Video Pirep Out of PAHO in the COTS

[Kilstorm]

This was scheduled to be a 2.2 hour flight from PAHO to PAFA and back.  Departing PAHO with 2 charter groups of 58 passengers and returning with 1 group of 65 passengers.  Christmas charters. It ended up being a 4 hour round trip flight with some intense moments on the return into PAHO.  

Heres a Pilots report of that flight.

 

I started the work day at dawn local time in real weather.  It was right at freezing when I approached the plane where I was met by Heidi already on the plane.  My first order of business was to get the plane warmed up for the passengers.  Larry got to work on doing all his flight engineer stuff while I took care of creating my flight plan and checking the weather briefs.

 

Once the plane was warmed up I called for boarding and then engine start.  Was a bit worried about how hard it was going to be to start the engines in freeze cold temps but with the extra priming they fired right up.

 

Departure, climb out and cruise where nice and the charters had ordered scrabbled eggs for their breakfast. Made my normal ACARS calls to Chilkoot Air Ops on the Slack radio. Coming into PAFA was also smooth but the OAT was minus 14C so I was looking for a quick turn to avoid the oil from getting too cold and making for a hard start.

 

The ground crew did their stuff while I got busy filing my return flight plan and checking weather.  Jimmy from Ops radio in about possible icing conditions for my climb and arrivals and the poor weather that had set in after I had departed.

 

Checking weather, sure enough the new ATIS was reporting 3sm vis and a ceiling of 600 with now light winds out of the north.  I loaded up the LOC/DME for rwy 4 which called for 1SM and 460' so I was good as long as it didnt drop anymore but filed for PANC as my Alternate.

In my hurry to get the engines started before they cooled too much I had missed the Master Ignition that was turned off during shut down and over primed two engines before I noticed.  So I had to lean those to get the flooded engines started. Got to love Accusim!

 

The flight back was a lunch time charter and this group had ordered chicken salad sandwiches. The legs were taking longer than planed but no real head winds.  Closer to PAHO the weather had backed off a bit to 3sm and 1,000' ceiling so I requested the HMO R228 19DME Acr to rwy 4LOC/DME approach. Luckily I have my GoFlight DME hardware as the B377 doesnt have one.

Cleared for the approach I was cleared down to 3000 where it was white IMC and serve turbulence.  Did a sloppy job on the DME Arc but did good enough to have a good approach in. The profile calls for just one alt point of 2,000 so its not a great approach to fly in the B377 and also the turbulence was so bad that I couldnt make if I was climbing or descending as I was trying to keep the airspeed down and the VS needle was all over the place due to the bumps in the weather.

 

I broke out at the shore line but due to this new PAHO ops snow plower guy Alex Geoff, the runway does not stand out and blends in with the surrounding area so I didnt make runway contact until I was well on it but made it in and just had to lean the mixtures and run up the engines on back taxi to clear the fouled spark plugs.

 

Found myself with sweaty palms and a sigh of relief on the taxi in.  4 hours had past since I started this flight and I was ready for a drink!
 

Click on the link below to see a video slide show of the flight.

https://vimeo.com/149776497

[dominique]

Nice PIREP for a great aircraft altogether ! I did a less stressful PAHO-PAYA  (thru ANC)  early morning flight yesterday with the ILS11 approach at PAYA, in good visibility .  Beautiful landscapes most of the way.

 

Not having a DME makes it more difficult  and the planning is more crucial.  I hesitate to install the GTN750 though, with its nifty Vnav calc tool  .

 

I think that the Strat' is more or less immune to engine icing.

[jlindblo]

Nice .... thanks for taking the time to put this on video and share ....  you enjoy the flight (although putting the video together is a lot of work) and we get to learn something .... every time, if we pay attention.