Ron Fox

When Smitty’s mechanic showed up the next day at the Fairbanks airport in a Cherokee 235, he advised me to bring all the personal stuff that was in my Rover so I wouldn’t have to come back for it later.  If I was to return to Fairbanks without a job, it wouldn’t involve an extra flight.  If I got the job, I wouldn’t have to return for the rest of my stuff.  I piled it all inside.  There was a considerable amount of stuff as my Rover had been stuffed with it, but it fit easily into the Cherokee and we were off to the Alaskan interior.
The flight west towards McGrath from Fairbanks was uneventful except for the vast expanse of wilderness we were flying over.  No roads marred this wonderland of snow.  Spring had blossomed further south but here in interior Alaska there was snow everywhere.  This was my first look at Alaska from the air and it surpassed the beauty I had experienced from the ground on the way up here from the lower forty-eight as the rest of America was known to those that lived here.
Approaching the Kuskoquim River Valley from the west, the mountains were impressive although far lower in elevation than the distant Alaska Range to the south.  Passing between the small village of Takotna just twelve miles west of McGrath and Tatalina Mountain, home of the Tatalina Air Force Station early warning radar site, I was relieved to see an asphalt runway a mile long and wide enough for Wien Air Alaska’s Boeing 737 which Mike told me flew in three times a week from Anchorage.  When I had learned that McGrath was a small village of only two hundred citizens without a doctor in residence,  I was under the mistaken impression that McGrath was going to be a remote outpost at the edge of civilization with few modern conveniences.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  In actuality, McGrath was the center of civilization and everywhere else within a couple hours flying time was the edge.  What I saw from the air of McGrath was a considerable collection of small but modern houses, several roads with vehicles, a large general store and modern aviation hangar facilities of which Hub Air Service’s was the largest.  As we taxied up to Smitty’s hangar I saw two nicely painted Cherokee Six-300’s, a Cherokee 180, an old Luscomb, a Piper Geronimo and a fabric covered Piper Cub with huge tundra tires on it.  They had no tread at all and looked like balloons.
We pulled up to the Hub Air Service hangar on a taxiway at the edge of the airport which was the center of the village and Smitty strolled out to meet us.  We talked a short while over coffee in the office and I hadn’t even unloaded the 235 when Jack, Smitty’s only other pilot walked in off a mail run from Nikolai.  Smitty introduced me to Jack and then Smitty asked him to take me on his last run to Lime Village to check me out.  I hadn’t been in town 20 minutes before I was helping Jack load up a Cherokee Six-300.  We took off for Lime Village soon after that and Jack filled me in on the routine runs; three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to Lime Village, Nikolai, and Takotna.  He described the strips and how to land at each while we were flying to Lime Village.  During the 45 minute flight to Lime Village my head was spinning.  I was out in the middle of nowhere without a clue to where I was going except a name and a general direction. Jack explained to me that this outfit was strictly a VFR operation and advised me to study the sectional charts for all the areas I was to fly into and memorize the elevations of the surrounding ground of each village so I would know how low I could go without seeing the ground in my descents.  It didn’t sound exactly like a VFR operation and it wasn’t.  Of course bad weather could delay delivery of the mail somewhat, but a career bush pilot couldn’t let weather delay him too often or he wouldn’t be working long.  I took all this in with a skeptical ear, but I knew he was preparing me for a long run as Smitty’s main pilot.  I wanted to do a good job and earn his respect.
As we approached Lime Village, I saw a few small cabins on a hillside next to a bend in a river.  I looked at him and, smiling, said,  “We made it!”  Jack just looked back at me with a grin and replied,  “We haven’t made it, yet, ”
On the bend in the river was a gravel bar perhaps 800 feet long which looked pretty smooth.  When I asked Jack where we were going to land he pointed at the gravel bar and said, “You’re looking at it!”
“You’re shitting me!,” I gasped.  “We’re going to land on that?”
“Sure,” he said.  “We come in downwind and check out the strip for rocks and pieces of driftwood.  We turn crosswind at about three hundred feet and line up for our final approach, never getting too low in the trees to lose site of the strip.  We come in at about ten knots over stall speed with a high rate of descent and full flaps with power off.  A few feet off the ground we pull the nose up high to bleed off our last ten knots, slam into the ground, pop off the manual flap lever to get the weight on the wheels, stand on the brakes and hope for the best.
Jack was explaining all this while he was doing it and all I could do was listen carefully to every word and watch Jack do his stuff.  He was so calm with it all that I could do no less than place my hands on the dash and follow his advice:  hope for the best.
We slammed on the ground all right.  Quick as lightening, Jack popped off the flaps and stood on the brakes.  He got her stopped with plenty of room and we taxied the remaining hundred feet or so to the end and Jack had to power up to turn the plane around.  At this time the plane’s front end lifted into the air and the tail hit the ground.  We were both staring into the sky and Jack looked at me grinning from ear to ear and said, “Now, we made it!  Must be a little tail heavy!”
This was my first bush landing of any kind in such a small airplane and I was impressed.  I was sure the fist-sized rocks on the gravel bar were going to drive the wheel struts right through the wings.  They banged loudly against their stops with every jolt.
A crowd of native Americans surrounded the airplane and issued friendly greetings to Jack, glancing apprehensively at me, wondering who I was.  Jack introduced me as the new mail pilot, amazing me as he had not yet seen me fly.  I was then greeted very warmly by at least twenty people from ten to what looked like eighty years old.  Everyone helped unload the plane.  There were boxes of canned goods shipped by U.S. Mail and every commodity imaginable.  If it was carried in McGrath’s general store, we flew it in.  Anyone who could get their hands on a catalog which carried anything that could be mailed, if it would fit in the plane, we flew it in.
After the plane was unloaded, Jack pulled a loose leaf notebook from under the seat and, walking toward the pile of boxes and bags, began calling out names and handing people packages for which he received money, making change each time.  This only took a few minutes.  Jack was to explain later to me that he gladly performed favors for everyone, buying them items in the general store in McGrath and bringing them on his regular mail runs.  It wasn’t strictly legal on a mail run, but it was expected of the mail pilots because we were the villager’s only contact with the outside world.  Bottles of booze were strictly illegal to carry to villagers on mail runs, but Jack performed these favors as well.  I was taking all this in, determined to be as good a mail pilot as I could be for every village I served, yet amazed at how much discretion I was to have in deciding where to draw the lines.
When Jack was finished passing out all the non-mail packages and bags and settling accounts, he turned to me and told me to take the left seat and try my hand around the patch.  My close observation of Jack’s starting procedures paid off as I started the Cherokee with ease.  He told me to look at the smoke drifting out of the cabin chimneys and decide which direction to take off from.  When we had taxied to the far end of the gravel bar he said,  “Hold the brakes, power up and let ‘er rip!.  As we begin to roll, hold the yoke back to lighten the nose so we don’t catch any rocks with the prop or nosewheel, then ease the back pressure as we pick up speed.  Don’t waste any ground.  Just rotate when you get to the end of the strip and point the nose at the tops of the far-side trees.  No sweat!”
Following his instructions, we took off empty with ease and flew around the pattern low.  Flying the plane just like Jack had, I came in slow with a high sink rate about ten knots over stall, somewhat slower now that we were empty.  Pulling hard on the yoke, we hit the ground hard just as we ran out of airspeed.  As soon as the nose hit,  I popped the long flap lever down and braked to a stop well back on the strip.  Jack told me I did a good job and we took off for McGrath.  Forty-five minutes later we landed at McGrath.
Jack and I walked into the Hub Air Service office to meet with Smitty.  Jack walked behind the counter, grabbed a backpack and, as he was walking out the door, turned to Smitty and said, “He did great Smitty, he’ll do fine,” and walked out the door heading for the Wien Air Alaska terminal just across the taxiway.
“Where’s he going?,” I asked Smitty.
“His wife is having a baby in Anchorage and I guess he’s anxious to join her.  I guess you’re our new pilot.”
“Thanks, Smitty,”  I said, not believing my luck.  “But I’ve got a lot to learn.”
“You’ll learn it,”  he said.  “If you can get into Lime Village, you can get into anywhere we fly.”
He spent the next hour or so helping me get my things out of the 235 and stow them in what used to be the hangar’s powerplant shop.  It had been converted into a small apartment with a kitchen, living room and bedroom.  The only thing separating my humble living quarters from the office was a curtain hung across the entryway.  I was soon to learn that I was in charge of the office 24 hours per day.  Whenever a charter customer would come into the office, I was to greet him, write up their charter request, take the money, and fly them anywhere they wanted to go in between my regular mail runs.  I found myself in bushpilot heaven, flying into the darndest places.  All without an FAA Part 135 checkride.