Stories from Alaska |
Twenty minutes previously, I had splashed down out in front of the Alitak Cannery. The first leg of my trip was finished as I helped offload food, produce and freight for the cannery. I had parked my Grumman Goose on a large wooden platform at the end of the row of cannery buildings. Because of the very low tide I had been forced to taxi across an area of muddy bottom before reaching the ramp, which led up to my parking platform. I was finishing a quick breakfast in the cannery chow hall thinking about the long day ahead of me. Transferring tons of cement sacks from a bay up to a lake was going to take much physical effort along with my pilot duties. This cement would be used in building a fish ladder, or Weir, for the yearly Salmon run up the river. Its location was about a half mile below the rivers outlet at the site of a series of small falls and rapids. It was the plan of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game to increase the size of the yearly run of Salmon by building this Weir. After thanking the cooks for breakfast I headed back to my Goose. I pulled both chocks after a quick walk around, climbed up the ladder and secured the hatch. The cabin is empty of its seats. I had to again crawl up and over the twelve wooden boxes of Avgas placed mostly under the wing area. Each box contains two five-gallon tins of Avgas. They lay on One Inch thick, cut to fit, plywood placed on the cabin floor. This plywood would spread the heavy load of the cement sacks across the floor area. After easing myself into the left seat a ritual started. Seatbelt tight, wobble pump fuel to prime each engine. Check the magnetos on, mixtures forward, props forward. Hit the starter button. Nothing rumbles to life like a radial engine, with it's slowly turning blades, several puffs of blue smoke, cylinders coughing as they wake, and with a rumble the Pratt & Whitney 985 comes to life as it reaches idle speed. Generator on. Give the battery a minute or two of charging before starting the second engine. Go through the same routine for engine number two. With both engines ticking over at 600 rpm, I check my radios and call in the blind that Grumman Goose N87U will soon be out in front of the Alitak cannery and taking off to the southeast in Alitak Bay. But first, a quick engine check. With each engine run up to 1500 rpm I check the generator charge, then each magneto and then exercise the prop control which changes the pitch of the propeller. Oil pressure and temperature are in the green and with a look at the fuel gauges I ease off the breaks and carefully line up my aircraft to head down the ramp, onto the mud and into the bay where my plane becomes a boat. I have hear nothing on my radio so, now back in the water and slowly heading out into the small bay I switch the gear lever to the UP position. I am scanning the skies, as the landing gear starts to raise itself with a racket that only an electric motor, working hard, can make. I quickly look outside to my left and then turn right to look into the small window port where I see darkness. Both wheels are up and in their wells. The GEAR UP light shows yellow. I run my controls full right and left, full back and forth and kick the rudder peddles side to side. Controls are full and free. Takeoff time. Looking at the water in front of me I slowly work the power levers forward increasing the power output of each engine. As the taxi speed increases, with both engines now coming up to full takeoff power, I feel the noise as much as hear it. The bow of the Goose is now rising and with a shower of spray the aircraft slowly pulls itself up onto the step, going from a displacement hull into a planning condition. Now up on the step, I balance the angle of the hull to the water using my elevators and quickly pick up speed. Sixty becomes Seventy-five and I apply a bit of back-pressure on the wheel and feel the Goose is about ready to fly. A tad more back pressure at Eighty and the hull breaks loose from the water and, leaving a trail of spray, slowly lifts up into the sky. I level off twenty feet above the water and allow my bird to pick up speed. Now climbing, I bank to the left around the headland and set course for Olga Bay. Banking over the mouth of the Fraser River I look down on several skiffs pulled up on the beach, and one fishing boat laying at anchor in the bay. Above the high tide mark, I spot a large pile of cement sacks. A group of men look up as the Goose curves around above them. A few minutes later, in the water with the gear down, I am carefully and slowly heading for the beach at a forty-five degree angle. Soon, I feel one wheel start to roll. Looking out and down into the water I check to see the size and makeup of the rocks and sand. A small rocky beach gives the best support but you can bog down a Goose on a soft sandy beach when the wheels sink into the sand. I think, This beach looks good, though I will have to be careful when she's heavy and full of cement. When the second wheel begins to roll I power the up-wing engine and swing the tail up over the waterline and stop. The rear hatch is now just up over dry land. Both engines become silent, ticking to a stop as I pull the mixtures closed. Several workers help me unload the cases of Avgas out onto the beach. Adding these boxes to the ones still unused will provide some of my fuel for today's shuttle back and forth to the lake. The loading and placement of the cement into the aircraft has been carefully planned back in Operations at home. The total weight, the number of cement sacks, the center of balance, where those sacks are to be placedall has been calculated. Each sack weighed 98 pounds. With the plywood on top of the aircraft floor to spread the weight, nine sacks were placed aft of the cockpit bulkhead, three rows wide, stacked three high. Aft, against these sacks were placed two more rows of six so that the last row was by the rear hatch. Next, one sack was placed in the read baggage compartment. Three sacks were placed up in the bow baggage compartment. The aircraft now had a total cargo weight of 2,450 pounds of cement sacks with the majority of the weight under the wing. We needed the skiff to load the three sacks up in the bow compartment. After the workers got each sack up onto the nose of the Goose I lifted each one down inside the compartment and placed them against the aft bulkhead. Closing the bow hatch I crawled back through the door into the cockpit and then, back in the cabin, placed each sack where I wanted it. The workers had set up a chain to lift the sacks into the Goose and on to me. Soon, I placed sack number 25 into the rear baggage compartment. Thanking the workers, I secured the rear hatch and crawled up over the sacks into the cockpit. When both engines were warm I applied power to one and then the other engine, walking the wheels, first one and then the other, into deeper water. Soon I was floating. With the gear up, in their wells, I applied takeoff power. Immediately, I could tell the Goose was heavy. Everything just happened more slowly. And, much more water and spray flew around the cockpit area as the heavy aircraft pulled itself up onto its step. I was required to give much more effort on the elevators to help her achieve placement on the step. With both big Pratt's pounding out their song of power the Goose slowly picked up speed. Passing Seventy I reached up and selected half flaps. As the flaps started down I applied back-pressure and about Eighty-Five my bird pulled herself up off the water. I leveled off at ten feet and watched the airspeed as we picked up our speed. I left takeoff power on until reaching 300 feet where I retracted the flaps and reduced power to climb power. Making a long slow turn out across the bay and climbing slowly I came back over the Fraser River mouth and headed up river towards the lake. Upon reaching 1,000 feet I could see the lake up ahead. The river meandered along under my path and soon I was looking down at the weir construction area. As I came on over the river mouth I looked for and found the lake beach where the workers were waiting for me. A 4X4 truck and skiff were visible along with a group of workers. I kept extra airspeed and used full flaps as I eased the hull down onto a light chop on the lake. With much splashing and spray my Goose again became a boat. I was happy for the wash, as this was a fresh water bath the aircraft received. At home, each evening, we gave our aircraft a good hosing to wash all the salt off. It helped keep down the corrosion. I headed slowly towards the beach with my gear down and when one wheel touched I saw that I was headed into soft sand. Powering the left engine I was forced to swing the Goose early. Only the tail climbed up over the beach. After shutdown, I crawled up into the bow compartment and opened the bow hatch. I called the men to bring the skiff around to the front of the airplane. Lifting each sack from inside the compartment up onto the bow of the Goose took a bit of effort. But, soon all three sacks were in the skiff and headed into shore. I organized two workers inside the cabin and two more who were wearing hip boots outside the hatch and up onto the beach so that we formed a line to pass the sacks along. It took awhile but soon the last sack from the rear baggage compartment was being placed on the 4X4 truck. This truck looked overloaded to me but I was assured it had carried heavy loads before. "We'll make it to the Weir." The driver yelled at me. The flying time between the mouth of the Fraser River and the lake was about 15 minutes. Now empty, after a quick takeoff, I stayed low and took a closer look at the weir construction site as I flew low level back down the river to the bay. The workers were all resting, laying on top of the wooden fuel cases, as I came overhead at a couple of hundred feet. Swinging out over the bay I checked my gear UP and banked steeply back around towards the beach and plopped my empty Goose back down into the saltwater. Trip number one completed! Back on the beach, with the hatches open, the loading of the cement started once again. Twenty-five more sacks were distributed correctly for weight and balance purposes. Once again the loaded Goose, with her engines blasting out their full song of power, lifted out of the water, trailing a line of spray and in a wide climbing turn headed for the lake. I was looking at my fuel gages. These takeoffs sure eat up the fuel. I have enough for two more trips before I need to refuel. After another two trips, I was standing up on top of the wing pouring Avgas, from a five- gallon container through a chamois covered funnel into my left fuel tank. The good news: I didn't need a head net because the bugs were not yet out and flying. The bad news: Filling each fuel tank to fifty gallons, five gallons at a timetook lots of time! But, it's all part of Alaska Bush Flying. No 'line boys or girls' around here to do your fueling while you sip hot coffee or a coke inside the air-conditioned pilots lounge. I remembered a time, out in the bush, when I needed to top off each tank. One Hundred Ten Gallons a side. All from Five Gallon cans. The fuel fumes that day attracted huge swarms of bugs. Only by being completely covered including a hat with head net could a person get the job done. Another joy of bush flying. After I finished my sixth round trip the workers helped me add just enough fuel to get back home. I watched as they piled into their skiffs and headed out to spend the night on the fishing boat anchored in the bay. A hot meal and bunk were available to them on board. One of the perks of bush flying in Alaska is that, when empty, you can enjoy a flight home doing what you like. Some like low level through the bays and mountain passes looking for bear, elk, moose and sheep, but today, I decided to climb up to the altitude of the mountain peaks, which were still snow covered, and look for sheep. Sticking my wing in close to these almost vertical snow covered cliffs I was wishing I had a movie camera to record the view. Sadly, I saw no sheep that day. That evening I told my wife that I had physically lifted 14.7 tons of cement sacks using my arms and back that day. The next day another pilot took over the job of the cement express. It was his turn to get covered with cement dust and have sore arms and a tired back. Bush flying gives a person the chance to obtain many other skills besides just being a 'dumb old pilot!' I highly recommend it! The End |
The Cement Express |
