What do you think of the various Alaskan flying programmes?

Stovepipe

hi all,
I've watched quite a few of all three series now and several things come to mind, apart from the issue of saturation of a common topic; In Flying Wild Alaska, the daughter is a muppet and clearly unfit to be let near an aircraft; in Ice Pilots, some of the staff appear to be their own worst enemies and a great deal is made of what would be trivial issues. The fat son is particularly irritating! Also, I think some of the flying is in conditions so risky that they were/are putting it on for the camera, rather than waiting for better weather and clearly, some of the work conditions are so extreme that the staff are getting treated with contempt. Also, some of the pilots are taking risks to make sure that isolated villages don't run out of snack food!!!
What do you think?

regards
Stovepipe

donvito99

Ice pilots is effectively a show about old airplanes breaking down and springing leaks and freezing solid - and then the your man Joe gets seriously p**sed off.

sparrowcar

Stovepipe wrote: »

hi all,
I've watched quite a few of all three series now and several things come to mind, apart from the issue of saturation of a common topic; In Flying Wild Alaska, the daughter is a muppet and clearly unfit to be let near an aircraft; in Ice Pilots, some of the staff appear to be their own worst enemies and a great deal is made of what would be trivial issues. The fat son is particularly irritating! Also, I think some of the flying is in conditions so risky that they were/are putting it on for the camera, rather than waiting for better weather and clearly, some of the work conditions are so extreme that the staff are getting treated with contempt. Also, some of the pilots are taking risks to make sure that isolated villages don't run out of snack food!!!
What do you think?

regards
Stovepipe

The daughter really is a muppet isn't she

It's good tv but I wouldn't subscribe to 90% of the crap they try and sell us as everyday life in Alaska.

phonypony

ahh, the power of editing! All those exterior shots while there's awful weather, etc. They're all shot at different times. Cliffhanger moments before the commercials and an obvious outcome. They gotta create excitement somehow.

By the way, Arial is a smart cookie (and cute) and has been on TV before(Wipeout). I read somewhere she's trying to be an actress. So it's all played up for entertainment as in most North American TV. They have to appeal to a wider audience with a little drama.

Good shows though, i've enjoyed them.

roundymac

sparrowcar wrote: »

The daughter really is a muppet isn't she

Yes she is, but I would'nt kick her out of the bed for eating crisps.:D It is however one the "better" programmes, particulary when the father is flying.

Stovepipe

She can't be that smart. Some of her flying is remedial. The instructor must have been really stuck for a job, trying to teach her.
Some of the Buffalo stuff is mental. I found myself shaking my head and wondering why they simply didn't use a turbine aircraft instead of almost killing themselves with inferior antiicing equipment and a monumental pain in the arse to start every morning?

regards
Stovepipe

youtheman

Loved the bit where Buffalo exported the two water-bombers to Turkey and one of the natives managed to land it 'wheels up', all caught on camera (it's on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gTBe0FWQ18 ).

What my father used to call 'expensive noises'.

roundymac

And these guys were being trained by Buffulo, aparently there was an instructor on board. Nothing more was heard or said about that incident, I wonder did the Turks tell them to can it? That muppet of a manager Mikey then went to some place in South America to look at another water bomber.
As you say some of the flying was with buckets of sh**e when they had two servicable Electras, I know there was a whinge about them being costly to run. Also the DC4 seems to change colour every second week; some weeks it's an all green livery other's it's got silver diagonal band on the middle of the fusalage, yet they regulary mention that they operate a single DC4:eek:

David086

I think Chuck is my favourite in Ice Pilots.

xflyer

I like Ice Pilots, the boss reminds me of someone..............you know who I mean and in any case I would love to fly a C46, go on Stovie, you know you want to, or the C47 or the DC4. Besides it's Canadian, not quite as crazy as Americans. For the info of others the reason they don't use turbine is that turbine costs just sitting on the ground, while the pistons can sit in the cold and wait for the job to come up. That's why it's been difficult to replace the DC3 all these years.

As for Flying Wild Alaska, yes the daughter is a bit of a bimbo. Somehow I think her interest in flying coincided with the arrival of the film crew. But the other stuff rings true.

On the other hand Alaska's toughest pilots are not Alaska's toughest pilots. Mostly they are ordinary Alaska pilots doing their job. Interesting though. A big error in the first series was to turn a single turbine Otter into a Beaver and back again. Even the dumbest film editor should have spotted that.

If I was twenty years younger, hell if I wasn't married I would love any of those jobs.

I'll bet loads of Walts headed North when those shows came out.

Jesus Nut

An Englishmans view on flying in Alaska
GO TO 09:04 to 09:30
Sums it up pretty well I think.
Flying is like driving a car over there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpgleXlZfTc

Irish Steve

I've watched them with interest, and there are all sorts of reactions.

I can understand them still using piston aircraft rather than the turboprops, the equipment to support the turboprops can be expensive, having to have GPU's and airstarts at any or all of those smaller strips is not helpful or cost effective.

The few Electra trips we've seen have been fraught with problems, the APU on them was not standard as such, and it's clearly not the most reliable of items. If you don't have an APU, you need a Ground Power Unit and an Airstart to get the beast going again, and people on the ground that know exactly how to operate them, as well as machines to then move them away from the live aircraft, no way at every possible stop that they go to, and even starting things like the ATR on just a GPU still means having one at every stop, a battery pack can't provide the power in the same way, the current is too high for too long to start a turboprop. I spent several years ground handling, and things like airstarts are people and equipment intensive, the costs of having all that gear at every possible stop would be massive, as would maintenance of the ground equipment, it would all have to be kept indoors and warm to be reliable, an additional and significant expense. I know how troublesome airstarts were at Dublin, getting the right people and equipment to the aircraft was bad enough, and the airstart wasn't the most reliable of pieces of kit, because it could go weeks without even being started.

Primitive deicing is easy when a yard brush will get the snow off, it's different snow to the stuff we get in Ireland, due to it being much colder, there's no way that we could operate in the same way, partly because it's usually ice rather than snow that's being dealt with.

Avgas is a lot more tolerant of being cold soaked than Jet A1, we've seen on other aviation programmes what happens to Jet A1 when it gets super cooled, and the end result can be very serious indeed. Avgas doesn't have the same issues, as long as the tanks are kept pretty full to avoid condensation in the tanks.

That said, even the Electra is not ideal, if money was no object, the aircraft for the job would be the C130, but would you want low time people flying it, and the operating costs would be massive compared to the types they use now.

Remember that some of the pilots are very low time people, who are desperate to hours build, and they are going to Buffalo, or any of the other places there to do exactly that, it's no different to what used to happen in Europe, except that in Europe, the hours building route was instructing, because the work isn't there in the same way as it is in America/Canada, and instructing has it's problems as well, some of the high time instructors could fly circuits and land a Cessna or similar with no hassles, but ask them to fly any distance VFR in a fast aircraft, and they were in trouble, as they'd not got up to speed metaphorically and physically in faster aircraft, and found the transition to small turboprops and the like hard to do, even though they were well used to being in the right hand seat.

The hours situation is very much glossed over in the programs, because it doesn't fit with the "family" concept of a little small Mom & Pop type operation that's close and comfortable. We never hear what the turnover of staff is, Air Alaska probably has a huge turnover, once people get to 1500 Hrs, and can go fly with their ATPL, they won't stay flying small singles very long.

I know when I went over to the States to do my ME/CPL/IR, the first instructor they put me with lasted 1 flight, his total time on ME was very low, I think he'd done 10 hours ME instructing at that stage, I'd flown over 300 hours ME in a significantly better performance twin, and had more time on a Seneca than he had, and he couldn't cope with the fact that I was way ahead of him in the handling and anticipation of what was going on and he was close to panic a couple of times because he was way outside of his comfort envelope.

I went to the owner after the first flight for a long chat, explained the position, and to his credit, I was then was put with an Instructor who had also moved on to regularly flying Part 135 work, and that worked perfectly, he was 750 Hrs further down the line, and was delighted to have a student that could already fly ME, and didn't have to be taught as such, and I was doing nothing different with him, it was a case of doing the relevant box ticking prior to the exams and flight tests, and polishing up the accuracy for the IR, as I already had an ME IMC from the UK, which had been done to IR standards, because of how slippery my twin was! The only reason it wasn't an IR at the time was because I didn't have enough hours to do a UK IR at that stage, rightly or wrongly, I'd bought the twin for hours building and work commuting with less than 75 Hrs total time, and my ME instructor made VERY sure I was safe with the twin before he let me loose on my own. We effectively did the entire PPL syllabus again in the twin, and I didn't have a problem with that, it meant that I did know the aircraft by the time we'd finished.

Flying for Buffalo, or Air Alaska at least means the pilots are getting real flying experience that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their flying careers. I will put money on it that if one of the pilots from Buffalo moved from there to a long haul Airbus, they'd not have ended up in the Atlantic like the Air France 330 did a couple of years ago if faced with the same situation that the AF crew faced.

Some of the conditions in Alaska and Canada are very challenging, but that is what flying in that part of the world means and requires, and while Joe can be a hard person to deal with, he's made it work for a long time, and I don't recall seeing ANY accident or incident reports about Buffalo over time, and I've been around aviation one way or another for close on 25 years, and the last 20 with "interest" of one sort or another in the commercial end of it, and active on sites that get reports of incidents worldwide.

Yes, it's spiced up more than some for TV, and you can be very sure that while TV concentrates on petty things like crisps, there will also be essentials like medication and the like on those runs, to many of those communities, there are no roads at times, so everything is going in by air.

A few weeks back, the DC4 had to do a job that got messy when they were taking a standby generator into one of the more remote communities, as their standby was out of action. People here complain if the power is off for a few hours, being without power for days in a climate as severe as the one we are seeing there is a different story altogether.

Ariel and some of the other things are in there to give the programs wider appeal than just the flying buffs, and some of that has to be taken with a pinch or 3 of salt.;)

Some of it is however how things are, especially when things are tight.

I know that if I'd known about Buffalo or Air Alaska 30 years ago, my CV would have been on the desk of both CEO's at the right time, and I would have been happy to have to do some of the "peripheral" stuff if it meant getting to fly on a regular basis. Hell, if I was younger, I'd be going there now if I could, especially Buffalo, and I'm not sure I'd have been in too much of a hurry to move on to bigger and larger, there are certain aspects of modern aircraft flying that are a lot less appealing than the sort of things that Buffalo do.

Yeah, it's more than 2c worth, but hey, that's life

Stinicker

I've just finished watching series 1 of Ice Pilots and it is pretty cool, Mikey is a bit of idiot I think and is there cause he is Joe's son and he also has a pretty hot girlfriend despite being horribly obese so obviously money and influence talks.

Some of their old planes are great to see and for them to be running commercially is really cool! I just wonder is regulation less stringent over there because I can imagine they would not be allowed to operate like this over here.

That rampie wilf looked like a serial killer also!

Blue Punto

Ive watch Ice Pilots from the first episode and Im up to Season 3 Ep10 at the moment.

One thing I will say is that some of it is "tuned up" for TV
But when your at -30/40 and the power unit goes down in a remote village this quickly can become life threatening and the logistics of getting the new one there to replace it as fast as possible can be difficult at the best of times.

For us watching it here it can be hard to imagine what the conditions actually feel like in those temperatures and it is something I could never of imagined until I got there 12 years ago to the day.The snow is dry and like powder unlike the wet stuff we get here the odd year and with the extreme cold it does not make life easy

One thing is for sure I wouldnt fancy a Rampies job

xflyer

Some of their old planes are great to see and for them to be running commercially is really cool! I just wonder is regulation less stringent over there because I can imagine they would not be allowed to operate like this over here.

The rules are more pragmatic but no less stringent on the other side of the Atlantic. On this side of the Atlantic there is more bureaucracy. But it would be possible to operate here, Air Atlantique did so for years. But there is no market.

Stovepipe

@xflyer, I'd love to fly a C47 or even a C46. First thing I ever flew in was an Air Atlantique Dakota, G-AMPO. What you said about crazy bosses...;)
@Irish Steve, I appreciate the point about needing ground support but they've been going to the same airports for years so it wouldn't be impossible to establish GSE and keep it servicable. When I see Buffalo carrying their own Avgas and a Herman Nelson, it essentially means lost revenue. Anyway, romance aside, the big pistons will die out as the spares holding diminishes and the 100LL supply dries up and turbines will win out by default if not design. I'd imagine that people will also tend to move out of the harsh climate and the small isolated villages will become unsustainable. I'd imagine that some only exist because of State subsidy anyhow.
Still, the programmes do make good watching, even if they are sometimes farcical. Ariel's dad has to be one of the better pilots.

regards
Stovepipe

xflyer

Pretty sure I flew in AMPO too, West Malling in the eighties, I think. When I'm rich I will own a C47 and you can help maintain and fly it. That will be quite soon BTW as soon as I win the lottery.

Watching the latest episode involving the Electras brought it all back. I taxyed an Electra once. We were doing a compass swing. It was quite a moment with all four props turning away with me in the right seat. Magic, if things had worked out the way it should have. My first job would have been on Electras. One of my few regrets.

Irish Steve

xflyer wrote: »

Pretty sure I flew in AMPO too, West Malling in the eighties, I think. When I'm rich I will own a C47 and you can help maintain and fly it. That will be quite soon BTW as soon as I win the lottery.:P:cool:

Young striplings

Exeter Airport, British Westpoint Airlines, operated DC3's to places like Heathrow, and DH89A Rapides to the Isles of Scilly, one of my first flights was on a DH89A at an airday, from Exeter down to Berry Head and back, that was flying. Somewhere in my garage, I've still got an old time expired propellor off the wind generator that provided power for lights and the like, no nice handy alternators in those days. They'd unfortunately ceased operations by 1967, so it was a long time ago:D

Going a bit off topic, the Westpoint DC3 colour scheme was in it's way, every bit as striking as some of the Aer Lingus colours have been, the Westpoint aircraft always stood out when parked among a group of aircraft, in the same way that for years, the Aer Lingus aircraft stood out among the rest.

There are some lovely pictures on Google of the Westpoint DC3's and a few of the DH89a's, as well as some other types they had.

Completely off topic, at Exeter. there was also an operation called 3 CAACU, the Civilian Anti Aircraft Cooperation Unit, which did target towing for the Navy. In the early 60's they were still operating DH mosquito aircraft, and mornings at the school I was at in those days couldn't get properly started until just after the first pair of Mossies had taken off, as the normal departure track from Exeter Airport was close to the school, which was on the high ground just over a mile from the runway. For whatever reason, the Mossies always took off in pairs, and never climbed out that hard, so most days, we were treated to the sight AND SOUND of 2 pairs of Merlins turning and burning, which tended to discourage the teachers from talking for a while, they couldn't make themselves heard over the beautiful sound of those engines.

Ahhh, they were the days. Vampires, Meteors and eventually Canberras replaced the Mossies, they were nice, but didn't have the same appeal as the piston powered machines We also saw things like Constellations, Argonauts, DC4's DC6's and the like on a regular basis in those times. People wonder why I've always loved aircraft

Best day was one year on the friday before the airday. The school was almost all glass on one side, which looked out towards the airport, a serious distraction. I saw 2 very low and fast moving shapes coming in over the hills to the south, and they went round a wide circuit, and I was the only person in the room that wasn't scared sh1tless when 2 German 104 Starfighters went over the school at about 100 Ft all turning and burning doing a fast run in to the runway as practise for their display the following day. I knew they were coming, and I was glad I did, they were moving at very high speed with a lot of power on, so noisy didn't even come close ;) We were on the third floor at the time, so not that far below them:D Happy days!

xflyer

Pah, Rapides they're not old. I remember seeing dogfighting Se5s and Fokkers near my house as a kid. I even had a grandstand seat watching a low level duel between two of them in the field behind my house.

Ok I'm not THAT old, it was for a movie either The Blue Max or the The Red Baron, not sure which. But it was the early sixties.

Even growing up ten miles from Dublin airport you could see Connies, DC3s, Britannias passing low overhead. At night you could see the alternating exhaust flames from the engines and of course Vampires, Doves, Provosts and Chipmunks from nearby Baldonnel, sometimes performing aerobatics. Plus the the eternal Alouette III.

As for the F104s, would love to have seen that.

This stuff is really dating me!:(

Irish Steve

xflyer wrote: »

Pah, Rapides they're not old. I remember seeing dogfighting Se5s and Fokkers near my house as a kid. I even had a grandstand seat watching a low level duel between two of them in the field behind my house.

Read about that in several places, and it would have been great to see that....

Ok I'm not THAT old, it was for a movie either The Blue Max or the The Red Baron, not sure which. But it was the early sixties.

From what I've seen it was Blue Max, but I stand to be corrected

Even growing up ten miles from Dublin airport you could see Connies, DC3s, Britannias passing low overhead. At night you could see the alternating exhaust flames from the engines and of course Vampires, Doves, Provosts and Chipmunks from nearby Baldonnel, sometimes performing aerobatics. Plus the the eternal Alouette III.

There are times when I wonder if aviation hasn't moved on just a little too fast :D .

Having said that my most precious and carefully guarded video is one I took before we moved over here, (and that was 1989), Exeter had a visit from Concorde doing a Bay of Biscay trip, and the powers that be opened up the airport like it was an airday. Never happen now, but then, I got there to find that the parking for the day was between the perimeter track and the runway, so I found a position about 100 Mtrs from the PAPI's at the departure end, and waited, video camera at the ready. We didn't just hear it take off, we FELT it. He took off, and went down to Biscay for the supersonic flight, and then came back, but while he was away, the very light wind changed, so I was now at the landing end. He did a low approach and go around, a wide circuit and then came back in for a full stop landing. I've got the entire approach, from about 10 miles, on video, it looks like an Eagle descending on it's prey, all the way down, and as it went almost over our heads at probably 50 Ft, the reversers were being opened to activate on touchdown. An Hour later, he departed for London subsonic, with again a departure from in front of us, and then a wide circuit and low approach, followed by a climb to the east to join controlled airspace at Bridport, 30 Miles east, at FL230! Pure Magic.

What made it complete was that Air Atlantique were there doing local pleasure flights with one of their DC3's, so I got a beautiful evening sequence of a large circuit of the Dak, again from close to the touchdown point, with full sound and the works, as the Dak came over the threshold, gently waffled the throttles back to idle, and popping gently, it landed in front of us. The contrast, with the airfield almost deserted at that stage, and a peaceful summer evening sunshine was amazing, in that over 7000 people had come out to watch the Concorde trip, so the place was buzzing.

To get those recordings, I'd rushed home at wildly illegal speeds to get my video camera and recorder, but from my point of view, that video is priceless, for all sorts of sentimental reasons.

Never did get to take a flight on the real thing, (Concorde that is) which is a great pity, but I do have a couple of sessions in the Concorde sim in my log book, which are also memories of times that will never be repeated. Hand flying a departure from LHR, and then positioning for an approach to LGW was another scenario that was amazing to do:D:D:D:D:D

[QUOTE}As for the F104s, would love to have seen that. [/QUOTE]

It was a pretty amazing moment, even the teacher ducked involuntarily, and a number of the students ducked under their desks, it was an unreal sound. Amazng stuff that again, isn't happening the same way today, the bean counters and health and safety NIMBY's in so many areas have killed off so many things that used to bring pleasure to thousands.

This stuff is really dating me!:(

You and me both, but with the way things are, at least we have some worthwhile memories, which the modern generations won't have in the same way. We might not be seeing too much of a bright future right now, but at least the memories are good ones, that has to count for something

Cheers

Stovepipe

@xflyer, that's real big of you to allow me to fix your putative oily old Dakota. I'd wait til your back was turned and get the Basler lads to do a proper job on it, with your Lotto dollars, of course:)

regards
Stovepipe

xflyer

I said you can fly it too! Right seat only of course. You can be the grizzled old Engineer as seen in Ice Pilots. Come to think of it, most Engineers seemed grizzled, even the young ones.

As for the Basler conversion, no I'm old school. I like oily round engines. When I do want something with PT6s for my Lotto money, it might be a Caravan or a PC12.

Which reminds me, I did the Eurolotto last night. Must check the results:)

Stovepipe

the only people who say they love round engines are those that have never worked on them!!
I take it by the lack of white smoke over Galway, that you are still one of the working stiffs and not rushing off to buy a Dakota?

regards
Stovepipe

xflyer

the only people who say they love round engines are those that have never worked on them!!

That's why I need an Engineer.:D

Well there's always tonight!

Blue Punto

Just finished watching season 3 of Ice Pilots and thought it was great

One thing i will say though ,watching it from the U.S/Canada is much better than watching it on the channels here

Ringo Starr or who ever it is sucks and makes it boring, it feels like your watching Thomas The Tank Engine

Leonidas BL

Alaskas toughest pilots seems ok. The kind of flyin id love to do.

BostonB

Not crazy about the format of the program the way they repeat so much of the program after every ad break. Theres too many ads too. In an hour theres probably only 30 mins of material. However I love watching those programmes despite so many of the characters in them being very flawed.

Irish Steve

Discovery UK have just broadcast the last episode of series 3 of Ice Pilots.

The really sad thing was to see just how badly the cancer he was being treated for had affected Arnie Shreder, the former chief pilot.

He was a shadow of his former self, but his deep dignity and humanity shone through the loss of weight and mobility he had suffered as a result of the treatment he's had to undergo.

We already knew he died later from the cancer, but it was a sad thing to see him so badly diminished by the illness.

In different circumstances, I think I can safely say I would have been proud to have worked with him, his love of aviation shone clearly through all the other things that happened in his life

RIP Arnie

smurfjed

The Blue Max is a 1966 British war film about a German fighter pilot on the Western Front during World War I. It was directed by John Guillermin, stars George Peppard, James Mason and Ursula Andress

The aerial scenes were filmed in Weston, the old building that KOC used was the officers mess. The aircraft ended up in an hangar in Powerscourt.

smurfjed

Joe 90

smurfjed wrote: »

The aerial scenes were filmed in Weston, the old building that KOC used was the officers mess. The aircraft ended up in an hangar in Powerscourt.

smurfjed

If I'm not mistaken, some of the aircraft were stored in Abbeyshrule in the mid 80s. I remember a bunch of us visiting there and being shown around by Sammy. As far as I was aware, at that point the aircraft were owned my http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Garrison

wishwashwoo

Rip. Arnie Schreder - Ice Pilots - R.I.P