This blog is from an email I sent out when I was up in Alaska working on helicopters. I miss that job now. Wish I could go back and do it all over again. I believe it was July of 2007 that this all happened.
Well I have had the craziest summer I have ever had in my life. The craziest part was the end of last week and part of this last weekend. So on the 14th I took off flew south about 300 miles to Aniak, AK to a staging point for my next short hop to another helicopter. The pilot and I arrived around midnight on the 15th without a place to stay we sacked out under the wings of the airplane we were flying. While in Aniak I did one night of work on another helicopter. On the 16th I was flown out to a lake where one of our other helicopters is located. My job out at the lake was to get the inspections caught up so the helicopter could fly for a while without a mechanic.
During this time I was trying to keep track of the helicopter I am currently with. I saw that this helicopter was approaching its inspection limit. I was trying to get a flight out of the mining camp at Kisaralik Lake where our helicopter was located. So finally on Thursday the 19th I was ready to leave. The float plane came in and myself and 2 other guys were going out along with some soil samples for the mining company. We loaded up and could not get off the water. So we got back to shore. The pilot called the camp and they were asking me to get off the plane. I was reluctant to get off, because I had a plane waiting for me in Bethel our final destination. One of the other guys got off of the plane slowly. The next try the pilot took the float plane in a really big circle around the lake and we were able to get off of the water.
When I got to Bethel I started to make phone calls to see whether my plane was really in Bethel. I got a hold of the owner of the helicopter company. I found out that they had been told that I got off the float plane so our helicopter in Aniak was sent out to pick me up. Instead our helicopter picked up the guy who gave up his seat. All along my airplane was in Aniak. So the guy who gave up his seat was flown to Aniak by helicopter and then flown to Bethel by airplane. Then I got on the airplane and flew back to Aniak. I ended up getting to bed about 2 am on the 20th.
The next day I was up by about 7:30. I had a small check and a servo to change on the helicopter in Aniak so I was talking with the pilot about what the plan was. We decided to work on the helicopter when they got done in the afternoon. A little bit later we found out that the servo had been left in Anchorage. So the pilot who was flying me around in the airplane was trying to track down the package and get it to Aniak. So sometime that night around 10:30 or 11 we finally got the servo. So I changed a Tail Rotor control servo the night of the 20th and morning of the 21st. To top it all I had never done this job before. I finished sometime around 3 or 3:30 the morning of the 21st. We let Aniak at 3:45 am and arrived at my current location around 6:30 am.
When I finally got back up here to Dahl Creek I had to do a 30 hr. insp. tp keep the helicopter flying. So the pilot flew a little bit in the morning and then landed and I had till noon to work on the helicopter. While he was flying I got about 45 min of sleep. Then I had to do an engine vibration test before my chauffeur left. I ended up getting to bed around 11:30 the night of the 21st. I might have had a total of 2 hrs. of sleep on the 21st. So that is just what happened to me in a period of 3-4 days.
I forgot to mention in that email that the night I spent in Aniak if I am remembering right I spent it sleeping on the ramp underneath the wing of the airplane.
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