CloudDancer
Registered User
L. Ronstadt - J. Ingram Duet
CHapter One -- Hey buddy, Can you Spare a Spark Plug??"
The Great Land has always been a dichotomy in many ways, only one of which was economically. And economically, it had been so for a couple of centuries before the CloudDancer ever stumbled sleepily offa’ the back of that Alaska Airlines Golden Nugget jet in Kotzebue..
From the trappers and fur traders of the early 1800's, the Gold Rush, World War Two, and now finally, the OIL BOOM was coming!! Buuuuut.....it wasn’t quite here just yet!! Granted, the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act had been signed into law by Tricky Dicky a couple of years before I got there; but the big dollars (payoff) bucks weren’t quite flowing throughout the state just yet.
Ergo, most of the residents in Alaska’s smaller communities (i.e. ANYthing outside of FAI, JNU and ANC) survived financially as they always had. And for quite a few folks like fisherman, pilots and air taxi operators, and gold miners ( to name a few); that meant making BIG bucks working your ASS off during the long Arctic summer’s “endless” days. And hopefully, your herculean efforts over the four month period from mid -May to mid-September would yield the financial results you needed to get you through the long winters.
So all the night long, under a midnight sun, small boats would be hauling a half a ton (hopefully) of sockeye salmon fresh from the nets to the four to six “fish mongers” (buyers) who had set up their little “offices” in plywood eight by ten shacks on the gravel beach between the Drift Inn hotel and the F.A.A. complex on the south side of the Ralph Wien Memorial Airport.
Two or three forklifts, large OR small, would be constantly running back and forth from the fish buyer’s shanties on the beach to the Alaska Airlines terminal or some other part of the ramp. They carried on their forks aluminum boxes (called “totes”) about the size of a small chest freezer inside which were the fresh salmon packed in ice cubes, ready to start their long journey to Asia or the Lower 48.
Some o’ them fishies left town in style, soaring up to the “Flight Levels” in them Golden Nugget “combi” 727's and 737's of Alaska Airlines and cruising to their first stop (ANC) at durn near the speed o’ sound. (Did you know a seven-two could easily do Mach .92?)
Other fish would maybe fly at the LOWER flight levels, around the mid-twenties and maybe HALF the speed of sound in one of Alaska International Air’s Hercules. And what was LEFT would ride to the big village, unpressurized and bouncing through the low altitude summertime turbulence (although, at this point, I think the fish were beyond caring about amenities) on an assortment of more “mature” (read old and DILAPIDATED) fill-the-oil-and-check-the-gas DC-4's and 6's and 3's and a few C-46's operated by some of the lesser known in-state operations.
Indeed, when the fish were REALLY leaping out of the water and into the boats, demand for lift would attract planes from as far away as Seattle and Boise.
Now, as it still is (I suspect) today; all the folks who OPERATE these airplanes in Alaska get paid pretty much by the pound. Each way. Therefore, whether it was the “big time” airlines like Wien or Alaska, or the other guys; whatEVER you load up coming back to town is GRAVY money. Pure profit supposedly, as you charged enough for the stuff going OUT there to pay for the cost of the whole trip. Potato chips or Pampers, autos or ottomans, it makes no nevermind. You wanna’ get something from ANC, FAI or Outside, you be paying BIG dough. Typically, just the basic STANDBY freight charge to get a Dodge Ram Charger pick-em-up truck shipped in from ANC to OTZ might run $1800.
Course, the Alaska Airlines pilots, working for a big-time airline and all; and with a UNION contract to BOOT that said they make “x” $$ per hour didn’t much care if they hauled any stinky ol’ dead fish back to town or NOT!! But, of course, management took quite a different view and did everything they could to ensure that the boys flying them smokers earned their keep. But the operations agents made sure that the airplane never exceeded it’s MGTOW no matter HOW many fish were waiting for passage. This pretty much assured the AIRline pilots that they had good performance available, and could easily handle the loss of an engine on takeoff.
Now a lot of the OTHER airplanes were either “owner operated” or operated by VERY small companies on shoestring budgets. In either case, being paid by the pound HAULED, seemed to inspire many of THESE pilots to load by VOLUME as opposed to weight.
This made for some rather specTACular, (or would that be UN spectacular) takeoffs, particularly
by some of the more MOTLEY old piston relics that had, only a couple of decades earlier been the QUEENS of the skies over America!!
What with the departure end of R/W 26 ending just a few yards short of the waters of OTZ Sound (there was just a two lane gravel road and a few yards of gravel beach) combined with a 134 foot cliff/bluff/HILL!! Just off the other (east) end if the runway AND usually a very slight breeze off the water to the west, along with absoLUTly weak west winds.
The Great Land has always been a dichotomy in many ways, only one of which was economically. And economically, it had been so for a couple of centuries before the CloudDancer ever stumbled sleepily offa’ the back of that Alaska Airlines Golden Nugget jet in Kotzebue..
From the trappers and fur traders of the early 1800's, the Gold Rush, World War Two, and now finally, the OIL BOOM was coming!! Buuuuut.....it wasn’t quite here just yet!! Granted, the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act had been signed into law by Tricky Dicky a couple of years before I got there; but the big dollars (payoff) bucks weren’t quite flowing throughout the state just yet.
Ergo, most of the residents in Alaska’s smaller communities (i.e. ANYthing outside of FAI, JNU and ANC) survived financially as they always had. And for quite a few folks like fisherman, pilots and air taxi operators, and gold miners ( to name a few); that meant making BIG bucks working your ASS off during the long Arctic summer’s “endless” days. And hopefully, your herculean efforts over the four month period from mid -May to mid-September would yield the financial results you needed to get you through the long winters.
So all the night long, under a midnight sun, small boats would be hauling a half a ton (hopefully) of sockeye salmon fresh from the nets to the four to six “fish mongers” (buyers) who had set up their little “offices” in plywood eight by ten shacks on the gravel beach between the Drift Inn hotel and the F.A.A. complex on the south side of the Ralph Wien Memorial Airport.
Two or three forklifts, large OR small, would be constantly running back and forth from the fish buyer’s shanties on the beach to the Alaska Airlines terminal or some other part of the ramp. They carried on their forks aluminum boxes (called “totes”) about the size of a small chest freezer inside which were the fresh salmon packed in ice cubes, ready to start their long journey to Asia or the Lower 48.
Some o’ them fishies left town in style, soaring up to the “Flight Levels” in them Golden Nugget “combi” 727's and 737's of Alaska Airlines and cruising to their first stop (ANC) at durn near the speed o’ sound. (Did you know a seven-two could easily do Mach .92?)
Other fish would maybe fly at the LOWER flight levels, around the mid-twenties and maybe HALF the speed of sound in one of Alaska International Air’s Hercules. And what was LEFT would ride to the big village, unpressurized and bouncing through the low altitude summertime turbulence (although, at this point, I think the fish were beyond caring about amenities) on an assortment of more “mature” (read old and DILAPIDATED) fill-the-oil-and-check-the-gas DC-4's and 6's and 3's and a few C-46's operated by some of the lesser known in-state operations.
Indeed, when the fish were REALLY leaping out of the water and into the boats, demand for lift would attract planes from as far away as Seattle and Boise.
Now, as it still is (I suspect) today; all the folks who OPERATE these airplanes in Alaska get paid pretty much by the pound. Each way. Therefore, whether it was the “big time” airlines like Wien or Alaska, or the other guys; whatEVER you load up coming back to town is GRAVY money. Pure profit supposedly, as you charged enough for the stuff going OUT there to pay for the cost of the whole trip. Potato chips or Pampers, autos or ottomans, it makes no nevermind. You wanna’ get something from ANC, FAI or Outside, you be paying BIG dough. Typically, just the basic STANDBY freight charge to get a Dodge Ram Charger pick-em-up truck shipped in from ANC to OTZ might run $1800.
Course, the Alaska Airlines pilots, working for a big-time airline and all; and with a UNION contract to BOOT that said they make “x” $$ per hour didn’t much care if they hauled any stinky ol’ dead fish back to town or NOT!! But, of course, management took quite a different view and did everything they could to ensure that the boys flying them smokers earned their keep. But the operations agents made sure that the airplane never exceeded it’s MGTOW no matter HOW many fish were waiting for passage. This pretty much assured the AIRline pilots that they had good performance available, and could easily handle the loss of an engine on takeoff.
Now a lot of the OTHER airplanes were either “owner operated” or operated by VERY small companies on shoestring budgets. In either case, being paid by the pound HAULED, seemed to inspire many of THESE pilots to load by VOLUME as opposed to weight.
This made for some rather specTACular, (or would that be UN spectacular) takeoffs, particularly
by some of the more MOTLEY old piston relics that had, only a couple of decades earlier been the QUEENS of the skies over America!!
What with the departure end of R/W 26 ending just a few yards short of the waters of OTZ Sound (there was just a two lane gravel road and a few yards of gravel beach) combined with a 134 foot cliff/bluff/HILL!! Just off the other (east) end if the runway AND usually a very slight breeze off the water to the west, along with absoLUTly weak west winds.