AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2017 - 78

CHIEF PILOT Ken Strickler

"I'M THE BAD GUY WHO SAYS NO TO CLIENTS.
I WON'T COMPROMISE SAFETY. I WON'T
SEND PILOTS OUT ON DAYS THAT I WON'T FLY."
-Ken Strickler

day. They seldom return to the lodge until
it's time to bring passengers back in the late
afternoon or evening.
Lodge owner Ferguson said pilots stay
with their airplanes at remote locations to
protect them from the elements. Alaska
pilots tell horror stories about floatplanes
becoming stranded by tides, dragging
anchors, and breaking free from moorings
or being blown off beaches.
"Big winds and adverse weather can
come up fast, and we have to be ready to
move our guests and the airplanes to safety,"
he said. "Too much can go wrong when an
airplane is unattended."
Grenda's closest call took place when his
Beaver was blown off a beach by a 40-knot
gust and started drifting away. The pilot
charged into the water and swam after it,
became hypothermic, and nearly drowned.
"I knew better than to swim after it," he
said. "But when you see a half-million-dollar airplane being carried away, you want to
do something."
Lodge pilots also become experts at
78 | AOPA PILOT May 2017

flying heavy loads (each Beaver has seven
seats and they're frequently all occupied)
and external loads. Boats, outboard motors,
and all-terrain vehicles are lashed to floats
at the beginning of each fishing season and
transported to remote camps, then return to
the lodge in the fall. Beavers are so draggy
that the pilots say they can tell little difference when they fly with external loads, as
long as they're properly placed near the
airplane's center of gravity. Also, boats
should be loaded with the boxy stern facing forward.
"Loading them bow first tends to blank
the airflow over the tail," Ferguson said. "A
lot of tribal knowledge about this kind of
flying is passed down over the years. I can
only imagine how they discovered that
boats have to be loaded stern first."
NOT-SO-SPECIAL VFR

Virtually all the airspace in the region is
Class G, meaning that pilots can fly VFR
in visibility as low as one mile and clear of
clouds. Over the sprawling tundra, pilots

(below left) uses a satellite
messenger to keep tabs
on far-flung pilots. Lodge
guests aren't the only ones
fishing for salmon. Brett
Nicholson (right) is one of
Alaska's youngest flying
guides.

tend to hug rivers and streams they know
are clear of obstacles and follow the lowest elevations. In the mountains they fly
through passes, not over the high peaks.
All three of the Rainbow Lodge Beavers
are fitted with portable Garmin 796 GPS
units, but pilots seldom track the magenta
direct-to line. Each GPS also contains a trove
of secret user waypoints that identify off-grid
fishing spots with names such as Location X,
Christmas Lake, and Hope's Run.
All Rainbow Lodge pilots are instrument rated, but they almost never fly on the
gauges. "Rule number one is don't lose sight
of the ground," Ferguson said. "We'll only
climb above a cloud layer if we know we can
descend in visual conditions."
Some of the techniques pilots have
developed for flying in an area defined by
persistent low clouds and rain are a bit
counterintuitive. For example, if the ceiling
is 300 feet, visibility is often better closer to
the ground.
"It's better to be right down on the
deck where you can see the horizon than
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2017
