Jeff DeFreest submitted this photo and note: “A Cessna Skywagon on Edo 2960 floats in remote Southeast Alaska. After being socked in a few days at Kook Lake on the Tongass National Forest, the weather was finally lifting enough to enable safely taking off and climbing to altitude to contact the nearest FSS and get a weather briefing for the flight home.”
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Jeff, a beautiful photo to start Tuesday. If you ever tire of being a pilot, or your current line of work, a photography career awaits. Until then, safe flying!
Thanks for the kind words!
Thanks for the photo because it brought back many memories of flying air taxi for 15 years in SE Alaska. I made many trips from Juneau to Kook Lake flying locals and tourists to the Forest Service cabin there. As an side, I had a high frequency radio in my Cessna A185F so I could use company dispatch to contact FSS for weather updates which were very sparse at the time.
You are welcome! My wife and I really enjoy the fly-in Tongass Cabins, and we try to “advertise” them as much as possible. They’re becoming an endangered species! Who did you fly for? Cool history on the HF radios, I never had one in a plane. Loran and ADF is about as advanced as I got in the “old days”. And now, well, I have a Marine & VHF radio and some basic wx options with a Garmin InReach. But I still appreciate being able to converse with a FSS person directly and ask questions. I wish I could access the FAA Wx Cams from remote locations 🙂
I flew with Southeast Skyways, Channel Flying, and the last ten years with Ken Ward at Ward Air in Juneau in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, the larger air taxi’s (Ward Air, Channel Flying, Glacier Bay Air, Alaska Island Air, and Ketchikan Air Service) had HF radios in their equipment so we could get real time, plane to plane, weather reports. In addition, several ground agents for Channel Flying at Angoon, and Tenakee Springs had land based HF’s. The HF was also used for company flight following.
This was all before the fed’s VHF repeater stations and weather cams.