EPOCH Alaska Diary

Nudge-nudge, from Vancouver Island…

@RocLobster - That looks awesome…! I can’t wait to get back to flying with EPOCH. Been a crazy busy last month at work. We had a huge uptick in flying and one of our pilots left, so that left a big gap in our schedule that had to be covered. I just passed a magazine deadline yesterday…which means I’m once again free to fly! Looking forward to catching up with the goings on at EPA…

Chris

So I walked away from my Mi-2 on January 1, 2016!! :astonished: Here we are, over a year and a half later (where, oh where does time go??)…and it’s time to get back on the move. My helo has been sitting in a hangar (thankfully) at Nanaimo (CYCD) all this time, so I go ahead and have it pulled out on the ramp, pay my hangar fees (ouch!) and give the bird a thorough walk around. Just a bit of dust, no bird nests, and we drain and sump the tanks and refuel with fresh Jet A.

The runup all looks good, the gauges seem OK, and I bring it into a hover check…

The hover check looks good, so I start off for a short sprint up to Comox (CYQQ) - hoping to head further on to the EPOCH Passage Aviation area (which was my destination a year and a half ago!)…

It is a gorgeous day in the Pacific NW…perfect for flying!

Taking up a heading toward the northwest…

I’m only about five minutes into the flight when all of the sudden a yellow light comes on on the left side of the instrument panel…followed a few second later by engine fire bells. Oh good grief…!

The engines - both of them! - shut down and I think the fire extinguishers auto deploy…

I bottom the collective, do a quick scan of the area, and settle on a small strip of grass near some houses - it isn’t a runway, but it’ll do. Unfortunately, my planning doesn’t work out as the Mi-2 autorotates like a rock. I W.A.G. the airspeed and settle on around 90 km/h, which might have been a bit too slow perhaps during the descent…but the rotor RPM stays up…

I don’t make the field, but I do find another one closer in…and I manage to a nice flare, decaying the rotor RPM and plop it down in a neighborhood.

Now…this is the first time I’ve tried to fly the Mi-2 in X-Plane 11…and I have no idea what happened. I don’t know if the engines are set differently, or if I pulled too much power…but the failures menu shows the igniters to be failed (which wouldn’t normally cause an engine to quit once the engine is running). So I don’t know what happened…

So I’ve got a repair truck on the way to figure out what is going on. Once I get squared away, I’ll head out again. Got to love surprises!

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Start your troubleshooting here.

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I just started looking…went through the total cold start once again, and when I check the failure menu, it looks like the ignitors fail each time. That said, the engines start fine and are idling fine…all within temps and limits, but lets see what happens when we go at flying power/RPM… :smile:

Arrived CYQQ safely…! Engine operated fine…no problems to report. Sure wish I had a wing leveler autopilot and GPS though…LOL… Screens tomorrow!


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So we are back in business. FedEx delivered the parts and a mechanic from Nanaimo came over go install them…

This time I did a more thorough engine runup test…including hovering and watching where my max power could come up to…

Everything seemed to check out OK…so we are on the way northwest to Comox (CYQQ)…


With what happened on the last leg, I’m leery about wandering over open water…and instead hug the shoreline in case of another power loss…


The flight starts out in hazy skies…but as we fly north the skies clear up and the visibility improves…


After about 20 or 30 minutes, Comox comes into sight…(add on scenery HERE)…

Hey…a nice golf course adjacent to the field…maybe I can talk @EPOCH_bc into a round!

Looks like the ramp is full of Canadian fire bombers or search and rescue planes…

I land at the green Quonset hut…where I’m supposed to stock up on “adult beverages” to ferry up to Port McNeill…I hear those guys are hard at work up there!

Next leg will be up there to Port McNeill…and finally into the Epoch Passage Aviation area of operations

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I missed this thread first time around and have just finished reading it. It’s kept me entertained for a couple of days on and off. Awesome AAR’S! This is exactly the kind of flying I wish I had the time for. :persevere:

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Me too…! :laughing:

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Alright - we have our adult beverages loaded up…time for our next little hop up the coast. This time we’ll only be heading about 58nm, but we’ll finally be penetrating the true Epoch Passage Aviation area by landing at one of the most southeasterly EPA facilities - Kelsey Bay (CEKB)…



I finally figured out how to use the ADF receiver in the Mi-2 (I hadn’t really messed with it)…and started picking up the Campbell River NDB…


Soon the weather turns to a broken medium level layer and the terrain starts to ramp up…

Passing the Campbell River NDB station…I wasn’t able to receive the custom NDB at Kelsey Bay for some reason…

The destination starting to come into view…(low fuel warning annunciator lit on the panel…LOL…)

Setting my eyes on the Passage Aviation scenery for the first time…it is super cool…!

I spot the elevated landing pad and make my approach. Fortunately the weather is very nice…no gusty winds or poor visibility…


TIme to unload and see if any of the Epoch lads are about…they might all be out working hard!

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Did you add all the ndbs to the custom data file? I haven’t done it in a while but there’s like 14 of them that get inserted just above the last line in that file.

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Ah…I’ll bet that is the error of my ways. I’ll go back and re-read the documentation… Thanks for the heads-up. Without a GPS, the ADF will be my only real source of navigation in the Mi-2 if I stick with it…

Ya and those adfs are the only real way to not get lost.

I’m not even sure if my Mi-2 has a VOR receiver… :thinking: I tried to install that freeware KLN-90B…but failed…

I might have to try this and pretend it is an iPad…

Got the custom NDB entries added to the correct place… Took a hop over to Port Neville - another nice scenery area. I was a bit nervous on my approach to the helipad…forgetting that it was built big enough for the Bell 412…LOL…

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The flight over from Kelsey Bay to Port Neville…got my NDB problem sorted with a custom file from EPOCH dispatch!

They did a great job on the Kelsey Bay area…lots to look at…


Heading across Johnstone Strait - feeling confident in my Mi-2 now that I’m taking a bit easier on the engines…(got the raft strapped to the seat though…)

Turning in to Port Neville…

Overflying the docks and heading for the helo tower just up the hill from the beach…

Approaching the neat tower helipad…checking the landing zone through the chin bubble…I felt like it was a lot tighter than in turned out to be…



Shut her down and put the plugs in for an overnight…

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COMOX… memories… :slight_smile: