Junk Yard Wars

[patrickg]

GlueGuy, Great contribution, no appology needed.

Bird, I see both you and GlueGuy are IFR pilots (I Follow Roads). If you can't dead stick to a fair landing site from anywhere along your route, you're tempting fate, a statistic waiting to be accounted by the NTSB.

Denali was about the high point for us as well but salmon fishing in Griz territory was a close second. Never ever got close to a brown bear (luckily, just the way I like it).

Everyone thinks blacks are teddies, they aren't, they stalk and eat people. I've had way too many close encounters with cute little harmless black teddy bears. Oh yeah Alaska, Anyone notice the stuffed Griz at the airport, standing about 11 feer tall?

Was anyone besides me flabergasted when they saw the pix of the halibut they catch out of Seward? When I was in a tackle shop and saw my first giant artificial lure, I thought it was a novelty, a hoax/conversation piece. Then I noticed they came in several colors with minor variations in style and it finally dawned on me THEY ACTUALLY FISH WITH THESE THINGS. These lures were over a foot long and had hooks you could hang a side of beef with. The wall was plastered with pix of fish bigger than VW bugs. I've seen smaller whales.

To the tune of where have all the flowers gone... Where have all the float planes gone, gone to Alaska EVERY one. Never saw so many float planes in my life as in Alaska.

Patrick

 

[patrickg]

Bird, Junk Yard Wariors, et al

Ever heard of Locke Supply? I confirmed by phone that they had the crimping tool for 3/4 PEX. Try Lowes first. I was 15 min late getting to Locke Supply today. They close at 1200. . Locke had it at $160. Got there too late so tried Lowes figuring it couldn't hurt. Same tool $98.

Now I can "professionally" repair the cow-knocking-over-the-frost-free-spigot damage and be armed and dangerous to crimp 3/4 inch PEX fitings.

Patrick

 

[Bird]

Patrick, I was not only surprised by the size of the lures, but also by the fact that the locals call them "Texas jigs". I told 'em I use quarter ounce jigs for crappie in Texas and have used 1 ounce jigs at the coast, but had never seen what they called Texas jigs. My brother thought I should use one of the 16 ounce ones, but I decided on the 12 ounce version instead. Of course, the biggest halibut I caught out of Seward was only an estimated hundred pounds. And I say "estimated" because after my brother tied it to the side of the boat (you sure don't want to bring one of those into the boat with you until you're absolutely sure it's dead) and got my lure out of its mouth, it came alive again and thrashed around until his knot came untied and lost my biggest fish./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif I saw a picture of a halibut caught on a long line that they claimed weighed 750 pounds.

Glad you can fix the plumbing, and hope I never need one of those tools. Cows are destructive critters; that's for sure.

Bird

 

[GlueGuy]

That sounds similar to my experience. We had 5 or 6 aircraft stranded at Ft. St. John for 3 days. There was a low pressure zone "parked" northeast of F.S.J, and the guy at the weather station (right on the field), said they were going to assign it its own zip code /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif.

On the 4th day, we noticed the "pinwheels" of the low had wet/dry areas that were 2-3 hours wide (at F.S.J), and decided it might be worth a "run". The guy from North Pole only had a VOR, and it's something like 400 miles to Watkins Lake (and no VOR's between). He flew on my wing ('cause I had the GPS) to Watkins Lake where he had to stop for fuel. The Long-EZ has "long legs", so I kept going to Whitehorse (~~ 800 miles? Can't remember. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif).

At any rate, I made it to Northway by mid-afternoon. The guy from North Pole pulled in after midnight. Makes a big difference when you don't have to stop for fuel...

Gotta get back up there again. Ahhh, the memories. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

The GlueGuy

 

[Bird]

GlueGuy, you had a lot more airplane than we did. We were just flying VORs until we got to Ft. St. John. VOR was out of service at Red Deer, so we just flew compass heading from Medicine Hat to Red Deer until we found the only 4 lane divided road in that part of the country. Then our delay at Ft. St. John was because Watkins Lake was socked in, and we were going to have to stop there for gas. My brother decided to take a short cut instead of staying with the highway from Ft. St. John to Watkins Lake and the young couple from Denver were going to follow us (the two faster planes decided to just stay with the highway). As soon as we cleared the first ridge out of Ft. St. John, there was a little thunder cloud and we skirted around it, but the other 152 got into it (sounded bad on the radio and we lost contact). Then when we got to the north end of Watson Lake, they came on the radio and said they were at the south end. The three planes landed at Watkins Lake, refueled, we made sandwiches for lunch and ate them, and that young couple hadn't been heard from; gave us quite a scare. We were just getting in our planes to go back and look for them when they showed up. They took the wrong branch of the river we'd told them to follow and aced out their shortcut. Of course, I would never recommend that shortcut to anyone because for an hour or so I didn't see a place I'd try to land a helicopter.

We had another little scare when we left Whitehorse the next morning and the guy in the 180 passed us. My brother had told him we were just going to follow the road until we were over the U.S. customs checkpoint, then come around to (270 I believe) and right down the valley to Northway. Well, there was a little shower on both sides of that valley and we just aimed right through the arch between them, but Northway said they hadn't heard from the 180. When we got him on the radio he said when he saw those clouds he decided to continue following the road, but that he was now in heavy fog, and you could really hear the panic in his voice. My brother asked him, "Can you get under it?" and he came back stuttering real bad and yelling, saying, "I . . . I . . I'm down to 50 feet and I can't see s__t!" So my brother asked him if he could turn around and he said he was turning. Anyway, he got back over the customs station on the road and then followed us into Northway. We left Northway in a light rain, but the guy who runs the airport told us we'd be in the clear in 5 miles. That poor character in the 180 said he was going to sit right there until he saw the sun; don't know how long that took./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

 

[GlueGuy]

With a 152, you must have come up the east side of the Canadian Rockies?

I came up on the west side until I got to Prince William. I crossed the Rockies going from Prince William to Ft. St. John, and I think I had to "bump it up" to 15,000' to get over. Was only at that altitude for 15-20 minutes, but if I had a 152, I ould think you'd have to go through the pass.

Your experience mirrors mine. Had a lot of "tense moments", but I always chose the most conservative choice. That area of the world is pretty harsh.

Oh, how'd you guys deal with the "weapon requirement". In AK, they "require" that you carry a weapon with a minimum 30 caliber (or so, don't remember the exact size). However, when crossing Canada, it's illegal to carry "any" weapon.

Before I left on the trip, I asked FAA authorities, and Canadian authorities how I could resolve that conflict. Basic answer was to mail yourself a weapon c/o general delivery in Northway. I blew them all off, and went weaponless. Decided the plane was heavy enough as it was..../w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

The GlueGuy

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

Bird,

Sticking with this thread/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif. When I was a kid we would go to the JUNK YARD and rip the open ended door handles from the wrecked cars, tie big trebel hooks on them and use them for jigs to catch fresh water Ling Cod in Kootenai lake.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Uh... Them must be some BIG fish if you can use door handles to catch em. Don't think I want to go swimming for awhile.

SHF

 

[Bird]

<font color=blue>must have come up the east side of the Canadian Rockies</font color=blue>

Yep, picked up the plane at the factory in Wichita, KS, in the afternoon, spent one night each in Scotts Bluff, NE; Red Deer, Alberta; Ft. St. John, and Whitehorse. We did leave the Alcan temporarily where it goes over Trutch and followed the river through the valley; never got over 4,000'.

<font color=blue>how'd you guys deal with the "weapon requirement</font color=blue>

Rules, regulations, and laws are constantly changing, and I haven't bothered to check on the changes in the last 10 years. When we drove to Alaska in '72, I had 3 pistols in the travel trailer (two .38s and a .22). Canadian customs just told me to bring them inside unloaded. They wrote up a form with the serial numbers, put all 3 in a heavy clear plastic bag, tied with a waxed cord and lead seal and told me to show them to Canadian customs before leaving the country (which I did at Beaver Creek). I never took them out of the bag in Alaska, so coming back, they simply did a new form to show at this end. In '90 and '91, I carried no handguns, but did have a .22 rifle, 30-30 rifle, and 20 gauge shotgun in the travel trailer and that was OK; just no handguns or hollow point ammo allowed (I'd just plain forgotten about the hollow point ammo rule and they didn't ask until I was returning in '91. We hit Canadian customs early on a Sunday morning in Beaver Creek; no other traffic moving either direction and the young sergeant there asked lots of questions, including whether I had any hollow point ammo - I did; both .38 special and .22 which I told him we would gladly throw away, but of course, instead he "confiscated" it, and wrote me a receipt for it - about half a box of each)/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif. And of course when we flew up, the survival kit had a double barreled 12 gauge in it. Canadian customs always asked whether we had any firearms, we told them, and they didn't even ask to see them. I understand all that's changed now.

Bird

 

[Bird]

Never thought about it, Al, but guess that should've worked just fine for those big mouthed fish. I caught a few ling cod around Rugged Island out of Seward on that 12 ounce Texas jig, and also caught lots of rock fish on a lure that was nothing more than a shiny chrome 4 ounce chunk of steel about 4" long with a single treble hook on the back end.

Never got to Lake Kootenai; only flew over it in a Piper once on the way to Seldovia to go out halibut fishing from there.

Bird<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Bird on 07/15/01 02:11 PM (server time).</FONT></P>