AlaskaAV
GONE WEST
Mission, TX
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q="iditarod+air+force"&spell=1
The link above will explain in detail about the Iditrod Air Force better than I could of course so I will just pass on personal knowledge.
For those not familiar with the Alaska state sport, Dog Racing, you might be interested in this. There are many others on Steve's and Dana's site that know far more than I do but I will get it started. Please join in with your stories. Mush ya huskies!!!!
Every year in Feb (or Mar) there is a dog race from Anchorage to Nome by dog team which is over 1000 miles about the distance from Denver to Chicago. Time involved is around 2 weeks, more or less. The route is across country and the trail is marked in advance by red flags tied to trees. The mushers and dogs travel over some of the most inhabitable country in Alaska in temperatures down to 40 below zero at times. Actual daylight is only a few hours so most of the travel is by night. Of course there is no street lights and especially stop lights.
Needless to say, the dogs, and musher, need to eat and rest so every so often at no prescribed time, they will rest every day. The musher must crank up a camp stove and warm up special food for the dogs. This will vary depending on the musher. Beaver meat is the choice of most mixed with secret ingredients. Caribou of course and dry dog food donated by major sponsors. Food for the musher is not controlled but usually a high protein trail mix of personal choice but at ever check point, there is a vet that inspects each and every dog for health and can take any dog out of the team at his/her will. Most mushers will forgo their own food and sleep just to make sure his/her dogs are taken care of and get enough rest. When traveling over icy conditions, the dogs will be fitted with leather boots to keep from cutting their feet. Booties they are called.
The term "leader of the pack" really fits in here. The lead dog is actually in charge although he lets the musher believe he/she is. Works good as long as the musher listens and watches the lead dog. Kind of like listening to the spouse, right guys? Many a musher's life has been saved by the knowledge of his lead dog and it's ability to know how to get to a help area.
The second year the race was run, I took a vacation from Wien and locked myself up in a hotel room in downtown Anchorage and operated the news media operation. I gave live reports world wide to news and sports TV and radio stations always in english though and was told that it would be translated into local language and not to worry about it. I had a stereo reel to reel tape recorder and had a phone pickup on each trak on the tape so I could tape calls on both phones at the same time.
All of my meals were delivered to the room by the hotel with the exception of one dinner when I invited a lady from our desk in the lobby of the hotel to have dinner with me across the street (among other things). Gee, a guy needs desert after a good dinner, right? It was fun really. At one point, we lost a great musher for a while, Col Vaughn who was like 75 years old at the time. He went missing for some 15 days. I set up a bunch of guys with aircraft to start looking for them. Most were from the Wasilla and Big Lake areas and finally he was found and once he got to a phone, he called me and gave me a real, and I mean real indepth report of what he and his dogs went through. I never let anyone listen to the entire tape other than excerpts that were not so gory for a dog owner. Finally, when I moved out of Alaska the last time and the situation was long gone, I donated the tape to the museum in Wasilla. If allowed to, it is something very interesting to listen to. Remember, better have a strong stomach though.
Back to the races. Prior to the race, dog food, and I am talking about thousands and thousands of pounds, is staged at selected places along the route by people we call "The Iditrod Air Force" using their own aircraft, usually C-180s or 185s on skis and sometimes Super Cubs depending on the need. The Cubs were normally used to move officials around. Remember, this is all being done at 20 to 40 below zero F. There is no payment for those guys/gals. Gas I am not sure about. They also ferried in the Vets and moved them around as needed. Anything that needed done by air, one of them was always there.
On one beautiful clear and calm day, one of our Wien pilots flying his own C-185 was transporting a film crew from Japan photographing the race. His name was "Ace" Dodson, a really great big iron Captain for us and just as good in his Cessna or any aircraft for that matter.
A pilot witness reported it like this. Not a word from Ace.
He was around 400 foot in level flight when he turned into a normal right turn, probably to give the camera man in the right front seat a better view of a dog team. It is suspected that when the guy in the right seat turned, he placed his right foot on the right rudder pedal and we all know what happens after that at 400 foot. Right bank with max right rudder all the way in? Needless to say, no one survived. Ace was such a supporter of the race although he never ran it, only flew with and for it. It was a big loss to loose such a great pilot in something like this.
There are lots of pros and cons of how to run the race but as with all of life, anything can change. A couple of mushers, one a very well known female musher, ran into a moose on the trail just after the restart near Wasilla that started trampling the dog team and killing several dogs, especially the lead dog. She had to scratch that year and start over with a new lead dog for next year. Several mushers were injured along the trail to the point all they could do was crawl onto the sled and give a voice command and the lead dog did the rest. For sure, a John Deere Tractor could not do that but you don't have to feed a John Deere year around though.
How about it Alaska pilots, anyone care to join in about the Iditrod Air Force?
The link above will explain in detail about the Iditrod Air Force better than I could of course so I will just pass on personal knowledge.
For those not familiar with the Alaska state sport, Dog Racing, you might be interested in this. There are many others on Steve's and Dana's site that know far more than I do but I will get it started. Please join in with your stories. Mush ya huskies!!!!
Every year in Feb (or Mar) there is a dog race from Anchorage to Nome by dog team which is over 1000 miles about the distance from Denver to Chicago. Time involved is around 2 weeks, more or less. The route is across country and the trail is marked in advance by red flags tied to trees. The mushers and dogs travel over some of the most inhabitable country in Alaska in temperatures down to 40 below zero at times. Actual daylight is only a few hours so most of the travel is by night. Of course there is no street lights and especially stop lights.
Needless to say, the dogs, and musher, need to eat and rest so every so often at no prescribed time, they will rest every day. The musher must crank up a camp stove and warm up special food for the dogs. This will vary depending on the musher. Beaver meat is the choice of most mixed with secret ingredients. Caribou of course and dry dog food donated by major sponsors. Food for the musher is not controlled but usually a high protein trail mix of personal choice but at ever check point, there is a vet that inspects each and every dog for health and can take any dog out of the team at his/her will. Most mushers will forgo their own food and sleep just to make sure his/her dogs are taken care of and get enough rest. When traveling over icy conditions, the dogs will be fitted with leather boots to keep from cutting their feet. Booties they are called.
The term "leader of the pack" really fits in here. The lead dog is actually in charge although he lets the musher believe he/she is. Works good as long as the musher listens and watches the lead dog. Kind of like listening to the spouse, right guys? Many a musher's life has been saved by the knowledge of his lead dog and it's ability to know how to get to a help area.
The second year the race was run, I took a vacation from Wien and locked myself up in a hotel room in downtown Anchorage and operated the news media operation. I gave live reports world wide to news and sports TV and radio stations always in english though and was told that it would be translated into local language and not to worry about it. I had a stereo reel to reel tape recorder and had a phone pickup on each trak on the tape so I could tape calls on both phones at the same time.
All of my meals were delivered to the room by the hotel with the exception of one dinner when I invited a lady from our desk in the lobby of the hotel to have dinner with me across the street (among other things). Gee, a guy needs desert after a good dinner, right? It was fun really. At one point, we lost a great musher for a while, Col Vaughn who was like 75 years old at the time. He went missing for some 15 days. I set up a bunch of guys with aircraft to start looking for them. Most were from the Wasilla and Big Lake areas and finally he was found and once he got to a phone, he called me and gave me a real, and I mean real indepth report of what he and his dogs went through. I never let anyone listen to the entire tape other than excerpts that were not so gory for a dog owner. Finally, when I moved out of Alaska the last time and the situation was long gone, I donated the tape to the museum in Wasilla. If allowed to, it is something very interesting to listen to. Remember, better have a strong stomach though.
Back to the races. Prior to the race, dog food, and I am talking about thousands and thousands of pounds, is staged at selected places along the route by people we call "The Iditrod Air Force" using their own aircraft, usually C-180s or 185s on skis and sometimes Super Cubs depending on the need. The Cubs were normally used to move officials around. Remember, this is all being done at 20 to 40 below zero F. There is no payment for those guys/gals. Gas I am not sure about. They also ferried in the Vets and moved them around as needed. Anything that needed done by air, one of them was always there.
On one beautiful clear and calm day, one of our Wien pilots flying his own C-185 was transporting a film crew from Japan photographing the race. His name was "Ace" Dodson, a really great big iron Captain for us and just as good in his Cessna or any aircraft for that matter.
A pilot witness reported it like this. Not a word from Ace.
He was around 400 foot in level flight when he turned into a normal right turn, probably to give the camera man in the right front seat a better view of a dog team. It is suspected that when the guy in the right seat turned, he placed his right foot on the right rudder pedal and we all know what happens after that at 400 foot. Right bank with max right rudder all the way in? Needless to say, no one survived. Ace was such a supporter of the race although he never ran it, only flew with and for it. It was a big loss to loose such a great pilot in something like this.
There are lots of pros and cons of how to run the race but as with all of life, anything can change. A couple of mushers, one a very well known female musher, ran into a moose on the trail just after the restart near Wasilla that started trampling the dog team and killing several dogs, especially the lead dog. She had to scratch that year and start over with a new lead dog for next year. Several mushers were injured along the trail to the point all they could do was crawl onto the sled and give a voice command and the lead dog did the rest. For sure, a John Deere Tractor could not do that but you don't have to feed a John Deere year around though.
How about it Alaska pilots, anyone care to join in about the Iditrod Air Force?
