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Last night I flew into Juneau from Wrangell after seeing this job posted. Like last time, I took the Yellow Jacket as the amphibian is still at the base being repaired. This afternoon, around 2:15, the doc, Lenny, was ready to go. He told me he'd stay overnight, so I wouldn't have to stay at AVSim Base if I didn't want to. I told him that was good, and explained that I wanted to get back to the base and check up on our other plane. So after loading his stuff into the back, he climbed into the Beaver and slammed the door as I began startup. I tuned ATIS on 135.20, even though I barely needed it. Clear and calm, pretty rare for the area. I tuned the tower, and told the guy up high that I wanted to taxi to the active for a west departure. He told me to taxi to runway 8 via taxiway A. As I got onto the taxiway I got caught behind a King Air taking his time getting to the runway.
He finally got there, got cleared, got off, and got out of the Juneau airspace. I told the tower I was ready to go after he picked his wheels up, and after he cleared the airspace, I was cleared to take off. We turned out, centered up, sped up, and left the ground.
After taking off and doing a 180, I headed off towards the Clarence Strait, which I would follow all the way down to AVSim Base.
I cruised at 2000 for a little while...
...but pulled up to 3500 after a while to keep the doc from getting sick. As we passed the southern tip of Admiralty Island, I descended to 3000. As I neared AVSim Base, I dropped again, to 2500.
I went up the little bay on Kuiu Island, and followed the ADF to AVSim Base. Here it is after sighting it and entering the pattern.
Since I was making an approach from the north, I descended a little below pattern altitude to make sure I could hold a decent final. Here I am on base at runway 15R (the dirt strip, even though you might not see it).
I descended to about 700 and turned final. I pulled the throttle as I neared the runway and let the plane drop some. Here I am maybe 100 feet off the ground, lined up, ready to reach the threshold.
I touched down...
...and stood on the brakes as the back wheel slowly come on down. After passing the last building, I turned off and pulled up next to the Otter parked in front of the VA offices. There I shut it down, took his money, and let the doc loose on AVSim Base. Now I'm about to fly out and go home to check up on the amphibian.
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