A Flight from Anchorage to San Diego - May 1997
I have a 150 horsepower 1957 Piper Tri-Pacer N7056D that I had to move from Anchorage to San Diego. At the end of March I got an annual inspection for it. Everything looked fine.
I flew up to Anchorage via Alaska Airlines on Tuesday April 29th and stayed with my best friend Alice. During the first day there, it was obvious that I couldn´t possibly see everyone, or even talk to everyone that I wanted to. I narrowed my focus to getting ready to fly down to San Diego. I wasn’t looking for cargo to carry, especially nothing in glass mason jars, no matter how good it would have tasted. The weather was looking good for Friday.
Friday May 2 - Anchorage to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada
I got dropped off at Merrill Field around 7:30 in the morning. Originally I was going to send a box full of stuff back to San Diego, but I finally decided that it would be easier to just put the extra stuff in the plane. I started to use my new flying calculator to plan the first leg of the flight, but a bunch of the keys didn’t work. I couldn’t use the three or the six, or add, or subtract. Not acceptable... I walked over to Northern Lights Avionics and traded it in on another one. All of the keys worked on the new one. I went to the Merrill Field office to check out of my parking space, called Flight Service for the weather and filed a flight plan. I filled up with gas at Aero Tech, said goodbye to Dick Ardiaz, who was the examiner who gave me my Private Pilot License.
I took off at 9:25. It was sunny and beautiful. I flew east and followed the Glen Highway out of town. Near Eureka and Gunsight mountain, I could see Wrangell, Drum and St Elias and realized that I was spoiled. Someone earlier in the week had mentioned the phrase "perfect weather". I could see these three mountains from one hundred miles away, but they were a bit hazy, so I guess the weather wasn’t perfect after all.
It was partly sunny at Northway. There wasn’t anyone in the pattern, I landed after 3.4 hours. I taxied up to the fuel pumps, and discovered that they had MoGas (plain vanilla unleaded car gas). I filled the plane with gas and went inside the lodge. I was only a little bit hungry, so I had a piece of cheesecake. I went back out to the plane, moved it away from the pump, and walked down to the Flight Service Station about a quarter mile away. I got a weather briefing. It was beautiful. I was told "The worst news I have for you is that you won’t have a tail wind". I probably talked to the guys at flight service for half an hour. Two minutes of weather and the rest was pure B.S. I also called Canadian customs
They’ve got a new customs system for light planes. You just call 1 888-CAN-PASS, answer some questions, and customs will meet you when you land. While I was talking to Canadian customs, I mentioned that I was moving to San Diego. The lady asked "Do you have your household possessions with you?" I told her of course I don’t, I’ve just got stuff for flying down. Then I got put on hold for a while, she came back on line, and asked more questions. I wonder if she thought that I’d have furniture and pots and pans and lawnmowers and such in the plane with me?
At the end the question was "What time will you arrive?" I said "About four hours from now".
"No, you can’t answer that way. You have to give me a time." So I had the opportunity to do some quick time calculations in my head, while being put on the spot. It was about 1:30 p.m., I was going to leave in about 30 minutes and it would take about three and a half hours to get there. I knew I was going to be crossing a time zone. Let’s see, on TV it goes 8 eastern, 7 central, so I need to subtract an hour, so it’s 1:30 plus 30 minutes plus three and a half hours minus an hour. Ummmm, "How about 4:30". "4:30?" "Yeah, 4:30"
I got ready and took off at 1:55. After takeoff I was impressed at how remote the Northway Airport is. I headed off towards the highway and I had to double check my heading with the map. There’s only one road out there, I couldn’t miss it, but it did seem to be awfully far away. I think I saw the spot where Rande and I stopped for a break on the drive out.
I saw the American Customs compound, and ten minutes later, as I flew near the airstrip at Beaver Creek, a flight of three planes took off towards the east, climbing to clear a ridge. They might have been going on a direct flight to Whitehorse. That was the most traffic I’d see for days.
Around 45 minutes after taking off from Northway, I started to do the detailed planning for arriving at Whitehorse. I took a look at the Alaska Flight Supplement for info on Whitehorse and noticed the time difference. I double checked and "Oh Shoot!" (Or words to that effect) I subtracted an hour instead of adding an hour. Customs will be waiting for me two hours early!
About ten minutes before the time Customs would be looking for me I was getting close to the Burwash Landing airport on the north end of Kluane Lake. I tried getting someone on the radio for about ten minutes on three different frequencies. I couldn’t get any one. Should I land and find a phone to call customs? No, they really want you to go to customs first. Well, my flight plan is accurate, so Flight Service won’t be mad at me, just customs. I flew at the same speed and hurried in my mind anyway.
Kluane Lake is just as spectacular from the air as it is from the ground.
The sun was getting lower, and it was spectacularly clear near Whitehorse. I was cleared to a long straight in approach to 13 right. I taxied up to the customs area, and could see a customs agent walking out to meet me. Just after I shut down, the customs agent walked up, and a fuel truck stopped right in front of me. I apologized for giving a bogus ETA, and the customs agent said it wasn’t any problem at all. She checks with Flight Service anyway. Customs took maybe ten or fifteen minutes.
After paying for my gas, I was talking to the fuel guy for fifteen minutes. He mentioned that the Shell guy had a pilot’s lounge and had rooms for rent. A turbine helicopter landed, and he drove off, fast, to fuel the helicopter. Before the helicopter’s engine was turned off, both brands of fuel trucks were waiting. I had never seen such competition to fill your tanks.
I stopped by the Shell Pilot’s lounge and got a recommendation for the Alpine Motel, just across the Alcan Highway. I got a room and had a drink and a bowl of clam chowder for dinner. Lots of historical aviation pictures in here. Stuff like DC-3s on floats! From my room I could see the world’s largest windsock. They’ve got a Douglas DC-3 mounted on a pylon. They say it takes at least a five mile an hour wind to get it to turn. Pretty neat.
Saturday May 3 - Whitehorse to Fort Nelson, Yukon
It was clear and sunny when I left Whitehorse at 9:50. I think there was one other plane in the area. It was easy flying, following the road past Teslin Lake. The clouds were getting low east of Watson Lake, a little bit below the mountain tops. The visibility never got bad in the valleys I was flying in, but it was looking bad in the valleys off to the side.
It was low, gray, windy and chilly at Watson Lake. I probably spent an hour talking to the C.A.R.S. (Community Aerodrome Radio Specialist?) guy. The conversation drifted over to stories about drinking with hockey players in Fairbanks. I had a good time, and if the weather were better, I would have hung around longer. Watson Lake is reputed to have the highest gas prices in the Yukon, and fortunately, with my long range tanks, I could continue on to Fort Nelson without buying gas at Watson Lake. I heard that a new guy is running the gas concession now, so the prices might be better, but I didn’t actually check.
East of Watson Lake there was an area that was recovering from a fire. It looked almost like tundra, because there weren’t any trees. I followed the Liard river for many miles. There was still plenty of ice on the river, but there were open spots where I could see some current. I wanted to take some pictures of the Liard Hot Springs, but the turbulence got bad enough that I didn’t think that I could get any decent pictures anyway. Just east of the Hot Springs, the river veers away from the road, and according to the sectional, goes through the "Grand Canyon of the Liard", including such intriguing spots as Hell’s Gate and the Rapids of the Drowned. If an aviation map names river rapids, I gotta check it out.
The most interesting rapid to me was where the river widened, and then radically narrowed, with lots of ice packed into the narrow part. There were a few places where you could see a lot of smoothly polished stratified rock in the canyon. It was bumpy and I was far away from anybody, so I didn’t get too close. I wouldn’t really compare this stretch to the Colorado River, but it was real pretty.
The Fort Nelson airport is a little bit weird. They’ve got a couple of long runways and one really long taxiway next to the east-west runway. The terminal and businesses are on this taxiway. The weird thing is that there are not any intermediate taxiways. I landed to the north on the long north-south runway, taxied up to the end of the east-west runway, and taxied down the length of that runway until I was able to get on the taxiway and taxi back to get gas. I don’t think I’ve ever taxied that far on such a small airport.
Once again there were two fuel guys competing for my business. I chose the Esso station because the other guys looked like they didn’t have a permanent operation. I got gas (at $3.65 a gallon, although it was pumped in liters) and told the guy that I was staying for the night. He was a really nice guy, but at first I had a hard time not smiling at his thick Canadian accent, eh?
He immediately got me set up with a tie-down right there, less than fifty feet from the pumps. While we were talking, a Partavenia (?) taxied in. Twin engine, high wing, set up for photography and or reconnaissance. The nose of the plane was all plexiglass and it had a small instrument console that looked like it belonged on a helicopter. It also had a large instrument rack inside, and I swear that I saw a small set of bomb bay doors underneath.
The Esso guy gave me the keys to the van, directions to everything, and asked if I could get the van back by 8 am. "No wait, tomorrow is Sunday, nothing ever goes on on Sunday, come on back whenever you want."
"Should I pay you for the gas?"
"Sure, now, or tomorrow, whenever it’s convenient for you. Have a nice night, eh?"
When we drove through a month earlier, Rande and I saw a sign in town that advertised a place that had 99 flavors of ice cream. I asked about it, he wasn’t sure about any place with that much ice cream, so he made a call and showed me where to go on a map. When I got there, I saw the sign again, advertising the Gra-Lin Burger Barn. Near where the map and the sign pointed, there was Fort Pizza. No evidence of ice cream at all. I went in anyway. There was a new hand printed pizza menu on the wall. There was a warm, empty, ice cream cooler right in front. An old burger menu was still there, but only half was still lit. The milk shake blender was still there, and there was a soft serve ice cream machine, but it looked empty. It turned out that they did still have ice cream, but certainly not 99 flavors. After all the build up, I got a soft serve hot fudge sundae that wasn’t all that special.
I spent the night at the Fort Nelson. It was kinda full, because of some kind of trade show going on. The hotel looked a little bit rough on the outside, lots of trucks. But it was nicer on the inside. I was surprised to find out that it had a really big atrium inside with a pool! No water, but they did have an indoor pool.
Sunday May 4 - Fort Nelson to Edmonton, Alberta
Sunday morning it looked iffy. There were lots of clouds, but I couldn’t tell how high they were. Not like the mountains in Anchorage that we use to guesstimate the height of clouds. I stopped in at Flight Service. I was planning on going to Fort St John, but it was looking marginal there, with a stationary front just hanging there, and predicted to stay there. There also was higher terrain in between and not a lot of weather reporting. The guy at flight service said something like "I can’t recommend that you go. I’m not telling you that you can’t go, but if you want to go, you’ll have to make your own decision."
I decided to wait on the weather. I talked to the owner of the Esso station, and read a book. Around noon a Turbo-Beaver on amphibious floats was on it’s way from Fort St John to Watson Lake. They got within fifty miles of Watson Lake, and came back to Fort Nelson because of the weather and fuel. It was an impressive plane. The paint job on it was probably worth more than my whole plane. I talked to him for a little bit, and it turns out that he was on his way to King Salmon and we both knew a couple of people in King Salmon.
He said the worst of the weather was in Fort St John itself, and it wasn’t really bad there at all. I decided to go. I started off following the highway, but the weather looked a lot better on the direct route, so I moved over in that direction. I had to go around a number of showers and low ceilings. It was too ugly for sightseeing, but good enough to get through to go somewhere.
It was clearing up when I got to Fort St John. The airport was pretty big, not real busy. I followed a turbo-prop commuter plane in. At Flight Service, it looked ugly the way I wanted to go, lots of rain and clouds to the south, but off to the east of the Rockies, it looked great. That was a real no-brainer, so I picked up an Edmonton Sectional. By the time I got back to the plane, the sun was starting to come out and I had a tail wind all the way into Edmonton.
It was a bit boring from Fort St John to Edmonton. All I saw was lots of checkerboard fields disappearing into the distance. I really couldn’t navigate just by looking at the ground. There were too many fields, roads, power lines and railroads that all looked the same. I flew according to the GPS heading.
I had been apprehensive about flying into the Edmonton airspace. It’s a big city, and on the maps it looks busy. I was arriving at about 8 p.m. on a Sunday. It was really easy. As far as I could tell, there was only one other plane in the air. I took the scenic route in so that I could get a good view of downtown. The Edmonton Municipal airport is located adjacent to downtown. I was given a parking spot next to the air museum. Air museum? That was the first time I’ve ever parked right next to jet planes. They didn’t have engines in them, but they were jet planes. The Shell guys gave me a ride to the Edmonton Inn, which was only about a quarter mile down the road. They called ahead and got me a special rate. I had an admirable room with a view of the airport. I looked through the hotel literature, and decided that I wanted to eat at the sports bar. Boy, those Sunday night big city bar crowds are a different experience, especially after spending the previous night in downtown Fort Nelson.
Monday May 5 - Edmonton to Helena, Montana
I dropped my stuff off in the lobby of the Shell FBO and walked down to the air museum. I found out that it’s only 3 or 4 years old. They’ve got around a dozen planes. The ones that stood out for me were a restored Mosquito Bomber, an Anson (Canadian) bomber, and a Norseman, a 1940s restored bushplane that’s going to Oshkosh this year. After I walked through the museum once, I grabbed one of the volunteers and had him give me the full tour, including the restoration area. When we walked into the fabric room and I smelled Stits Poly-Fiber drying, I felt right at home.
The jets that were parked out on the ramp were from Namao, which was a Canadian Air Force base that is converting to army. The grunts were building stuff right on the 14,000 foot runway so that it couldn’t be used as a runway again, and were shipping off anything that even hinted of the Air Force, like the display aircraft near the front gate. That’s how they got to the museum.
I spent over two hours at the museum, and didn’t take off until 1:25. As I was taxiing to the active runway, I saw a Cessna 206 with a stinger sticking out the back. It was a single engine Cessna version of a Navy P-3, used for mineral exploration. I had never heard of such a plane before. I got another tour of downtown as I flew out.
I spent a big chunk of time talking to air traffic control on this day. I headed out of Edmonton, and not all that long a time later I was talking to ATC going through Calgary’s airspace too.
After 4.0 hours of flying, I landed in the good old United States at Cut Bank, Montana. There was a brisk wind blowing at 17 gusting to 23 pretty much right down the runway. There was a huge hangar that looked like it was sized to handle bombers and survive a direct air strike, and a small wood framed building where the FBO and customs office was. There were a couple of planes tied down outside, and I could see at least half a dozen inside the hangar. The customs officer came out to the plane. All he wanted to see was my pilot’s license, plane registration, and I think I showed him a copy of my birth certificate. I went inside to fill out a form and paid $25 for the 1997 decal that’ll let me across the border for the rest of the year.
I went out to the plane to get some stuff to plan my next flight leg, and when I walked back into the terminal, the customs office was closed up, and the customs guy had his jacket off, and was sitting behind the FBO counter, wearing an FBO T-shirt. So I asked him, "What’s the deal, are you a part time customs agent?" He grinned and said that he was part time, and got paid by the plane.
After looking at the map, the weather, and how I felt, I decided to fly to Helena, Montana. I took off at 6 and got to Helena about an hour and a half later. Helena is a medium-sized airport, elevation 3,874 feet, with regular commuter and UPS traffic. After I landed I stopped at Beck’s U-Pump, right under the tower.
This place was really something. Pump it yourself 100LL fuel for $1.80 a gallon, as cheap as I’ve ever seen avgas. Right next door was a pilot’s lounge named Mustang Mickey’s. The lounge was a big as our new apartment. It has a large table and chairs for 8, a full kitchen with a stove, microwave, full sized refrigerator, pots, pans, plates, glasses, utensils. There’s a couch, comfy chair, 2 director chairs, a TV with a VCR and at least two dozen flying videos and another dozen other videos. There was a direct satellite weather machine, another computer weather setup, a phone (please no toll calls). Two courtesy cars, a small bathroom, a large bathroom with a shower, and a bunkroom with two bunk beds.
Did I mention the munchies? Twizzlers, hard candies, a five pack of beer in the fridge, sodas, complementary sized soap and shampoo and conditioner and hand lotion. The deal was, please buy gas here and tell everyone about the place. That’s it. It’s owned by a dentist, and he figures that if there’s nice, cheap places to go, more people will go flying.
I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go. My original plans were to fly through central Washington, Oregon and California, and now I was on the other side of the Rockies. When I called Rande, I mentioned that I might be going down the east side of the Rockies and crossing over in Nevada. She said "Great idea! You should give Alan and Susie a call." So I started planning in that direction.
I had the place to myself for about 14 hours. I took the station wagon into town to get something to eat, came back and watched a video about the Voyager flight around the world, and slept in the bunkroom. I had been mentally preparing myself for the lower 48 where you have to pre-pay at the gas station, and I ran across this place. I’ll definitely go back there again.
Tuesday May 6 - Helena to Las Vegas, Nevada
The weather was looking a little bit ominous in the immediate vicinity of Helena. After checking the weather with Flight Service, I filed a flight plan and took off at 8:40. I was barely out of the airport traffic pattern, when it started to rain. It didn’t last long, less than half an hour. It was the last rain I saw for over a week. I was on my way to Logan, Utah.
I was flying through the high country, through the Rockies. After Alaska and the Yukon, the Rockies don’t look that impressive. 8,000 foot mountains don’t look that big when the base of the mountains is at 5,000 feet. The Chugach Mountains behind Anchorage have a vertical rise of 6,000 feet, and go from sea level to above tree line. I was generally following Interstate 15 from Helena all the way to San Diego.
It was a relief to be able to follow terrain and read a map again. I don’t care for that flying in a straight line at a constant altitude stuff that I did from Fort St John, to Edmonton, to Calgary, to Cut Bank. I was flying at 6 to 7 thousand feet, throttle full open, cruising at 75% power. (The amount of fuel you burn depends on how much air goes through the engine. There’s less air at 6,000 feet, so you burn less fuel at full throttle up there).
In about 3 hours and 45 minutes of flying time I went from 40 degrees in Helena, Montana, over Idaho Falls and Pocatello, Idaho into 80 degree heat in Logan, Utah. The lower 48 is looking a lot smaller. Logan’s elevation is 4,454 feet. I got gas, and weather, asked about getting through the Salt Lake City Class B airspace, and called Alan in Las Vegas. Just as I started talking to him a twin turbo-prop started it’s engines and I could barely hear him. The conversation was mainly "I’ll call you again in about six hours".
It’s a good thing these airports are built way out on the flats, because it took a while to climb up to where I wanted to be. Once again the Class B airspace wasn’t as bad to fly through as I expected. I think the worst thing about flying through every one of these complicated airspaces was the fact that it was the first time that I flew there, and I had never seen any of the landmarks and wasn’t familiar with the area.
As I flew by Hill Air Force Base I got to see some B-1s and F-16s doing touch and gos in the pattern below me. It’s not often that I see fighters and bombers below the Tri-Pacer. Usually they can’t keep up. Yeah, keep dreaming.
It took me about an hour and a half to fly through the Salt Lake City area. The guys in Logan didn’t have a Las Vegas Terminal Chart, so I was thinking about stopping somewhere to get one.
I was buzzing along at about 7,000 feet, and the terrain started dropping away, I looked at the map and noticed that Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks were off my left wing. Wow, I’m going to have to come back and see them later, when it’s cooler.
It was about 40 degrees when I left Helena and now at 8 thousand feet it’s 80 degrees. Have you ever watched a movie where they were having trouble with the gages, and they tapped them with their fingers to make sure that the needle wasn’t jammed in the wrong position? Well I was doing that with the thermometer. I think it was the first time that I ever thought it was broke. 80 degrees at 8 thousand feet? Come on, that can’t be right! I don’t think I’ve ever flown in that much heat, never mind at 8 thousand feet. It’s supposed to be around 20 degrees at that height. It can’t be right. I discovered myself opening the outside air vent, and even the window!
My Tri-Pacer has some funny little vents on the side windows. The best description I’ve heard of them was "They’re not very effective, but they do make a lot of noise" I had to dig out my Leatherman to coax them open. I’m not used to flying with a breeze blowing charts around the cockpit.
I had been planning on stopping at St George, Utah. The airport was at an elevation of only 2,938 feet, had automated weather there, and I could probably get a chart for Las Vegas and call Alan.
When I checked the weather, it was 91 degrees, a density altitude of over 5,000 feet, and a direct 90 degree cross wind of 16 gusting to 20 knots an hour. Ok, let’s see, I’m a bit tired. My plane will have very poor performance, and I know that a Cessna 172 maximum cross wind component is only 12 to 15 knots. My Tri-Pacer came out before they were required to give a cross-wind component. I guess that I’ll just head on into Las Vegas without a Terminal Chart. I already had two current charts covering the area. I just didn’t have the most detailed one.
From looking at the map, I figured that I could cross the ridge to the west of St George at 3 to 4 thousand feet. I ended up crossing at 7 thousand feet. That terrain is hard to figure out from a map with thousand foot contour intervals.
As I approached Las Vegas, I started talking to Nellis AFB Approach Control. I figured I could go in low (about 4,000 feet for a traffic pattern at 3,000 feet), but they kept pushing me toward the north, so I ended up at 5,500 feet to stay over the terrain. Finally Approach Control told me to turn left when I had the field in sight. I was looking and looking and there was stuff as far as the eye could see, but I couldn’t see the airport. They got tired of waiting for me, so they gave me a heading and handed me off to the tower.
According to the GPS, I was heading towards the airport, only about 8 miles away, and I still couldn’t see it. Finally I thought I saw it. Just to the right was a small tower, but to the left was a fairly tall narrow tower. That must be the control tower, I thought, so I headed towards it. I looked back down at the GPS, and it looked like I was headed to the left of the airport, so I looked at the tower again, and it turns out it was about an 8 story high sign for a casino that I was seeing from the narrow side. The little boring looking tower was actually the airport control tower. Once I go oriented, I landed at North Las Vegas Airport, elevation 2,203 and a temperature of 91 degrees.
Right in front of the terminal were about half a dozen twin-engine planes owned by one of the tour outfits. To the left of them were two Beech Starships. The Starship is a multi-million dollar twin turbo-prop canard pusher business airplane that was at least partially designed by Burt Rutan. They never sold very well, because you can get a bigger faster cheaper used jet for less money. It’s a futuristic almost Buck Rogers looking plane that I’d never seen in person before. They said they’d park me behind the Starships. Great neighborhood!
From Logan to Las Vegas took just under 5 hours, for about 8 hours and 45 minutes of flying time for the day. Boy it’s warm in Vegas!
I went into the terminal and talked to Alan. I told him I’d get something to eat there, to give the traffic some time to die down. As I was eating, I looked at the clock on the wall. "What time zone is this?" That damn pilot forgot to announce the time zone change, again. Alan picked me up at the terminal, and less than a mile past the airport we passed two large casinos that each had more light bulbs than the entire Yukon Territory. I was in culture shock for a minute or two. I spent the next two nights with Alan, Susie, and the new kid, Jake (10 weeks old).
Wednesday May 7 - Las Vegas
I didn’t do any flying, I thought I’d take a break. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go hit the strip, or just hang around and do nothing. After borrowing a pair of shorts, I went to Henderson Airport to get a Las Vegas Terminal Area Chart and headed towards the strip.
I went to the MGM Grand and started towards the amusement area. I had heard about a ride called "The Screamer". I saw a model of it, it looks like a giant swing, like 250 feet high. As I got closer, it was $2 to get near the amusement area, and one ride on "The Screamer" by yourself was $22.50. With two other people, it was $12.50. After flying down from Alaska, $14.50 for a ride on a big swing didn’t look like a bargain to me, so I left.
I went across the street to the New York, New York Casino. It’s got a replica of everything, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Tugboats in the harbor, the Chrysler building. They’ve got a great roller coaster. After wandering the required mile through the casino to get to the good stuff, I got in line for the coaster. Apparently they had been having some trouble with it. I never saw it run while I was walking around outside. As I got there they were just letting people into the rat maze area. I was about number ten in line. They had the usual four-foot high sign packed with warnings. We got up to the turnstiles where they make you buy a token for $5 to put in the turnstile before you go in.
One of the employees started mumbling loudly "mo ba, mo ba". No one could understand what the heck he was saying. Finally we found out that he wanted us to move back from the turnstiles so that they could get set up. I couldn’t figure out if they had no clue at all to what they were doing, or if they were trying to give us the full New York Experience. "Come on in, no, wait, move back. We’ll tell you when you’re supposed to come through".
A few minutes later they started telling people that they couldn’t bring in purses, or hang on to anything large, like stuffed animals. A four foot sign mentioning heart disease, nausea, motion sickness, back problems, blah, blah, blah. Never mentioned anything about purses. Fortunately they did have lockers out front.
Finally we did get up to the ride after having heard the "keep yer ahhmms and legs inside the caaa at all times" at least a fifty times. It was fun. I was sitting next to a girl who was a real screamer. The ride starts inside the building, and most of it is outside in the sun. One of the better roller coasters I’ve been on. It had one full loop and one corkscrew.
After that I wandered over to the Luxor. I wanted to go on a motion simulator ride that was broke the last time we were in town. It was a big, fun, silly Indiana Jones kind of production. There were only five of us going through, so it was really silly having to stand around watching the video about how to pack as many people as possible onto the ride. The ride was at least ¾ empty. I was the only one to go on to the second part, which included some 3D effects. I walked into a theater, about the size and shape of an IMAX theater, by myself. I asked the girl that worked there, "Which is the best seat in the house?"
She said the orange one. "This one?", "No, two more seats, that one." So I sat in the best seat in the house. It was silly, set up kind of like a talk show set, with applause signs and everything. I had fun because the whole thing was just so silly, including running the whole thing just for me. On the way out I dropped four quarters in a slot machine. I figured it was worth it to bump my odds from zero in a million all the way up to one in a million. Besides, after flying all the way down from Anchorage, why should I start gambling now?
On the way back, I stopped a Gee Bee’s Bar and Grill. The theme of the place is the Gee Bee race planes from the 30’s. They’re short and squat, a lot of engine, not much wing and little else. The Gee Bees were named after the Granville Brothers from Springfield Massachusetts who designed and built them. At one point, Jimmy Doolittle set a speed record in one. They were reputed to be extremely dangerous. When I was at Oshkosh last year, I had a chance to talk to Delmar Benjamin, who is the owner and pilot of a replica Gee Bee racer. He currently has more airtime in the Gee Bee than all other pilots in the world, ever, combined. He told me that I should stop in if I was ever in Vegas. I was, so I did.
Suzie’s mom and dad arrived at the airport that afternoon, so I got kicked out of the spare bedroom, and spent the night rooming with Jake (10 weeks). He was great. I got a good 7 ½ hours of sleep.
Thursday May 8 - Las Vegas to San Diego, California
The first guesstimates for the last leg were for only a couple of hours, then I bumped it up to three hours. It worked out to more like 3 ½ hours. I was flying at a higher altitude than I originally expected. On the way out to the airport I finally noticed Alan’s car. When he picked me up, all I noticed was that it was a small red car, with a towel rubber banded to the stick shift (to prevent burned flesh I guessed). In the morning I noticed the Porsche floor mats, then the Porsche imprint in the center of the steering wheel, and Alan likes Porches, and hey! I’m riding in a Porsche! So that’s why I was able to borrow the Toyota pickup with over 100,000 miles on it.
As we walked out to the plane, we saw a bright red open cockpit Waco biplane being towed up to the ramp in front of the terminal. We stopped and talked to the owner, who was also the pilot. He was making a living giving rides. I checked out, and paid $10 for two nights of parking. It was the only place I paid for parking.
I got gas and took off at 10:30 in the morning. As I was slowly gaining altitude to get out of the bowl, I saw the Waco again, near Red Rocks on the west side of Vegas. I stayed high most of the way to San Diego. As I crossed the pass into the Los Angeles basin near San Bernadino, the visibility dropped down to a reported 7 miles. Yuk. I was used to 50 to 100 miles or more of visibility during most of the trip.
I skirted around the Los Angeles airspace, and saw only one other plane, and it was going in the opposite direction. After having spent hours studying the maps the night before, I was comfortable heading into San Diego. The airspace here is as complicated as Anchorage, and once I get familiar with it I don’t think I’ll have any problems.
I landed on runway 28 left at Montgomery Field, San Diego at about 1:50, three and a half hours after leaving Las Vegas.
According to the Hobbs Meter, I spent 36.1 hours on six days flying from Anchorage to San Diego. I went through 306 gallons of fuel that cost about $666. The fuel averaged $2.18 a gallon and I got 8.5 gallons an hour. I used about a quart of oil every six hours.
I ended up flight planning for 100 statute miles an hour, or 87 knots. On the purely VFR navigation portions of the flight I’d cut enough corners that even if my ground speed was only 90 MPH I’d still get there on time. Nothing broke. I only spent half a day on the ground waiting on weather, I didn’t have any problems with customs, or flight service, or anything. Well, waiting for the roller coaster was a pain in the butt, but it was cheaper than gambling.
I had 22 maps and charts with me at the end, flight supplements for Alaska, Canada, the North-West and South-West US and the Alaska Airmen’s Association Logbook for flying in Alaska and Canada. I bought the Vancouver and Seattle sectionals ahead of time, but never got near that airspace due to the weather.
If you want the Canada Flight Supplement, order one early. Aviation Wholesale on Merrill Field is the only place that has them in Anchorage. I was able to pick up a six month old copy half-way through the trip. No one sells them. I was told that they get shipped out at random times, and in all the FBOs and Flight Service Stations I was in, I think I only saw one that was up to date.
It does help to have all the up to date maps, charts, and frequencies with you. Most of the frequencies in the Yukon changed in January 1997. So, a lot of the documentation that I had with me, including the six-month old Canada Flight Supplement, and my GPS were out of date as far as the frequencies went.
I should have brought a pair of shorts with me. When you’re thinking about charts and gas and oil and survival kits and boots and snowshoes and everything else, you have to draw the line somewhere. I figured I could survive a day with long pants. But then again when I was packing, I wasn’t planning on going through Vegas.
I lost some weight during the trip. Between my nerves, and having no desire to do that cross-legged dance in my seat while flying, I only ate one meal a day. I figured that I’d be munching all day every day, but it never happened. It turns out that I had a lot more survival food than I was planning on.
I hope I never have to go on a commercial airliner again.
Walter Yankauskas