Success on Tincup Lake

As I suspected, I didn't find the scenery on Tincup Lake because I didn't look for it.

<img src="modules/gallery3/var/albums/Mike%27s-Miscues/MYJETLINE-PC-2019-jan-19-001.jpg?m=1547931839" alt="Scenery on Tincup Lake" width="640" height="400">

Boy, it's cold up here. I'm going back to Juneau

Nice...and if you have an eagle-eye <img src="tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-icon_eek.gif" alt="icon_eek"> you'd spot the Bald Eagle on the cabin roof.

<img src="modules/gallery3/var/albums/John-Rogers-Pics/e8a.jpg?m=1547998117" alt="Tincup Lake Cabins" width="700" height="390">

As it turned out, getting out from Tincup Lake proved a little more difficult than finding the scenery elements. Above the lake was a heavy cloud layer of unknown thickness, and around the lake are mountains that tower 4000' above the lake's surface. Add to that the absence of nearby radio navaids or radar service and you have the makings of a problematic situation. There seem to be three options: 1) Hole up in one of John's cabins near the lake and wait for the weather to clear. That would be prudent and what I would probably choose in the "RW", but using real world weather day-to-day, there's no telling how long we'll have to wait to get out under VFR conditions, 2) Rely on GPS to stay above the lake surface or in adjacent low lying river valleys until you break out of the tops of the cloud layer, Or 3) Use a map to generate a set of GPS waypoints tracking the lake surface and the exit drainages and insert these into an IFR flight plan. Then slave the A/C autopilot to the GPS flight plan. Really, methods 2) and 3) are almost the same. Ordinarily we could just go for it and see what happens, but the beauty of the Econ flights is that can cost you %5000 if it doesn't work out, so it's best to exercise some caution.

<img src="modules/gallery3/var/albums/Mike%27s-Miscues/MYJETLINE-PC-2019-jan-19-004.jpg?m=1547942845" alt="Climbing out f Tincup Lake" width="700" height="438">


Here we are already 2500' above the lake surface and still in the soup. The GPS map (upper left) shows that were still over the lake surface, but running out of room. Instead of undertaking a steep bank to stay over the lake, I elected to follow the drainage channel, as the Sectional chart shows that the drainage stays below 3000 msl. This is a good reason to have the sectional available in this kind of "VFR" flying.

<img src="modules/gallery3/var/albums/Mike%27s-Miscues/MYJETLINE-PC-2019-jan-19-005.jpg?m=1547942907" alt="Breaking out a 6000'" width="700" height="438">

Whew! Here we are topping out at about 6000', just as we reach the end of the lake. The rest of the flight was uneventful, except when I switched to Approach on the autopilot as I was making an unnecessary IFR approach to PAJN Rwy 08. How many times do I have to learn that an LDA approach is not an ILS approach. So when you switch to Approach, the autopilot gets no pitch information and the A/C often goes into a steep dive. The recovery from that required me to discomfit the passengers (2.4 Gs) and was followed by a unnecessarily sloppy landing (-524 fpm). Together, these cost me almost half my profit on this flight. I suppose if I got these details right all of the time, I would have lost interest in this hobby years ago.

Hah Mike,

I had a similarly harrowing experience myself today on my flight out of Tincup Lake. I opted take off over the lake opposite the direction I really wanted to go for PAJN, then make a 180 and return across the lake. By that time I had enough altitude to cover the initial part of the over-land flight until reaching my cruise altitude of 10500 ft. This also put me just over the cloud deck. PAJN was really socked in, so I altered my direct route by flying to HNS NDB and then the RNAV approach from HNS kept my over the water in the channel, allowing me to drop to the 3400 ft IAF altitude.

I also had problems controlling my altitude on the final and overflew runway 8 before getting control. Again I flew a 180, returning over the seaplane base and was able to make a nice landing the second time around. Without the GPS map showing the surrounding terrain, it would have been much more difficult, as I was unprepared for the listed missed approach. Had it not been for Econ Mode I would probably just drove my nose down on the first attempt and tried to make a late landing with the likely runway overrun and veering off before ending up in the water. I hated to get a gforce penalty at that late stage, but knew I was pushing the fuel limit of the Beaver to the flight anyway, so the missed approach and go-around cost me a bit anyway. Still, I think the situation turned out ok considering the really poor weather conditions. Fortunately the Beaver's slow approach speed and easy handling makes it very forgiving compared to other aircraft in such situations.<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Jan 21, 2019 - 07:25 AM</em><!-- end editby -->

John,

It is amazing how much more forgiving the Beaver is than, for example, the Kodiak, which has a tendency to go into an unrecoverable stall without warning.

Mike