Dream Hop - Alaska

[Jamesdub]

Per recent discussions on where is your dream destination - many references were shared about the previous COG Alaska trip.

A few questions:

What time of year / season did you go?
How many ships were involved?
How many days did you allocate?
What was the average daily flight time?
What was the average total time?
What was the average separation between aircraft enroute?
Any customs procedures to deal with?
Any special equipment / survival gear?
Any interesting U.S. landmarks / airports flight planned?
How did the non-Turbo folks make out in the higher elevations?
Any Maintenance breakdowns?
Who was the furthest starting location to join the flight?

Budget Wise ($$) - for a couple what would you recommend allocating?

Would any of the original COG be willing to sponsor another 'North to the Future' Hop?

 

[mcgrathm]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Per recent discussions on where is your dream destination - many references were shared about the previous COG Alaska trip.

A few questions:

What time of year / season did you go?
How many ships were involved?
How many days did you allocate?
What was the average daily flight time?
What was the average total time?
What was the average separation between aircraft enroute?
Any customs procedures to deal with?
Any special equipment / survival gear?
Any interesting U.S. landmarks / airports flight planned?
How did the non-Turbo folks make out in the higher elevations?
Any Maintenance breakdowns?
Who was the furthest starting location to join the flight?

Budget Wise ($$) - for a couple what would you recommend allocating?

Would any of the original COG be willing to sponsor another 'North to the Future' Hop?

I'll go. You can practice when you come up to the cookout on 4/2/16 in Savannah, TN.

 

[Airotto370]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Per recent discussions on where is your dream destination - many references were shared about the previous COG Alaska trip.

A few questions: a few answers...any AK participants feel free to add or correct...

What time of year / season did you go? End July/early August
How many ships were involved? 10 plus the guide Bonanza
How many days did you allocate? I think it was about 10 days on the tour but some of us spent 3 weeks all told
What was the average daily flight time? 3-4 hours
What was the average total time? Not sure of an average, but I recorded 89 hours total over the 3 weeks
What was the average separation between aircraft enroute? We ended up flying as two separate groups (112s vs 114s) for a good portion of the trip. The 112s did a lot of fairly close airwork, including a 3 ship to minimums instrument formation landing in Fairbanks.
Any customs procedures to deal with? Only those when they were forgotten by the guide.
Any special equipment / survival gear? Yes, there was a list of required gear.
Any interesting U.S. landmarks / airports flight planned? The whole trip qualifies
How did the non-Turbo folks make out in the higher elevations? It was a challenge but we all made it.
Any Maintenance breakdowns? Nothing major, I remember one plane had a vexing electrical issue that took a while to correct. Two bird strikes...well one real and one that was disguised as a chain link fence, but no down time caused.
Who was the furthest starting location to join the flight? Not sure of the math, but we had planes from NY, MS, TX

Budget Wise ($$) - for a couple what would you recommend allocating? If you have to ask...

Would any of the original COG be willing to sponsor another 'North to the Future' Hop?

From what I recall, I put comments after your questions above.

 

[ksandrew]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

John

The blog that we did on the Alaska trip is still on our web page. The spelling is bad as two 15/16 yo boys from England did most of it. A few pictures.

Starting from South Georgia going via Mexico.

http://andrewtent.com/alaska.htm

Life is a barrel of fun.

Ken

 

[JD318]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Ken,
That was an interesting read. I see you made a stop in Nebraska. Looks like a lot of fun.

JD

 

[mcgrathm]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Thanks for sharing. Looks like it was a lot of fun.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[wiguy]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Two of us flew from MS to and around AK some, FAI, Merril, Palmer, Talkeetna, ENA back in 1992. It was a GREAT trip, just a series of cross-countries.

The terrain isn't as big a deal as some imagine, you go around the biggies, not over them.

Our time was late July into Aug, averaging two longer legs a day. One thing I remember is we left on a Wednesday and got to the Fairbanks campground on Monday.

Our steed was a 66 Cherokee 140.

 

[Pat]

Re: Dream Hop - Alaska

Joe,
If you can fly a Cherokee 140 to Alaska, you will be very happy with any Commander. We took our 114 to Alaska with the group in 2009 and we had a great time. I compared fuel consumption between the different planes and it was about the same for all planes expect one. Lonnie's IO-580 was the exception but he enjoyed passing us several times on each leg of the trip. The fun factor was in his favor.
I lived in CA and I would often see 10,000' density alt. between CA and CO. The performance was great. Now living in the Midwest, density alt is not a factor. The highest extended trip I have flown is 16,000' and on O2. Most of my trips are below oxygen so a turbo doesn't offer me much appeal. After 25 years in a 114, I replaced it with a 114B standard induction and very happy.