Apologies in advance for the long AAR - this was three days worth of flying, compressed into one virtual day…
So with the Beaver dropped off in Prince Rupert, my following day was going to be a busy one! I caught the first flight out of Prince Rupert on an Air Canada Jazz Q400 by FlyJSim. This is a great airplane for regional ops…
After climbing aboard, I settled in for the short drone up to Vancouver, about an hour away. I’d basically be flying back the way I’d come in the Beaver, but far more directly…and at a much higher altitude!
This was also my first flight with the newly revamped and updated SkyMaxx Pro v3.0, and I have to say I was quite impressed. Both the visual depiction of clouds of multiple types, and the performance were agreeable.
The lens flare and “God’s rays” effects are really cool and add a bit of dramatic appeal to the flights…
The flight up the Inside Passage was characterized by a high overcast layer and multiple scattered low cumulus layers, but overall good weather…
Within an hour we were on the final descent into Vancouver…
Turning final…I can’t say again how impressed I am with Tom’s Inside Passage Scenery package…
After touching down, we taxi in to the commuter terminal…
I spend the rest of the day munching on overpriced airport food. I buy a pass to the Plaza Premium Lounge to kick back and relax - money well spent. After spending the day, I make my way over to the South Terminal to pick up a Twin Otter for the EPOCH InsomniPilot™ flight. For this night, the call to arms is to bring in some supplies to assist in the expansion project of EPOCH Passage Aviation. We’ll be heading down to 39P (Cinebar, WA) to pick up some items to bring back. We had a good showing with four or five pilots participating and some drive-by appearances on the TeamSpeak channel as well.
I fire up my Twin Otter at the South Terminal and go through the preflight checks and load the flightplan in the GPS…
On the way out to the departure runway - I notice the pavement markings don’t match up with the hold short signage (the pavement is right, the sign is wrong!)…
Once all the other Night Flyers have checked in and are ready for departure, we stagger our takeoffs to provide deconfliction. We also communicate DME from the various waypoints enroute to assure we don’t all occupy the same piece of sky…
The first leg is a very short 35nm hop over to Bellingham (KBLI) to clear customs.
Interstate 5 snakes up toward KBLI, making it easy to spot. We used real time and real weather for the flight and conditions were perfect with unlimited visibility and cloudless skies (this is Seattle right??)…
After touching down at KBLI, the gaggle of us clears customs (no body cavity search this time…darn!) and we are soon heading back out. The northern lights are dipping down all the way to Washington tonight…
Paine Field is the next waypoint, but this time we just have to overfly it and not stop in…
SEATAC is next up - can’t miss it out there with the triple parallel runways…
As we head further south, the lights give way to darkness, and soon there is just a sprinkling of ground reference as we get into the vicinity of Morton, WA and our destination Strom (39P). There is a lot of discussion among the flight as we ponder the best way to make the approach into 39P. High terrain pens in the strip in most quadrants, with mountains up to around 5,000’ to the east. The lighted airfield sits at 941’ MSL with a mere 1,800’ of runway to work with.
I elect to come down the road through the valley from Carson and enter directly into a right base to runway 25 - a plan that seems legit on paper and in my mind. The near complete lack of lights and the black hole that the airfield sits in quickly scuttle my plan as I err to the high side because I can feel the terrain hemming me in as I descend into the valley heading south toward the field. By the time I see the runway, I’m impossibly high and make the no-brainer decision to go-around…
Later analysis, after I run the time forward to show me the terrain, shows the danger of my approach. This is the actual 3D track I flew - it starts out well enough in the valley, but you can see I drift too far east and almost descent down into the hills to the northeast of the field. That Spidey sense was the self preservation neurons firing at max volume! You can see my descent toward the field and then I break off into a close in left circuit hoping to come back around - but that tight maneuvering in the inky blackness is completely nerve jangling. I once again find myself in no position to land, go around, and head off to the southwest and the relative safe terrain near Riffe Lake…
Here is another angle (entry into the area is from the left side of the shot, then you see the track exit the right side - that is where I head to the lake and come in for the successful approach from the southwest…
Keep in mind, this was all flown in pitch black skies. I can honestly say it was one of the most sweat inducing sim moments I’ve had in a long time. The fact that we lost one pilot on the ridgeline (no fatalities, he walked the rest of the way!)…didn’t help…
The overhead view of the track…
The final (successful) approach I somehow managed to avoid the terrain and get it down and stopped. Thankfully the Twin Otter is a really nice short field performer…
One of our other pilots (Joel / -bc-) made it in with a nice and similarly adventurous approach, and we dropped another due to connectivity / X-Plane stability issues. After that approach, I emerged from my Twin Otter with my knees shaking a bit. The return to Vancouver was scheduled for our convenience the following day (DAYLIGHT!!), so I grabbed some sleep.
The next day, I had a bit of a plan already in the works. I rented a Tomahawk from the local FBO, along with an instructor pilot (they don’t let you just take their planes without a checkout…regardless of how many thousands of hours you have), and we headed out for a short flight to the south - destination: Hood River / Jernstedt (4S2). In the daylight, the terrain was revealed and the horror of the previous night’s approaches understood…
The Alabeo PA-38 Tomahawk II is a fantastic little trainer with a gorgeous 3D and virtual cockpit…just superb! I tuned in the Klickitat VOR down near the Columbia Gorge to keep track of our position…
Heading out, the terrain around 39P was pretty impressive. Night flying - not recommended…!
Turning on course to the southeast, we climb out of the Strom Valley of Death…
The SkyMaxx glare is pretty well done and adds a lot to the atmospheric effects of XP10…
The instructor takes us on a short detour to check out Mt. St. Helens, which is just south of our flight path…
Soon we are into Carson where we’ll pick up the Columbia River Gorge and fly it eastbound…
After about six or seven miles of following the river, the wide plain south of Hood River opens up and I spot 4S2 airport…
We land and taxi in…
My instructor is going to join me on the next part of the flight - and the reason we came down to Hood River…
EPOCH Passage Aviation just purchased a Bell 412 for operations along the Inside Passage! Yes!! While our helo is in a hangar at Calgary International getting some work done and a new paint scheme…I’ve come down to Hood River to get some recurrent training in a similar Bell 412. There she is - the awesome X-Trident Bell 412… You might remember we covered the Bell 412 in one of our first Mudspike reviews: HERE!
I hop in - and have to spend a good amount of time familiarizing myself with the cold and dark start process. I watch a couple helpful video tutorials and follow along in the checklist. It takes me about fifteen minutes, but soon I have everything up and initialized. X-Trident has been doing awesome constant upgrades to the Bell 412 and now they’ve added the Garmin 530 capability as well as custom SAR winch and sling loading capabilities.
I spend a few minutes plugging in our training route for the recurrent flight. Thanks to the guys at Hover Control - we have a really nice scenery package that takes us up into the high country to a string of helipads along the west side of Mount Adams and Rainier.
We head out of Hood River for our first LZ at CRG0…
The first waypoint is a cakewalk approach to a grass strip - great to shake the rust off…!
After a brief stop and go, we head for CRG1…
The custom helicopter scenery is really nice and gives something a bit different to practice helo ops with…
We continue working our way up the chain of waypoints. Some of the bases are smaller than others, with a bit tighter parameters. As the altitude climbs, performance drops off, but the 412 is extremely powerful…so it has no problem with a relatively light load.
Enroute to one of our stops, I notice a high ITT warning, and don’t even know how long I’ve been flying on basically one engine (check out the #1 torque indicator!)…
The views out the right side of the aircraft are awesome!
We work our way up the valley on one engine toward the next LZ where we have a mechanic with the training provider ready to take a look at our problem…
A single engine approach to a tight LZ is no joke…but the 412 has plenty of juice even on one engine…
I flip the fuel off to the #1 engine and consult the XP10 failures menu. I did not have random failures turned on, but somehow I got some mechanical issues anyway! Clearing the blocked fuel tank vents cleared my problem and I was able to restart #1 with no more problems…
With the crew agreed that we were OK to continue, we headed up for the next LZ…
I didn’t have my TrackIR hooked up…but it would have been much, much better with it working. Landing in tight areas without TrackIR can be tough…
As we tick of the LZs (there are ten of them) brings us higher and higher until eventually we are running across the lower slopes of Mount Rainier…
I keep a close eye on the fuel. We started with around 1450 lbs. and we are down to around 380 - just enough to make it to our last stop…
I marvel at the views of Rainier. I flew this flight entirely with real weather selected on, so clouds, visibility, turbulence, and precip were all real values - and I was surprised to have such good flying weather!
Clouding up a little bit on the approach to LZ #10 (CRG9)…
A few of the approaches dump you out on top of the LZ coming in from crossing a ridge or a higher altitude transition - a perfect recipe for vortex ring state. I got into a fully developed VRS on one approach at around 35 knots and low power…you could feel the aircraft shudder a bit. I used the traditional VRS escape of pushing forward on the cyclic and easing off a bit on the cyclic, which works fine if you have the altitude to spare. I got a nibble of VRS on another approach, but recognized it earlier and eased out of it before it fully developed.
At the last LZ, we did some brief sling loading practice - feeling the strain on the helo and keeping control of the load. The plug-in is well developed by X-Trident and adds a lot of fun and practicality to this add-on. I’ll be the EPOCH pilots are going to have a ton of stuff to long-line around the Inside Passage!
280 lbs. of fuel remaining at our last LZ. I shook the tension out of my shoulders, and unstrapped from the command pilot’s seat to climb into the back while refueling. Another pilot undergoing recurrent training would take us back to Hood River via the same LZs we hit on the way up. Now I could sit back and enjoy the scenery…
Our track through the LZs…nice job by the scenery designers and route. We sure could use more type of similar scenery and challenges for X-Plane!
Our return to Hood River and Cinebar went without incident. I let the instructor fly me back to Strom Field while I snapped pictures of the scenery going by. Tomorrow I’ll load up the Twin Otter with the supplies to run them back to Vancouver. Then I probably need to get my butt back up to Alaska to earn some money for EPOCH!
- This was a two cup of coffee AAR…apologies!
BeachAV8R