Bill Rusk
BENEFACTOR
Sandpoint, Idaho
Folks
I have a little down time so I thought I'd do a post on my Alaska time in 2018 and also expand on some of the cabins I have stayed in and give a little more info on those cabins. I hope that you are able to find some useful and helpful information in this thread. I will post more cabin info and pictures.
I departed Poplar Grove May 9 and headed West to my place in Spokane. I had the pleasure of a nice visit with Larry Vetterman for an afternoon.
He is building his second Javron Cub and it is coming together quite well. I wish he would post here more as he has a LOT of innovative ideas and is a great craftsman. I could have stayed a couple of days and would no doubt have learned even more. If you guys meet him at a fly-in, take the time to look closely at his Cub. Very high end and leading edge. It will be good in so many respects.
I was also Blessed to have Dan Lilja come up and rejoin on me as I flew up the Clark Fork River, a place that holds a special place in my heart, where I punched one of the 9 holes in my life card a few years prior.
Picture of my cub taken by Dan from his Cub over Plains, MT
Cabinet Gorge Dam on the Clark Fork River. Provides electricity for a big chunk of the Inland Pacific Northwest. Known airplane killer.
Dan built his Cub as well and has flown it extensively. One of the measures you can often use to find out how an experimental airplane is, is too look at how often the owners quickly put it up for sale and how many hours it has on it. You see certain models show up on Barnstormers/TAP often, and with low hours. The good ones are kept and flown like crazy because they fly great and they fit the owners mission. Bottom line, Dan built a CC kit and flys it a LOT. Skis and wheels. I just need to get him up on floats. LOL
I struggled with the weather coming through the mountains near Missoula, so had to drop in at Deer Lodge and call it a day. The next day I learned about a route from a local. At Missoula, turn North and follow 93, over Evaro, Ravalli, and at Dixon pick up the Flathead river, follow that to Plains MT etc. This is a lower route than following I-90/Mullan Pass and may help you get through the mountains. Both routes are incredibly scenic.
In Spokane I met up with my friend Eric, a relatively new SC guy, and we spent a few days doing the Idaho Back Country. It was Eric's first experience in backcountry Idaho type flying. He is a good stick and did quite well. Since I was on floats I landed at JC and parked until we flew back to Spokane. Just for those who are not sure, I did not take an amphib into the backcountry strips, nor would I recommend it. Johnson Creek is quite doable, however.
3 minute video here.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJuTSj28LzU
Went back to work for a couple of weeks.
I departed solo for Alaska on May 31. Flew mostly direct from home (Spokane) to Lynden (38W) in 2.7 hrs. Lynden is a small airpark (houses lining the runway) North of Bellingham and about 2 or 3 miles from the Canadian Border. They have Credit Card fuel there, no tower. A small pilot lounge. Because of it's proximity to the border it makes a good place to file flight plans, call customs to set a time, file EAPIS etc.
As you can see in this photo I am running with the Airglass fuel pod. It holds 32 gallons and is just about the only option that works with floats. Several others are making pods and some are quite nice and light, like the ones made by Randy Apling at Carbon Concepts. But unfortunately they do not have the through holes for the cross brace wires. So if you are on floats, or planning it in the future, make sure your pod will work with floats. Airglass makes several pods for Cubs to include an all cargo, fuel and cargo combo, and the all fuel pod. Some have chosen the all cargo and then used fuel bags to add fuel capacity. The downside to this is you have to land to refuel. If you have the fuel/cargo, or fuel pod, you can set up a pump mechanism (see my thread on Building a Javron Cub for how to) that allows you to pump fuel up into the wing tank in flight. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything so I am not telling you what you should do, everyone is different and your mission may be different from mine. I have 36 gallons in the wings which gives comfortable 3 to 3.5 hour legs, but there are times when that is not enough. With the pod I have 68 gallons and about 8+ hours. I used that this summer to fly non-stop from the US (Lynden) overfly Canada, and land back in the US in Alaska. The advantage is you do not have to clear customs twice, which saves a lot of time and hassle. File a flight plan and go. Want to take a handgun? You can do so if you do not land in Canada but you have to have the capability of overflying Canada and going direct. It was awesome, and I plan to do that again this coming summer. Took about 5.5 hours to go from Lynden to the Humpback Lake Cabin.
The British Columbia coast is incredibly scenic like the SE part of Alaska. It really helps to get your rigging right here. I was able to fly several hours at a time without touching the stick, just using light pressure on the rudders to maintain or change heading. You can use the water rudders to fine tune your rigging.
On this long flight it helps to have a tailwind, however small. One of my favorite weather info sources in here.....https://www.windy.com/?46.307,-94.101,5
This site has a great wind chart. It also has charts for clouds and cloud base so it can be a GREAT planning tool. It also covers several days in the future. I highly recommend you get into this site. It is just fantastic.
Another weather site I really like is.....http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/launch/code.cgi?sta=PANC&state=AK
You can choose your state and city. This one does great and seems to be very accurate with vis and cloud base. It only goes a couple of days in the future but it has winds, temp/dew point spread (handy for predicting fog), cloud base, vis etc. Between these two weather sites you can get a pretty good feel for what you are getting into. Hope this helps.
Heading into Humpback lake where the cabin is. The Humpback Lake Cabin (hereafter I will use LC for Lake Cabin) is the furtherest South cabin in the system so it is a good last stay when heading back south to the US or a good first stop when going North.
The lake water was high this year so the beach was pretty much under water. If you are going to fly floatplanes in the SE I recommend you get a pair of hip waders. You can turn the top down in flight to keep the temp down, but don't forget to pull em back up before you step off the floats. Trust me you will forget a few times, and get a boot full of VERY cold water. It is self correcting after a couple of times. But I don't know how many times I have needed the height of the hip wader over something shorter or just boots.
You can see even the wood shed was flooded this year. Skiff half under water.
Humpback LC
Humpback LC
Inside the cabin. This cabin has skylights which really help with the lighting.
View from the cabin
Picture taken another year. Note the beach and how far from the water the wood shed is. This will give you an idea of the difference in the lake water height from this year when it was quite high, and there was not really a good place to beach the floats.
Nice to enjoy a fire when it is not raining. I have enjoyed good fishing in this lake. My notes say I woke up the next morning to a steady rain which I noted was pretty loud on the skylights. Reading a book called the Accidental Airline about a floatplane business flying the BC coast. Good book.
Much more to come in this thread.
Hope this helps
Bill
I have a little down time so I thought I'd do a post on my Alaska time in 2018 and also expand on some of the cabins I have stayed in and give a little more info on those cabins. I hope that you are able to find some useful and helpful information in this thread. I will post more cabin info and pictures.
I departed Poplar Grove May 9 and headed West to my place in Spokane. I had the pleasure of a nice visit with Larry Vetterman for an afternoon.
He is building his second Javron Cub and it is coming together quite well. I wish he would post here more as he has a LOT of innovative ideas and is a great craftsman. I could have stayed a couple of days and would no doubt have learned even more. If you guys meet him at a fly-in, take the time to look closely at his Cub. Very high end and leading edge. It will be good in so many respects.
I was also Blessed to have Dan Lilja come up and rejoin on me as I flew up the Clark Fork River, a place that holds a special place in my heart, where I punched one of the 9 holes in my life card a few years prior.
Picture of my cub taken by Dan from his Cub over Plains, MT
Cabinet Gorge Dam on the Clark Fork River. Provides electricity for a big chunk of the Inland Pacific Northwest. Known airplane killer.
Dan built his Cub as well and has flown it extensively. One of the measures you can often use to find out how an experimental airplane is, is too look at how often the owners quickly put it up for sale and how many hours it has on it. You see certain models show up on Barnstormers/TAP often, and with low hours. The good ones are kept and flown like crazy because they fly great and they fit the owners mission. Bottom line, Dan built a CC kit and flys it a LOT. Skis and wheels. I just need to get him up on floats. LOL
I struggled with the weather coming through the mountains near Missoula, so had to drop in at Deer Lodge and call it a day. The next day I learned about a route from a local. At Missoula, turn North and follow 93, over Evaro, Ravalli, and at Dixon pick up the Flathead river, follow that to Plains MT etc. This is a lower route than following I-90/Mullan Pass and may help you get through the mountains. Both routes are incredibly scenic.
In Spokane I met up with my friend Eric, a relatively new SC guy, and we spent a few days doing the Idaho Back Country. It was Eric's first experience in backcountry Idaho type flying. He is a good stick and did quite well. Since I was on floats I landed at JC and parked until we flew back to Spokane. Just for those who are not sure, I did not take an amphib into the backcountry strips, nor would I recommend it. Johnson Creek is quite doable, however.
3 minute video here.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJuTSj28LzU
Went back to work for a couple of weeks.
I departed solo for Alaska on May 31. Flew mostly direct from home (Spokane) to Lynden (38W) in 2.7 hrs. Lynden is a small airpark (houses lining the runway) North of Bellingham and about 2 or 3 miles from the Canadian Border. They have Credit Card fuel there, no tower. A small pilot lounge. Because of it's proximity to the border it makes a good place to file flight plans, call customs to set a time, file EAPIS etc.
As you can see in this photo I am running with the Airglass fuel pod. It holds 32 gallons and is just about the only option that works with floats. Several others are making pods and some are quite nice and light, like the ones made by Randy Apling at Carbon Concepts. But unfortunately they do not have the through holes for the cross brace wires. So if you are on floats, or planning it in the future, make sure your pod will work with floats. Airglass makes several pods for Cubs to include an all cargo, fuel and cargo combo, and the all fuel pod. Some have chosen the all cargo and then used fuel bags to add fuel capacity. The downside to this is you have to land to refuel. If you have the fuel/cargo, or fuel pod, you can set up a pump mechanism (see my thread on Building a Javron Cub for how to) that allows you to pump fuel up into the wing tank in flight. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything so I am not telling you what you should do, everyone is different and your mission may be different from mine. I have 36 gallons in the wings which gives comfortable 3 to 3.5 hour legs, but there are times when that is not enough. With the pod I have 68 gallons and about 8+ hours. I used that this summer to fly non-stop from the US (Lynden) overfly Canada, and land back in the US in Alaska. The advantage is you do not have to clear customs twice, which saves a lot of time and hassle. File a flight plan and go. Want to take a handgun? You can do so if you do not land in Canada but you have to have the capability of overflying Canada and going direct. It was awesome, and I plan to do that again this coming summer. Took about 5.5 hours to go from Lynden to the Humpback Lake Cabin.
The British Columbia coast is incredibly scenic like the SE part of Alaska. It really helps to get your rigging right here. I was able to fly several hours at a time without touching the stick, just using light pressure on the rudders to maintain or change heading. You can use the water rudders to fine tune your rigging.
On this long flight it helps to have a tailwind, however small. One of my favorite weather info sources in here.....https://www.windy.com/?46.307,-94.101,5
This site has a great wind chart. It also has charts for clouds and cloud base so it can be a GREAT planning tool. It also covers several days in the future. I highly recommend you get into this site. It is just fantastic.
Another weather site I really like is.....http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/launch/code.cgi?sta=PANC&state=AK
You can choose your state and city. This one does great and seems to be very accurate with vis and cloud base. It only goes a couple of days in the future but it has winds, temp/dew point spread (handy for predicting fog), cloud base, vis etc. Between these two weather sites you can get a pretty good feel for what you are getting into. Hope this helps.
Heading into Humpback lake where the cabin is. The Humpback Lake Cabin (hereafter I will use LC for Lake Cabin) is the furtherest South cabin in the system so it is a good last stay when heading back south to the US or a good first stop when going North.
The lake water was high this year so the beach was pretty much under water. If you are going to fly floatplanes in the SE I recommend you get a pair of hip waders. You can turn the top down in flight to keep the temp down, but don't forget to pull em back up before you step off the floats. Trust me you will forget a few times, and get a boot full of VERY cold water. It is self correcting after a couple of times. But I don't know how many times I have needed the height of the hip wader over something shorter or just boots.
You can see even the wood shed was flooded this year. Skiff half under water.
Humpback LC
Humpback LC
Inside the cabin. This cabin has skylights which really help with the lighting.
View from the cabin
Picture taken another year. Note the beach and how far from the water the wood shed is. This will give you an idea of the difference in the lake water height from this year when it was quite high, and there was not really a good place to beach the floats.
Nice to enjoy a fire when it is not raining. I have enjoyed good fishing in this lake. My notes say I woke up the next morning to a steady rain which I noted was pretty loud on the skylights. Reading a book called the Accidental Airline about a floatplane business flying the BC coast. Good book.
Much more to come in this thread.
Hope this helps
Bill
Last edited: