Page 6 - Volume 17 Number 3

Flying theC34and theLearIt’s Not the SameBy Kevin WareFellow corporate pilot TL and I have been up since 0500 and don’t expect to be home until well after midnight. We take the small public car ferry across the Tongass Narrows from the airport to the town of Ketchikan itself and check into the local motel, intent on getting some sleep.Listening to the wind howl outside, I think, If this had been a personal trip in my Cessna 340, I would just be getting out4 • TWIN & TURBINEThe wind is 20 knots, ceiling 300 - 400 feet and visibility less than a mile in moderate rain and snow.MARCH 2013Left seat pilot TL and I rotate off KBVS (Skagit Regional Airport), just north of Seat- tle, in the Lear 35 at 0700 on a fog- gy, cold morning, headed for PAKT (Ketchikan, Alaska). It is about a 650 nm trip to the northwest and, with the little jet doing 550 knots, we arrive just after dawn in light rain at 0720 local. The ILS is un- expectedly out of service, but after some finger-fumbling we enter the multiple GPS waypoints into the airplane’s older Universal flight management system, complete the RNAV approach to Runway 11, land on a wet runway, and taxi off to the FBO. Our passengers, all construc- tion supervisors, collect their hard hats, lunch bags, and equipment and are gone before we have the airplane closed up.