Mooney fun in Talkeetna, introduction to Anchorage

Day 8: Palmer to Anchorage (Merrill field), Alaska

I was put in contact with a local Mooney owner by one of the Mooney parts suppliers I use in California. The owner, an A&P mechanic who had done an outstanding job restoring his M20C, and his lovely family made arrangements to meet me in Wasilla for fuel before flying our respective airplanes up to Talkeetna for lunch. As usual, the weather was interesting. The wind at Palmer and Talkeetna, dead calm. Wasilla, barely a 5-minute flight to the west of Palmer in similar geography, had wind gusting to well over 20 knots. Between Wasilla and Talkeetna, low fog (which we'd fly over), all underneath an altostratus deck that kept the Alaska range hidden from view.

Wasilla to Talkeetna, flight of two

The 5-minute hop over to Wasilla was uneventful aside from spotting numorous airstrips. Everyone and their uncle flies here, and being a well-populated area the land was littered with grass runways galore. One could take a quick look around from 1,500' AGL and probably count 20 unpaved runways within a few mile radius. The family I was meeting based their airplanes off of such a (shared) private strip. At Wasilla, we did a quick briefing to fly formation to Talkeetna; I'd be wing-man of course. The wind was gone within a few minutes of departing Wasilla and it was a surprisingly smooth flight. My host flew a good, solid, stable lead and it required very little effort to hold formation along the way.

Along the way my hosts were kind enough to get some nice air-to-air photos of me, and I managed to get a quick camera phone video in while at a safe distance.

Turbine DeHavilland Otter

Talkeetna is worth a stop on any Alaskan trip. Several air taxi services operate tour and other charter flights to circle around nearby Denali, the highest peak in North America. Many of the flights include glacier landings, a technique pioneered by bush pilot legend Don Sheldon. Some go to see the sights, others to start climbs. A couple friends of ours made attempts on Denali (one with a successful summit) several years ago, and launched each expedition to the mountain with a flight out of Talkeetna  All manner of bushplanes from Cessna 180s to Beavers and turbine-powered DeHavilland Otters were fitted with retractable skis for this purpose. The air tour activity, even on a cloudy day, runs nearly non-stop. Seeing a turbine Otter (think small school-bus on wings with a thousand-horsepower turbine on the front end) nearly levitate off the end of the runway was impressive every time.

DeHavilland Beaver

The town itself is all of a few square blocks, pretty all over, and while a tourist trap, was my kind of tourist trap: Few  kitchy wares for sale, but plenty of good food and, for those done wit their flying for the day, great beer that I'd get to try on my next visit (I decided right then and there to bring my wife back later).

My hosts treated me to a great Reindeer sausage sandwich for lunch before we walked back to the airport to go our separate ways.

On my own once again I looked over the Anchorage terminal chart and Alaska Flight Supplement to brief a flight into Merrill Field, one of Anchorage's airports. My wife was still 48 hours from arriving so I'd reserved a rental car and cheap place to stay for a couple of nights. I'd previously read that flying into the Anchorage area is akin to a bee returning to the swarm around a nest. Anchorage itself is a medium-sized city, but has a collection of airports smashed up against each other, from an air force base to a large international airport and worldwide cargo hub. Because of all this the airspace to get in and out of various airports is stratified.

One example of this is going into Merrill from the northwest as I was planning to do. I'd cross into town from the west over the Knik arm of the Cook Inlet. The special flight rules in the area specify that a pilot going into Merrill cross the arm, and then downtown, at either under 600', or above 2,000' -- fighter and heavy transport traffic to and from the air force base flies between.. and that was one little slice of airspace, among many in the area. En route, I was in an area with actual radar coverage for the first time since leaving Seattle, and got traffic advisories. No longer was the reply light on the transponder dark, as it had been for the last week of flying.

Once handed over to Merrill tower crossing the Knik arm, I finally saw why things were divvied up this way - the air force base was right next door. I was instructed to fly north of the field on downwind to land to the west, and made a pretty tight traffic pattern (even by my own standards) to do so. One thing I noticed flying almost every day for the past week was that my skills had ratcheted up considerably. I fly the Mooney, on average, once a week but this much time between man and machine tends to step things up a bit, and make the airplane an extension of the pilot. Being on one's "A" game to maneuver the airplane to a precise location, speed, and altitude were that much easier.

I landed in the rain, and even so it didn't take long for my appreciation of Merrill to develop. Here was an area, several city blocks' in size, completely littered with airplanes and related businesses over every square foot. General aviation is on a slow decline in the lower 48, here it is thriving, if out of nothing else than necessity. The airport was abuzz with Super Cubs launching for remote locales, Cessna 207s hauling cargo, and even King Airs with cargo pods on their bellies. One thing absent was a big fancy FBO (fixed base operator) ready to roll out the red carpet for a customer. Here it was all function over form. For a pilot, it was an exciting place to be.