This afternoon I posted some pictures of flight # 999398. This is the 87th leg of the Alaskan Grand Tour. The total tour is advertised at 100 legs, but it's really only 98. So, I'm "only" 11 flights short of completion. I'm hoping I live long enough to finish. I started in Juneau back in March of this year (2016) and I have flown each and every leg, in sequence, in real weather, in the same aircraft -the DHC-6 Twin Otter, often known as a "Twotter". Since the tour starts in southern Alaska and works its way north, then west, then south and finally east, I figured this would work out well. I'd start in the south in the early spring and go north with the advancing summer. Now I am racing to get back to Kenai before deep winter sets in, and it looks like it may be close. Somewhere along this Odyssey, I swapped out the standard Aerosoft Twin Otter for the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended. One of the attractions was the load of really cool liveries available in the Extended model. I settled on the Inuit Air livery - very appropriate for the far north and great Inuit hieroglyphics on the fuselage. I also like the big, fat tundra tires, great for those runway narrow misses. This may not have been a very bright move, as the extended model is a good deal harder to fly, won't taxi properly, and has an annoying propensity to engine fires. Nonetheless, the enhanced features and realism were irresistible, so I soldiered on. Some of "my" (actually John Rogers') passengers weren't thrilled with the steep learning curve, and I still occasionally get those annoying passenger screams, but I am nearing real mastery of this aircraft. You'd think that Alaskan passengers could handle an occasional 2 g turn - wimps! Also, way back in April on the 40th leg, "management" put in economic scorekeeping - the econ package. It seems that eventually the accountants ruin everything. This meant no more flying with the aircraft 1/3 full. Now I had to cram the Twotter to the gills with passengers and cargo just to eke out a tiny profit from each flight. On top of that, I couldn't lard on the extra fuel "just in case", because it cut down on payload and flirted with the dreaded "fuel penalty", whatever that is. More than once I landed at below 5% fuel and sweating bullets. On top of that, you haven't really flown if you haven't dragged an overloaded, high wing aircraft at half flaps onto a nearly invisible, short, narrow gravel runway in a stiff crosswind. Let's just say some of those landings weren't very photogenic. Then there's the Alaskan weather problem. I don't just mean that it's often bad, which it is, but weather stations are few and far between. Usually you can't get an AWOS, much less a METAR or TAF for these small strips our "genius" management sends us into. So, you check the TAF for your alternate and hope for the best. I usually fly an upwind about 2000' AGL just to get the lay of the land at a new destination. I can't see some of then until I'm 50' above the threshold and finding landmarks to help on the approach is a vastly underestimated piloting skill. Sometimes, I have to make several passes before I commit to a final approach. I've also learned that it's very important to figure out your escape route before you "duck and drive", for if you have to go around, you don't want to have to pull 3 gs avoiding that ridge you should have seen. I can still hear those screams. Really people; that's not helping.
In spite of the complaints, however, this is my thing. I like (simulated,I'm too chicken for the real thing) flying that requires close attention and good problem-solving skills. I learned a lot in the doing. For example, if you're full you'd better take off with about 60 units of pitch down trim, or you'll find yourself in a full stall 1/4 miles off the end of the runway, no matter what the CG diagram says. The Twotter's Pratt and Whitney PT6A turboprop engines and light and powerful, but they don't spool up rapidly. The variable pitch means that you can't rely on prop RPM, you need to monitor the applied engine torque. In the end, you have to learn what setting of the power levers will produce the thrust you need after the engines spool up. You also need to watch the EGT, run them too close to the red-line for too long and they'll catch fire, guaranteed. Don't count on recovering from a stall, once she stalls, she goes into a spin and you won't get her back. Then too, you have to watch the airspeed like a hawk. Once you start deploying flaps on an approach, you have to work in the narrow window between 100 KIAS, the max. speed for flaps deployed, and about 80 KIAS where she starts to wallow with a full load if you aren't descending. If you let the airspeed bleed off too fast you're toast, because the engines won't spool up fast enough to avoid a stall, ala Colgan Air. Also, to make money on these flights, you have to be an artist with the combinations of pitch and torque at cruise. In the end, I learned how to get 130 KIAS at level cruise using only 400 Lbs/hr.(both engines) by adjusting the power levers and the propeller condition levers. I'm still not completely satisfied that I have mastered this aircraft and I could probably benefit from another loop around Alaska, but I'd better get back to Minneapolis before I find a pink slip in my company mailbox. When I get back I'm going to assign myself something easier to fly (e.g., the Dash 8 Q400) and I'm going to fly into a lot of airports with an ILS approach (and a bar); I haven't flown one of those in months.
When I finally finish this tour I'm expecting Yoland to fly over from Switzerland to Los Angeles and take me out for a beer. I know some good places close to the airport.
Cheers,
Mike
