Pages, some stolen, some original

Thursday, May 9, 2024

How do you get to Bristol Bay, Alaska?

Example Piper Tri-Pacer

Marc sold his Pacer to Jeremy, a guy from Alaska. Jeremy joined us for lunch Tuesday and I asked him how long it would take to fly home. He lives in an unpronounceable hamlet on Bristol Bay in western Alaska. As the crow flies, it's 1,700 miles, but the Pacer only has a range of 500 miles. Overland, it's 2,000 miles, so two or three days of flying. If he flys. Seems there are a number of bureaucratic obstacles, i.e. he would have to land in Canada so he'd have the mounties threatening to arrest him and impound his plane because he didn't have right cover page on his TPS report.

The alternative would be to take the wings off and load the disassembled plane onto a pickup truck. Seems kind of sketchy, but airplane guys are resourceful so I imagine it could be done. The wings are 13 feet long, so they could be laid in the bed of the truck with only about three feet hanging over the back edge of the tailgate. The fuselage would be perched on top facing backwards so the tail would be hanging out over the hood. You would want to take the tail feathers off and store them on top of the wings. As much confidence as Marc expressed in this option I expected that it might be a common technique, but Google turned up no pictures. Several photos of disassembled planes loaded on larger trucks and trailers, but no pickup truck only setups.

Alaska Road Map

One minor problem with this scheme is that there are apparently no roads in western Alaska. There is a highway north from Anchorage to Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, but nothing west of that. So while you could drive to Anchorage, you'd have to stop and assemble the airplane there and then fly the rest of the way.

Seems like flying would be a better solution, driving 2,500 miles over questionable roads, the airplane is going to take a beating.

2 comments:

  1. Put in a ferry tank with flexible pipes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry, it's 1,700 miles, not a thousand. I'm not sure a Tripacer could carry enough fuel for that.

    ReplyDelete