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Its nice to be home after a week in Fairbanks.  I had a nice time working for the Alaska State Wide Mentor Project.  They are a great staff and fun to work with.  Even though the work was fun, its nice to be home hanging out with Erin again.  We got the “big boat” in on Sunday after I broke myself out of a 15 hour slumber.  Jesse, April, and Sawyer came out and we all (Jim included) went for a little boat ride.  It sure is nice to have the boat in this early in the year.  I hear we should be seeing temps in the 70s in the next couple of days.  Sounds like we should take a boat ride after school.

Safe and Sound

It was a pretty stressful Wednesday night wondering what circumstances my dad was in having “crashed” in a Cessna 208 Caravan II flying between Scammon Bay and Bethel, Alaska.  I’ll try to give you a play by play on what happened to the best of my knowledge.  I haven’t had a chance to directly talk to my dad yet, but this is what I’ve gleaned from conversations with my mom and a message left by my dad on my cell phone.

On their way back to Bethel from Scammon Bay my dad and fellow pilot Brian were flying at about 7,400 feet elevation when the engine failed.  My dad said he was very impressed with how the caravan handled, and that it had a high enough glide ratio to give them time to pick out a suitable place to land.  They ended up putting the plane down on a lake roughly 94 miles from Bethel.  Within 15 minutes of setting the plane down one of the companies other planes flew over checking on them.

dads-plane-crash

The landing couldn’t have been better.  Brian did just a phenomenal job of setting the ski less plane down on the snow covered lake.  During the landing the front landing gears shock was depressed and would not release.  This is the only damage the plane encountered in the emergency landing. They are very lucky the landing gear didn’t buckle.  If it had, the plane would have sustained a substantial amount of damage.

So now they are stranded in the middle of a frozen lake surrounded by miles and miles of bare tundra.  They were able to radio headquarters that they had landed and that neither of them had been injured.  The national guard dispatched a helicopter out to pick them up.  The helicopter got really close to them but there was a pretty bad blizzard that made an air rescue impossible.  Upon hearing the National Guard had scratched their attempted rescue Hageland sent a plane back out to the scene where they dropped some survival gear out the side of the plane for the guys.  They retrieved this gear and headed back to the plane where they were able to get out of the wind and cook up some dinner.  I heard rumors of some humorous talk of the movie “Alive” as they sat in the plane with the wind howling outside.

Meanwhile 45 miles to the west in Chevak a search and rescue team was being mobilized.  A couple of people headed out on snowmachines only to have one of their machines break down so they had to return to Chevak.  Around 1:00 AM a group of 4 riders took off to pick up the two pilots.  While they were on their two hour ride to the crash site, Dad and Brian were catching some zzzz’s in the caravan.  I guess at one point the wind was blowing hard enough to jostle the plane around.  There was some concern that the plane might tip over from the wind gusts.  Usually when a plane is parked the wings are tied down to keep them from being pushed around or over by the wind.  Since they were on a lake the guys were unable to tie the plane down and were at the mercy of the wind.

The search and rescue team from Chevak arrived at the plane around 3:00 in the morning.  My dad was fast asleep and I’m sure snoring like a log (poor Brian).  They had to knock on the side of the plane to wake them up.  The guys hopped on with the search and rescue team and headed back to Chevak arriving just after 6:00 in the morning.

Dad was very impressed with the search and rescue team.  Their command center had a map up with their crash site marked out and a full plan on how they were going to get them rescued.  He said it was a very well run operation.

At some point that morning (Thursday) the guys flew back to Bethel and were back to work.  For a plane “crash” it really couldn’t have gone any better.

Im not 100% positive about their plans to retrieve the airplane, but here is what I think will happen.  Hageland will fly out a mechanic to get the engine working and fix the front landing gear.  They may jack up the plane and put skies on it, or bring in a small bulldozer to clear out a runway for the plane on the ice.  They will then have a pilot with a ferry permit (a permit that allows the plane to be flown dirctly to a shop where it can be completely checked over) fly the plane off the lake back to Bethel or Palmer to have it fixed up and put back into circulation.

UPDATE:  Hageland ended up flying out a replacement engine and changing it out on the frozen lake.  They fixed the minor issues with the front landing gear and were ready to bring it home.  Here’s where it gets fun and a little taste of Alaska.  To get the plane to take off on the snow covered lake the crew cut three sleds (the kind your kids use to slide down hills) in half, put the back end in the front end bolted 2×4’s around as a frame and placed them under each wheel on the plane.  When the plane took off it used them as ski’s.  When they were off the ground the sleds stayed on the ground since they weren’t attached to the plane at all.  The Cessna 207 they used to bring the engine out picked up the sleds as to not leave any trash behind and they both flew back to Bethel.

Dad still has to do his check ride with the company before he can start flying for them.  I hope he is successful in that endevor.  If he is then he’ll finish out the two week shift and then head back to Valdez for a couple weeks off before doing it all over again.  Hopefully the next shift will not include any landings that aren’t on an approved runway. 🙂

Engine Failure

I ended my last post with this line….

“Anyway I wish him the best of luck.  We always say its better to be lucky than good.”

I guess that speaks volumes now because my dad was very lucky.  On April 1st, 2009 at approximately 1:30 PM Alaska time,  my dad was flying from Scammon Bay Alaska to Bethel Alaska when the engine on his Cessna Caravan II failed.  Being a single engine airplane he and the other pilot were without power and had to make an emergency landing.  When an engine goes out on an airplane like that you have very few options on where you are going to land.  Without power they fall out of the sky petty quickly.  They were able to bring the plane down on a frozen lake in the middle of the tundra roughly 90 miles from Bethel.  Luckliy neither of them were injured in the crash.  A national guard helicopter was dispatched from Bethel to rescue them but had to turn around due to bad weather.  The Alaska State Troopers have begun putting together a ground based search party out of Chevak Alaska which was the closest village to the crash site roughly 50 miles away.  There is a pretty bad blizzard working its way through the area so plans were made to drop supplies to help them weather out the storm holed up in the airplane.  I’ll post again when I know more.

dad-plane-crash

My dad has been a pilot since the late 70’s and is a very competent pilot.  This was his second day on the job with Hageland Aviation which has been in service since 1981.  I have flown many a flight with them during my tenure in rural Alaska.  They are a very safe company and I would fly with them any time.  The Cessna Caravan II uses a turboprop engine which usually is very reliable, so it will be interesting to see what caused it to fail.

Dad’s New Job

Well, my dad is starting a new job today.  He hopped aboard a Cessna Caravan in Palmer, Alaska heading for Bethel Alaska.  He is one check ride away from being a Hageland pilot.  It sounds like he’ll have about 4 hours of instruction in a caravan once he arrives in Bethel.  After the instruction time he’ll take a check ride and if he passes he’ll finish out his first “shift”.  A shift I found out is a two week stint.  If he doesn’t pass his check ride he’ll head back to Valdez.  During a shift a pilot can’t fly more than 8 hours a day, but usually work about 12 hours each day.  The rest of the time they are loading up freight into the airplanes and refueling them for their next flights.

Here is what a Cessna Caravan II looks like.

Here is the routes they fly on a pretty regular basis if not every day.

He is really excited about the new job.  This is something he’s always wanted to do.  He got his commercial pilots license a few years ago.  He also has his instructors license, so he is able to give flying lessons and has done so with a couple of guys from Valdez.  One of the cool possabilites of this job is that he may be stationed in Nome which should bring him in and out of St. Michael on a somewhat regular basis.  For those of you who don’t know, that is where my sister is teaching this year.

I do have my concerns about this whole new job…  After having lived in rural Alaska and flying in the inclement weather that frequents the area I worry about some of the situations he may be in.  Frontier Alaska’s rules state that if a pilot is not comfortable flying because of weather they can decline to fly at any time.  The problem is the weather can be really bad a lot of the time, so it turns into the standard operating procedure to go out on days you normally wouldn’t fly in.  This tends to work out fine over and over again, but the one time it doesn’t can be a tragic day.

Anyway I wish him the best of luck.  We always say its better to be lucky than good.

Texting on Takeoff

On our Northwest Flight 594 this morning from Portland to Minneapolis Erin and I were sitting in the exit row by the first bulkhead.  The flight attendants went through the normal procedure of getting everyone in their seats and closing the boarding door.  Like any other flight they then came on the intercom and instructed us to turn off all electronic devices including cell phones and ipods.  I made sure that my cell was off and that my iPod touch was stowed for takeoff.  Kay the flight attendant who was seated across the isle from me dissapeared into the restroom while the plane was taxing to the run way.  She re-emerged a couple minutes later with cell phone in hand.  I only noticed because the lights were off in the cabin, and her cell phone was glowing like a flashlight in the dark.  I thought to myself “This is odd.  They told us to turn those off five minutes ago”  I was kinda of annoyed by this knowing that if I had my cell out and running I would be reprimanded for doing so.  As we pulled into position on the runway for takeoff Kay then sat down in her seat across from me and tried to hide her cell under her coat on her lap while she continued to text away.  As a school teacher this is a tactic often observed in the classroom by high school students.  As the plane was just lifting off the ground she continued to text away and check the glowing screen under her coat.  I felt very cheated knowing that I could be using my ever so dangerous iPod touch to listen to music during our takeoff if it weren’t for the airlines rules.  Now I know that having a cell phone up and running during a flight will not cause the plane to fall from the sky, however as a flight attendant who is supposed to be enforcing these rules, I felt that this was a very unprofessional action to take in front of an entire plane full of passengers.

Just my two cents, but if they can do it, why can’t I?

My first post from my iPod Touch

I was searching the web and came across this fancy free app made by automatic ( the people that make wordpreas). It allows you to post to your wordpress blog directly from your touch or iPhone.

If you have one of these devices and a wordpress blog you should really stop by the app store and download it.

Managing work and play…

I’m about three weeks in to my offical work year now.  Its a bit of a rude awaking from what I have been doing for the last year.  I got pretty used to having days around the house when I was in Minnesota, and crazy jam packed working for three week stints in Alaska.  Now I am back to the old Monday through Friday work week.  I usually leave the house at 6:30 AM to make the 40 mile drive to work.  If I’m lucky I’ll get home around 5, but there are plenty of days that I don’t seem to make it home until 6:30 or 7:00 PM.  That doesn’t leave much time to hang out with Erin before I need to get the sack and catch some z’s to do it all again the next day.

Friday night Erin, April, Jesse, Jim, and myself went to the Cook vs. Tower high school football game to watch their cousin Jordan play.  There were some fancy storm clouds overhead.  I really like the big billowing clouds that build up over the midwest.  Tower ended up beating Cook pretty easily, and it was a fun evening under the lights.

This weekend a couple of friends from work Tony (Art teacher) and Kate (English teacher) joined me on a BWCACAST trip.  I got up at 6:00 AM and met them at the Y-Store at 7:15.  We headed to the end of the Fernburg Trail (by car) and paddled through Lakes 1, 2, 3, and went to the edge of Lake 4.  It was a gorgeous day, and I of course didn’t bring sun screen and burnt my face.  I was hoping to get some video of the leaves changing, but it appears I went a week or two early.  I’ll have to think about going in again in the near future to get the fall colors caught on tape.

My grandparents drove up from Alden to Duluth to attend a hawk sighting deal in Duluth.  They called us up and let us know they were in the area.  We were lucky enough to have them stop by today.  We went out for a pontoon ride, and had them over for some venison pot roast for dinner.  It was nice to catch up with them.

Pizza

We started the day with sourdough pancakes.  For those of you who don’t know, my parents got this batch of starter going back in the late 70s.  Katie and I grew up with sourdough pancakes on the weekends, and sourdough bread from the leftover batter.

So after breakfast we headed out on the lake for some boating and tubing.  After the tubing we went out and about looking for a place to do some swimming and have a little picknick.  The trouble was all of our favorite places were in use by other people.  So we just dropped the anchor by a reef.  We did some swimming off the boat and had some cheese and crackers.

After some sun we headed back home for dinner.  I had been working on the leftover batter through out the day to use as a pizza dough.  So I streatched it out and thew it in the oven with some cheese and pepperoni and here’s how it came out.

Its been great having Jeremy, Nikiya, Rown, and Scout over for the weekend.

Little Breaks

Today I worked from home, which is always nice.  It saves me the drive into the office, and it allows me to get right to work when I get up.  The websites are coming along slowly.  It seems like I run into road blocks every hour or two.  The design of the site is pretty much done, so now I am just porting over all the content from the old sites to the new one.  Its a lot of copy and paste and making sure all the linked files are transfered over to the new server and organized in a manner that makes a little sense.

I take breaks every few hours to either play a little Mario Kart on the Wii, or go swimming in the lake with Erin.  Its nice to give the eyes a little break from staring at code and get the muscles moving around a bit more.

Erin also did some baking today and made home made blueberry muffins as well as some delicous peanut butter twists.  I’ve eaten about 6 of them this evening which isn’t the best for me, but they are pretty tasty.

Laura, Erin, Mike, and I went to “Step Brothers” tonight.  It was a little over the top at times, but Will Farrel is a fun actor.

Jeremy, Nikia, Rowen and Scout will be visiting and staying the night with us tomorrow.  Its always fun hanging out with Jeremy.  It should be a nice evening of boating and grilling.

Im off to work super early in the morning so I’d better get some sleep.

Back at it…

Well, I will officially start blogging again.

The HughesNet installer was here this morning setting up our “high” speed interent dish today.  Don’t get me wrong its better than dial up when it comes to progressive downloads and overall page loads, but the 900 ms ping times is killing me when I try to FTP files and do web work.  It is nice to be able to surf the web somewhat normally again.

For those of you who hadn’t heard, I accepted a job with the Virginia Minnesota Public Schools for this next year.  They already have me working this summer on revamping their district, high school, upper elementary, and lower elementary websites.  It is quite an undertaking and the beginning of the year is quickly approaching.  I would like to have all 4 sites done by the end of next week.

Along with being in charge of the websites for the district I will also be teaching two hours a day.  One class is a web design class, and the other is an advanced video editing / student broadcasting class.  I should be pretty fun.  The rest of the day I’ll be helping teachers integrate technology into their classes and the rest of the jobs that a tech person runs into.

The shcool uses only Apple computers, however they have the administrators running windows on their macs using bootcamp.  So I do have to deal with the dark side from time to time.

Erin and I have had a busy summer.  She has graciously accompanied me on the BWCACAST camping trips this summer.  We have our last scheduled camping trip this coming Monday.  I don’t know how long we’ll be able to go in for with work hanging over my head.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been getting up around 6:00 AM to get to work when everyone else does in Virginia.  I have about a 40 mile drive each way, so I have to get up a little earlier than I’d like to, or have had to in the past.  Here is what it looked like the other moring as I drug myself out of bed.

We needed another car since Erin got a job in Net Lake which is 40 miles the opposite direction I’ll be driving.  So we looked around on craig’s list and found a 02 Kia Spectra in Superior.  So last weekend we drove over there and bought it.  Its a nice car and gets about 32 mpg.  So that will be nice with the driving.

Thats all for now.  I’ve found that getting up at 6 AM causes you to go to bed earlier in the evening.

I should be posting more often now that we have upgraded from dail up out here at the lake.

I look forward to reading all of your blogs as well.  I havn’t been able to do much of that either, so it’ll be nice to see what everyone else is up to as well.