Alaska 2012 - Day 4 & 5

The night before departure I got some good Zzzzzs in using my great new eye mask that we bought for the trip.  The rumors did prove correct that it doesn't get dark at night up in Alaska, and we found the masks really valuable to help get some good sleep.  Without them, it only gets to be dusk for most of the night, and you can walk around at 10:30pm and think it's still sometime in the afternoon. Dale and his wife from "Let's Fly Alaska" hold a mandatory dinner/briefing the night before the trip, so the entire group came to his hangar for the dinner.  He has about the most spectacular hangar setup that I've ever had the pleasure to see, with red carpets, tile floors, neon signs and cool lighting, pinball machines, a bar with hotdog and popcorn machines, and tons and tons of complimentary drinks and snacks.  If there ever was a place to hang out at an airport, this would be IT!
The next morning we were all ready to go, but had to wait out some weather because the field was IFR.  We started to worry that perhaps we weren't even going to get out of Washington, due to the WX, but eventually we all got off in our formation takeoff and headed North.  It was cool looking at my NavWorX ADS-B display on the Chelton's, as I could see all of the other trip members around me, all lined up at same altitude.  We kept heading North in the area of the San Juan Islands, and flew right past a Navy base with Aircraft Carriers, Submarines, and other ships all at dock.  Pretty cool to see from the air!  The first stop in Skagit, was just to get to a good airport to use as a customs/exit airport before going in to Canada.  Due to the border crossing time restrictions, you want to be right on time when crossing the border, so it was easier to just gather up there and launch in a timeframe that would get us crossing the border exactly on time.  It also gave us a chance to top off with fuel again, before we had to start buying in Litres, and there was a great restaurant on field.
After our short break, we were then on our way, crossing the border and then heading up the trench into Canada, bound for Prince George.  As we got over land, the trip stared to look absolutely cool!  We were flying at about 1000-1200' AGL, with overcast or broken skies above us after a while, flying right next to mountains while staying in the valley's.  This leg was good for some of the pilots not normally used to flying by large rocks at low altitude, nor flying in formation.  For me, it was a hard flight to watch at times....because some of the pilots had no formation experience at all.  Now that shouldn't matter much, because we weren't really so much in "formation" as "in trail", with SUPPOSED spacing to be about the same as if you were in the traffic pattern at your home airport.  In reality, we had people leaving 1/2 to 1 mile gaps, not able to use their throttle effectively enough to keep steady and close spacing.  An "alternate" method of keeping spacing was to do an occasional S-turn to give additional space, but one of the planes was doing S-turns that spanned up to 2 MILES horizontally, and it became very hard to follow in trail, so I just kept it straight and kept watching at my 45 degree forward angle to make sure we wouldn't get smucked by the other plane as it swept back into the line.  The planned formation layout was about 1200' behind, staggered with #1 on the front left, #2 on the right, #3 on the left, and so on, with about 1200' between, giving all planes a nice stable plane to watch to hold their position, while being far enough away to make it much less intense than having to exactly match power and speed settings.  Personally, I LOVE traveling in formation with other folks who fly well, and I find it easier to keep spacing like 200-300' than 1200, plus it's much more enjoyable to look at a beautiful airplane next to you.  But this group had some work to do. :)
The scenery was SPECTACULAR with lots and lots of waterfalls coming off the mountains, smooth skies, and snowcapped mountain tops off to the sides.  It really was breathtaking.  Andrea got lots of stick time, giving her more practice at holding position too.  As we got more and more inland, away from the oceans and inland of many mountain peaks, it started to become more desert type country, and you could tell it didn't rain quite as much in the area.  Also, the skies started to clear out, and we had some fantastic views.
In what seemed like too short a time, we ended up landing happily at Prince George and chocking up for the night.  As directed, we remained in our planes, and I turned on my cell phone to call NavCanada to notify them of our arrival for customs.  What a mistake that was.  Not only did they simply tell us that someone would be there soon, but I recently got my cellphone bill and found that the roaming charges bring calls up to something near $1 per minute plus other charges...so my cellphone bill was up by nearly $100 after this trip!  Note to future travelers....try to contact NavCanada by some means OTHER than cellphone and just keep the phone off when getting into Canada.

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