Northern Flights

[50 Mission Cap]

Reading this book that an Alaska bush pilot put out about 20 years ago - only about 20 pages in, but what those people do is insane!!! Speaking of, anyone ever read hatchet when you were a kid?

[RandomDood]

I have an uncle that was a pilot for TWA for many years. Then he retired, divorced his wife of 40 years and moved to Alaska to be a bush pilot. He was dead less than 5 years later. He survived the crash, but died of exposure. Yep. They aint sane.

[RepublicanSS]

Cap, what's the name of the book, I'd love to read something of that nature.

You must be much younger than I (46), because it wasn't in school when I was a kid (if so I didn't know about it), but my son has read it and I believe there are others in the series.



Reading this book that an Alaska bush pilot put out about 20 years ago - only about 20 pages in, but what those people do is insane!!! Speaking of, anyone ever read hatchet when you were a kid?

[50 Mission Cap]

Random,

That is horrible man. I hear that kind of stuff happens all the time.

Rep SS, the book is called "Northern Flights" by Gerry Bruder. Randomly found it looking for something else at the library last weekend. Gary Paulsen is fantastic. There are a few more hatchet books, and then there all of his "dog books". He competed in a few iditarods and wrote a few books on that and the joy of having dogs in general... I'd strongly recommend - I seem to remember a few posts a while ago about yer dog - I'm sure you'd appreciate / relate.

Mick

[50 Mission Cap]

Finished the book last night. I'd definitely recommend to anyone. Interesting how the author tried to make it several times in the business-journalism but after a few years here and there, he always went back to flying. The book ends (spoiler?) with his "final return" to journalism at some aviation magazine when he's like 40. I wonder if he ends up making it. Kind of a neat profession, and it really spoke to me how he felt so pressured to "get a real job" while sacrificing his passion. Not that I necessarily think like that, but as a teacher, tv, my father, my mother in law often drop subtle hints that I should "get a real job". Thus, pretty decent book from entertainment and philosophical stand points.

[rockyrider]

I knew some guys that were DC-3 pilots running freight and seismic crew flights in and out of places in the middle of nowhere in Northern Alberta and NWT/Yukon.

Those guys would have to carry spare cylinders and pistons (pots) in case they hydraulic'd a piston from oil seepage and blew a cylinder off. They needed all the cylinders on those radial engines to climb out of some of those airfields. The pilot/copilot had to do the repairs.

They had crazy stories about flying in at treetop level and just killing the motors to drop just past the trees to get near the start of the landing strip because the landing strip would be to short to stop otherwise. And up or down hill landing strips. And nearly clipping trees on take off. :eek:

[50 Mission Cap]

I knew some guys that were DC-3 pilots running freight and seismic crew flights in and out of places in the middle of nowhere in Northern Alberta and NWT/Yukon.

Those guys would have to carry spare cylinders and pistons (pots) in case they hydraulic'd a piston from oil seepage and blew a cylinder off. They needed all the cylinders on those radial engines to climb out of some of those airfields. The pilot/copilot had to do the repairs.

They had crazy stories about flying in at treetop level and just killing the motors to drop just past the trees to get near the start of the landing strip because the landing strip would be to short to stop otherwise. And up or down hill landing strips. And nearly clipping trees on take off. :eek:

Speaking of DC 3's, ever see the original "Thing" movie from the 50's? Military expedition flies a DC 3 on skis up to investigate a disturbance at some scientific research facility... classic movie.

[rockyrider]

Back in those days I was amazed to find that you could buy a flyable DC-3 for $80,000 - $100,000. The catch is that each engine rebuild was about $20,000, so they weren't cheap to run. And they took up more space than a Cessna 172.

I remember watching them power test a new pair of engines. They had the tail wheel connected to one of the airport tractors while they ran the engines up to full throttle, and would adjust the props just to the point where the prop tips went supersonic (and you could tell right away when that happened, it was very loud) and then backed the pitch off. They ran it like that for several minutes and it was desperately trying to take off, bouncing around on the end of a tow bar like a crow held by the feet. If that tow bar would have come loose they'd have shot into the air like a catapult launch. :D