Preventing ice is your best bet to avoid becoming an NTSB statistic. Follow your airplane flight manual or operating handbook’s instructions and use your carburetor heat whenever icing is probable. Remember, you can even pick up ice when taxiing or idling on the ground. If ice is likely, run the carb heat for a few minutes prior to takeoff to make sure that the carburetor is clear.
I had instinctively lowered the nose to prevent a stall. That’s about the time the RPMs smoothly returned to full power. But I was already committed to being on the ground even before the RPMs dropped a second time. While lowering the nose, I made a slight left turn toward the field. My attempt to make some kind of a normal landing really didn’t work out because I never got the nose back up to a good landing attitude.
During my early flight training, not only did I not have a complete understanding of density altitude (see my previous story), I also missed the part about always being aware of the wind and being mindful of its effects on your airplane. It was a few years before I realized something was missing in my wind knowledge—and that realization occurred at an embarrassing moment.
The subsequent takeoff began normally enough—I didn’t necessarily notice if we became airborne a little farther down the runway than normal or not. But once airborne, I slowly became aware that things weren’t going as expected. After liftoff, the climb rate of the 172 was downright anemic to say the least. It was clawing the air trying to climb, but without much success.
Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America, but it’s surprisingly easy to see—thanks to airplanes like the Turbine Otter. That’s the view Craig Bixby shares in this Friday Photo, with the snow-capped mountain peak framed under the wing of the rugged bush plane. Definitely a must-see on any trip to Alaska.
Based on past checkrides, it had become the expectation that the rope break would occur on the second flight. But as we turned crosswind on the last flight, he still hadn’t released the rope. I started thinking he must be going easy on me and maybe I started to relax a little—when WHAM he released the tow rope!
Seaplanes are as much a part of everyday life in Alaska as pickup trucks are in Texas. Whether ferrying essential supplies or transporting passengers on a memorable trip, they keep things moving the Last Frontier. Craig Bixby captures this spirit in his beautiful Friday Photo, which shows a Male on floats tied up to shore after a long day flying hunters.