Getting to Camp

As I said before, camp was absolutely incredible. I, along with the rest of us here at Kindgom Air Corps, could not have been more pleased. So here is a little of what happened...

Getting there
Dwayne has a phrase that has become somewhat cliche' around here: P.W.W.P. It stands for Pilot Willing, Weather Permitting. And most pilots know that one of the big go/no go decisions is based on the weather. Friday night as we were preparing, the weather looked beautiful, so we made the flight plan to head to Palmer for gas, then directly to Fairbanks from there where we would meet up with Jim and Cathy Congdon, and go directly to camp.
5 airplanes took off from the ranch around 9am, slowest leaving first and the fastest last. Beautiful sunshine greeted us, the terrible haze we had the past few days was clearing up, and we were all excited for camp. Palmer is the closest actual town to us here at the ranch, so it was just a short hop to the gas stop. But about halfway there, an unwelcomed guest made its presence known: low clouds. We got on the ground and went into the flight service station, checking up on weather. Mountain passes we socked in, and every way we thought to go, we wouldn't be able to make it through low clouds and poor visibility. So we stayed in Palmer a few more hours than we anticipated. As soon as the weather started breaking up, we loaded up and headed out. The flight to Fairbanks would take 2-3 hours, depending on which aircraft's speed is used for calculations. We went over Wasilla, probably straight over Palin's house, and up the Parks highway.
About halfway up the highway, the Cherokee 6 (6 seater, one of the fastest in our little fleet) started losing oil pressure. Thankfully there were several airstrips along the way, and it was dropping very slowly. We in the 206 landed to help them out. It ended up just needing some oil added and was functional from then on. Dwayne instructed them to fly at a higher altitude where the air is cooler to help keep the engine oil a little cooler.

Coming out of fairbanks, the 175 was having some radio trouble. Thankfully we had a handheld radio and capability to plug the headset into the radio. That problem being solved, we made our way to Bettles, crossing the arctic circle on the way. Dwayne gave the airplane a BUMP as we went over it so everyone would know where exactly is was. And he started telling story after story after story of flying over those mountains. At several points I used the pilot isolation switch and talked to the other guys on the radio.

At Bettles, we discovered the 152 starter was broken. It can still be hand propped to start, but it isnt quite as safe an operation. Before planes had electrical systems, the hand propping method was the only way to get the birds flying. Starters really are a luxury item if you think about it that way!

We arrived at camp late enough Saturday that we just went straight to bed, ready to pick up kids Sunday and get camp started Monday.