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Susitna River Gravel Bar Landing.

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Posted

I love gravel bar landings on the Susitna.  Makes for a practice paradise. 

 

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Posted

I think that's great! A question for the mountain pilots. Do you routinely fly over terrain that you can't land on? I ask this question on my old group when I had my challenger and the major percentage said 'NO'.  I have to fly over stuff that I can't or wouldn't want to land on or in. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to fly. I do put the odds of risk in my favor as much as possible when possible. But sometimes its unavoidable.  Am I the only crazy hillbilly that does this?  I am a perfectionist when it comes to maintaining my engine and aircraft and engines are like wives, if you don't trust them, they aren't worth having. (my opinion, not my wife's). Don't tell her!

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Posted

I would never get to fly if I was afraid of the terrain around my house.  Basically when transitioning between questionable terrain altitude will be our friend.  I pull the cowling on my craft after every flight and inspect everything. Creeping problems can get out of hand quickly.

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Posted

I think that's great! A question for the mountain pilots. Do you routinely fly over terrain that you can't land on? I ask this question on my old group when I had my challenger and the major percentage said 'NO'.  I have to fly over stuff that I can't or wouldn't want to land on or in. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to fly. I do put the odds of risk in my favor as much as possible when possible. But sometimes its unavoidable.  Am I the only crazy hillbilly that does this?  I am a perfectionist when it comes to maintaining my engine and aircraft and engines are like wives, if you don't trust them, they aren't worth having. (my opinion, not my wife's). Don't tell her!

I don't know too many places in the world that you can fly over and NOT have places that you would NOT want to land.  Maybe if you had a runway on the dry lake beds and just circled them you would be ok, but the rest of the world has to fly over terrain that you probly wont have a flyable plane if land there. 

The higher you fly the more time you have to think about how bad its going to hurt when you ball it up.  I say that is its gonna happen I wanna get it over with quickly and completely :lol:

I do tend to fly high enough when crossing cook inlet or large bodies of cold water that I can glide to the other side.  The only time I did a little low level scud running over open water on wheels I was sweating like a whore in church and my plane developed the most horrible sounds / vibrations one could imagine.. oh wait, I did imagine them.  Not a fun experience nor one I care to repeat.  I now have the satellite communicator so I can wait out bad weather and tell people where I am at so they don't send good people out into crappy weather to look for me when I am just hanging out in an improvised camp waiting on the weather to clear.  It is a small price to pay every month to not have to put my buddies in danger when they get all excited because I have not returned at the scheduled time.

:BC:

 

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Posted

Hey Allen,

I have flown extensively in europe and found when I flew there I had always somewhere I could land if sh*** hit the fan (meadows, river creeks, lake shores, valley in high mountains, corn fields, lots of airfields, etc) .

When I started flying a C-172 on wheels here in Canada (british columbia) it was the first place I found I often had no place to go if my engine quit.....(big rocks, big forrests and ocean/lakes)

I did not feel comfortable and decided to go "amphibious"....what a blast. There has not been a single flight where I did not have some water to land on:P . I now fly mostly in remote places and my Catalina may see a runway 5% of the time......I really feel good and safe to be able to drop into a 500feet pond if needed...

Just my 2 cents..

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Posted (edited)

I NEVER fly over hostile terrain. That’s like driving and saying you’ll never turn a corner.  Sit in your living room in the dark watching re runs of full house if flying is that scary.

https://youtu.be/-vUlL0aDOYc

 

 

 

 

Edited by C5Engineer
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Posted

Now I know I am not the only crazy hillbilly! Nice video, rough terrain. 

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Posted

Now I know I am not the only crazy hillbilly! Nice video, rough terrain. 

I was born and raised in Bristol Tennessee.  I'm a crazy hillbilly through and through.

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Posted

I was sweating like a whore in church 

:BC:

 

That's not too bad.  Her customers sitting next to their wives in church are the ones that really sweat! :lmao:

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Posted

Now I know I am not the only crazy hillbilly! Nice video, rough terrain. 

I was born and raised in Bristol Tennessee.  I'm a crazy hillbilly through and through.

How did you end up waaay up there. Take a wrong turn at Memphis?

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Posted

Now I know I am not the only crazy hillbilly! Nice video, rough terrain. 

I was born and raised in Bristol Tennessee.  I'm a crazy hillbilly through and through.

How did you end up waaay up there. Take a wrong turn at Memphis?

The Army had different plans for me.  After jumping out of perfectly good airplanes at Fort Benning, Georgia they told me I was headed to Alaska.  My mouth hit the floor.

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Posted

I love gravel bar landings on the Susitna.  Makes for a practice paradise. 

 

I fished the Sue Baack in 1988 for silvers with Mike Lutes. 

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Posted

I fished the Sue back in 1988 with Mike Lutes.  

 

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