itself was blocking the fuel line. We stared at this with some incredulousness for a while, though glad to know that we had solved the mystery. By now it was dinner time, and we once again got a ride from Scott back to the hotel, where Turner spent the next few hours jumping into the pool.

Yep, I'm sure it's that seventh fetzer valve.

At first we thought it might be this gunk, mostly goo from a sealant that had been improperly applied to the gasket.

Then we found this in the other tank.

When we pulled on it, all this came out.

It appeared to be masking tape, and the glue was delaminating off in strips and turning into goo in the tank.

Kristin: "I dont think this stuff was mentioned in the Type Certificate..."

It was an entire roll of tape, complete with cardboard spool. It could only have gotten in there if the access hatch was opened up, during installation because it's too big to fall into the filler cap hole. We kept it as a souvenir, and leverage to have the idiot who did this pay for his mistake.

Turner didnt much care about the tape, he just wanted to go swimming.

We arrived at the hangar after dawn the next morning, as we knew it would still take some time to put the plane back together. They had already made new gaskets to replace the gooey ones, as well as cleaned out the tanks thoroughly with MEK. They had also cleaned out the gascolator once again, as well as the finger screens within the carburetor which had also gotten gunked up. We decided to reuse the fuel we had drained the day before. It had gone through the gascolator and was being pumped through another filter, but in retrospect it might have been better to start with fresh. In any case, we got everything put back together and headed North.

This time our pass was open and we flew through only light turbulence. We chuckled to ourselves about how ridiculous it was to find a roll of tape in the gas tank, but were glad to know that the worst of our problem had to be behind us now. We landed near dusk in Prince George and taxied to a random FBO, where we were once again greeted by friendly staff willing to help us out however we needed it. We were now clearly in winter country. From Spokane onwards all of the tie-downs were buried in snow. Up until this point we had lucked out and found hangar space, largely because we needed some maintenance at every stop. Here there was no hangar space and the tie down were buried. But they rounded up some moveable concrete tie-downs and let us push back behind the hangar for some shelter. We finally put the wing and engine covers on for real, and found another hotel with a pool…

The next morning we were at the hangar before dawn to preheat the plane and get an early start. Though it may seem like we had plenty of time for relaxation given we were only flying a few hours per day, there was a huge amount of work checking weather with the briefers, creating flight plans, and back up plans, etc, not to mention the maintenance work plus just keep the plane safe. Combined with all of this was juggling our watch over Turner. Generally speaking he stays out of trouble and is easy to please, but one of us still has to do nothing but stand guard with him while the other works. And his patience grows thin at times too, especially when he is cooped up in a hangar or reception area and wants to climb all over everything. But somehow we manage, and on this day were able to get a reasonably early start, though it was still 11AM by the time we got fueled, started, and on our way.

Our big challenge this day was getting over the last major pass. It had been blocked often on our way up, but seemed doable today. And all the way up, it seemed like the weather pattern past it was stable interior air that was cold but calm and clear, so we figured that once we made it through, it would be smooth easy sailing all the way back to home. As it turned out, the jet stream began following us North, and predictions were for deteriorating weather all over the Yukon and into Alaska. So we were eager to outrace it. But generally speaking the weather this day was fine. We stayed high over the pass, over the scattered clouds, passing by a ski area, logging areas, and oil fields, and made it fine into Fort Nelson to refuel without incident. Here it was clear and cold, with ground temperatures about -25C. We threw the engine cover on as soon as we landed, and headed into the pilot lounge while they refueled. Here were circumstances we were more familiar with. The FBO was based out of a trailer, and the pilot lounge consisted of a computer that was non-functional in a room where the exterior door would not close from the inside. But it was relatively warm and the toilet flushed, so we didn’t complain. Turner wanted to stay, and we were a bit tempted, but we didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling from the place and decided to press onwards.

More clouds.

These are oil fields. Not sure where all the pipes are.

Kristin keeping us airborne and safe.

We had hoped to make it all the way to Whitehorse that day. But our slow start, coupled with some headwinds, made it clear that we would have to fly in the dark through another pass to accomplish that. Even as it was, they had to turn the runway lights on at Watson Lake. Watson Lake is a town of 300 people, but has a huge runway with a 24/7 tower. Apparently they are the alternate to Whitehorse for international jets, but they only see one or two planes a week in general. We taxied off the runway and asked where to park, and they said basically anywhere we liked. Again the tie-downs were buried, and unfortunately the local fueler was gone for the day despite it being only 4PM or so. So we pulled up next to the tower, and I covered the plane and tied down the controls the best I could, and we hoped for the best. In the meantime Kristin was calling some hotels, but this was the kind of place with only one taxi and it would likely cost $50 just getting to and from any hotel. I asked the tower guy if he minded if we just stayed in the terminal and he said that was fine. There was a pilot lounge with a few couches and a desk, so we made ourselves at home. Our cell phones had no coverage since we entered the Yukon, so I was unable to text the ever-growing list of folks following our trip, and we had no internet either, so it seemed that the outside world would just have to keep their fingers crossed until we reached Alaska.

I think that we probably all lost weight on this trip. I basically didn’t eat anything until we were on the ground at our next destination, and I think Kristin was the same. Between the stress and the potential for bouncing, I just didn’t have an appetite. Turner ate pretty well, though. I kept a supply of salami, cheese, and chips nearby, but we limited juice so as not to have diaper blowouts, which happened nonetheless.

Later that night we finally got hold of the fuel guy, who came by in the morning. We were able to borrow an electric heater from him to plug in over night, so that we could keep the engine warm and not have to get up hours earlier to hook up our gas powered heater. The airport here is filled with an excellent collection of photos and text that describe the area’s aviation history during WW2, when thousands of planes flew past here into Alaska and over to Russia as part the lend-lease program. Unfortunately, most of the story was in regards to the awful winter weather and numerous plane wrecks that plagued that program.

We woke up to snow, as predicted. The weather briefers indicated, however, that there might be a break in the morning that we could sneak through. The local guys all told us their horror stories about how people had been stuck weeks here, but by about 10AM it was actually looking nice out. It still took nearly two hours to get going, by which time the weather seemed to be deteriorating, but we figured it was still worth a try.

We had one more small pass to get through, which would be the last of the trip. The weather on either side was calling clear enough, but we had no information on the inside of it. We kept the road beneath us as we flew, and all seemed to go fairly well. Though visibility was low, it was still OK, and there was no turbulence. But as we got further into the pass, we began entering a snow squall and visibility dropped further. Fortunately the tree covered mountains and the road provided some contrast to give us some guidance. There were times though that even the road was difficult to see and we both kept a close eye for it, hugging every turn. It seemed odd that the goats here walked on clouds, but I guess they are Canadians, eh. Fortunately just as we were getting through the worst of it, the valley opened up and the clouds lifted and we had reasonably clear skies all the way to Whitehorse. Once again we were tempted to press on through to Northway, Alaska, but given our late start and headwinds, it was likely that we would have arrived after dark and we just didn’t want to push it. Plus we had friends to visit here and were looking forward to an afternoon off where we were not looking over a mechanics shoulder or hoping for a break in the weather, and it was Sunday and US customs was technically closed. Fortunately the FBO we pulled up to also had a few hotel rooms for pilots, so we got one looking directly out onto the plane. As usual, the tie downs were buried, but they assured us that the winds were usually calm here.

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It was warmer in the front than the back.

We followed the road pretty closely through the Yukon.

It makes a pretty long runway if needed. We wouldnt be the first...

Turner: "I dont see any white horses here! Just Mama!"

We spent the afternoon unwinding and running a few errands. We rented a car and checked out Canadian Tire. Much more than a tire store, it was an enormous box store like a cross between Wal-Mart and Napa. Here we finally found the little electric heaters we had been looking for the entire trip to keep the plane warm, as well as anything else one could imagine putting in a car or truck. Afterwards we visited Andy and Carol. Andy has flown Helio couriers for a long time in support of science projects, and still spends his summer doing that. He’s even landed at 18,000’ on Mt Logan a number of times, as well as inside the crater on Mt Wrangell. Kristin and he chatted about airplanes most of the evening, while Turner played with the dogs and anything else that tolerated it.

On the way back, we stopped at the tower to see the local weather briefers and get a sense of what we had to look forward to. They showed us the latest satellite imagery which indicated the jet stream was traveling far northwards and heading our way with a lot of bad weather. The prediction was for strong winds at the airport starting over night and lasting throughout the day. We still hadn’t even put the wing covers on yet, and we had nothing to tie the plane down to! But we made the best of it by trying to use snow as chocks and tying the controls up with the seatbelts.

The winds never arrived overnight and the morning looked like it was nice enough locally to give it a try. Unfortunately the weather folks were still calling for this storm to hit any moment, and for strong turbulence on our route. We spent some time in the morning repacking as well as organizing some moveable concrete tie-downs, but by noon the winds still had not picked up. We were tempted to head onwards, but with continued forecasts for strong turbulence along the way, we decided to wait. We explored town a little bit, then found a movie theater in which we essentially had a private showing of Bedtime Stories. We stopped by the tower one last time on our way home and were told that the big storm was in fact not going to arrive and that the next day was looking good.

It seemed like a pretty nice day, but we decided to not to launch based on the weather reports. The runway was pretty snowy anyway.

Turner: "Scooby look out! There's a monster behind you!"

Turner: "Just kidding!"

The next morning we were up before dawn getting the plane ready to go. The plan was to take off as soon as it was light enough to see and make it all the way back to Fairbanks – tonight we might sleep in our own beds! We loaded up and said our goodbyes to the local staff, and headed off into the brightening twilight.

Air temperatures on the ground were still about -25C or so. We had our new heater running all night long inside the cowling, and this kept the engine nice and toasty within the insulated cowling cover. Once we were a few thousand feet up, the air temperatures warmed to only about -5C or so, and this was reasonably comfortable. We passed over Kluane Lake where Andy bases from in summer and where the strong turbulence had been predicted the day before, and though it was a bit bumpy it was not as bad as it could have been. Northway was only about 2 hours away, and I kept my eyes on the GPS screen most of the way as it estimated our time enroute, glad to see the time getting smaller and smaller. Before long we were finally crossing the border and back in US airspace! We called ahead to Northway, where they were still plowing the runway, and circled for a bit while they finished up and soon enough we were standing on Alaskan tarmac!

We're in Alaska now! Funny, on the maps that line is blue...

Meanders like this mean the ground is pretty flat. We like flat.

Northway airport was pretty snowy. They plowed away enough for us to land on though.

Customs here was not as smooth as in crossing into Canada, as might be imagined. Here we were met by a customs agent who had a radiation detector, apparently looking for nuclear weapons (why a terrorist carrying nuclear weapons would go through the hassles of filing a flight plan, calling ahead for a customs inspection, and following through with it is beyond me, but I guess it makes the Administration happy to claim that they have never found any…). As luck would have it, his gizmo went crazy near the back of the plane. It was about -30C here, so Kristin and Turner went inside while I pulled everything out of the plane. In the bottom of the last box in the back of the plane, it turned out there was an old air temperature gage for the plane that had a glow in the dark dial, and this was what was setting off the detector. Fortunately we did not get sent to Guantanimo Bay for this security breach, but it was still another 30 minutes before all of Kristin’s paperwork had been throroughly checked. But soon enough we were airborne again, heading to Tok for one last fill up before heading home. From Tok, we were barely an hour from home!

While fueling in Tok we chatted with folks there who told us similar stories as in Whitehorse, how for the past few weeks it had been brutally cold there, with temps in the -50s to -60s and how lucky we were that it had warmed up now to -30. Warmer or not, we were glad to be continuing onwards.

As fate would have it, our last hour and a half of flight was not the most pleasureable. Even though we were not going through any major passes, the winds were still making noticeable and unpleasant bumps in the air. Turner mostly slept, but would clutch my arm even while sleeping when the gravitational forces rearranged themselves. The minor bumps continued until we dropped back down into the inversion on the final approach into Fairbanks International. We landed and taxied into the long-term parking spot that Kristin had already arranged for – after a month of traveling, we were finally home!

It felt a bit surreal to land at an airport we knew. We had such great luck with folks helping us along the way, I wondered what it would feel like to land here if we were strangers. We called a cab to meet us at the local avionics shop, where we headed to get warmed up, and were not there a minute before they offered to run us over to the central parking lot to get our car. Before long we had put the plane to bed, packed up the car, and were driving home. Home!

Spike made the whole trip with us. He slept most of the way though.

Home is a cabin heated by a wood stove, meaning that while we are away the house freezes. Fortunately the warmer weather meant that it was only -10F inside and it seemed like everything had survived just fine – the tree was still standing and keeping guard over our presents. So we bundled Turner up on the couch and started his favorite Scooby Doo movie while we got a fire going and began sorting out a home life again. After a few hours, it was warm enough to not see our breath, and we banked the stove full and crawled up into the loft where we made a makeshift bed in the warmer air aloft. I woke up the next morning with Turner sprawled on my lap in front of his tiny DVD player, and half full glasses of champagne next to Kristin and I – I think we all fell asleep within 15 minutes of crawling under the covers last night. Santa had visited sometime during the night, so we finally celebrated Christmas on January 15th.

We all got matching pajamas for Christmas (aka January 15). But Turner was the big winner.

Though the trip didn’t go as planned, it was still an interesting one filled with lots of stories and a happy ending. Plus we met lots of interesting people and made a number of friends. My cell phone’s text message list had grown to a dozen folks by the time we were home. Do we have any regrets? I wish I would have taken more photos, especially of the people we met. I had also hoped to fly over the mountains more to take glacier photos, but given the weather and our delays this was simply not an option. And in retrospect I wish I would have read more books on buying a plane and had gone through the process once or twice looking over someone’s shoulders. Having gone through this experience, I know if we're ever involved with another plane purchase we’ll be a lot more thorough with the pre-purchase inspection and be more willing to hold out for exactly the right deal. Even among experienced buyers, there’s not many that can say ‘I once bought a plane that was missing a pushrod’ or ‘I once bought a plane that had a roll of masking tape in the fuel tank’ – we can do both now, and can shut down any objections to seek for random idiocy. Did I learn anything? I learned not to trust anyone blindly -- not sellers, not mechanics, not pilots. But I also learned a bit about how to sort out good ones from bad ones, and gained a lot of respect for the good ones. I certainly learned that there are really really good reasons not to think that just because a person is handy with tools that he any ability or right to work on an airplane -- there are just too many non-intuitive things that can go wrong by doing so that only years of experience can help predict. In terms of the plane, it seems to have survived just fine, with most of the mechanical problems due to prior issues, and we are looking forward to the summer and using the plane as intended.

It felt odd not checking the weather the next morning, or even caring about it – I guess people that arent trying to fly the length of the rocky mountains in winter don’t need to. The pattern of our lives for the past month was one of coping with constant uncertainty, with long periods of waiting punctuated by occasional moments of ‘what was I thinking?’ What were we thinking? I’m still not sure, but I think now that aircraft purchasing and ownership is a bit like having kids – if you knew what level of work and lifestyle change you were really getting yourself into, you probably wouldn’t do it. Hopefully, though, the end result will be similar – having taken the plunge and committed to the work, the rewards are large enough to make it all more than worthwhile. Only time will tell fo sure. In the meantime, we just take it one step -- or one flight -- at a time, together.

Parents: "OK, baby, let's get back in the plane and go to Greenland. And let's leave Spike here this time."

Turner: "What do you mean I just got Punked?..."