Flying Wild Alaska: TV Show

[Jeff_S]

Hey all,

If you haven't yet, set your DVRs to record the new show Flying Wild Alaska on Discovery. It airs Friday nights (9 or 10p ET, can't remember which) with reruns throughout the week.

I just watched the first episode and it's pretty good. Even given the fact that they sometimes have to describe things in ways non-pilots will understand, they do an excellent job showing and describing the requirements and risks of flying in the Great North and the role of aviation in keeping all those communities connected. The first episode had a great sequence on landing a Cessna 180 on a mountaintop ride to drop off some bear hunters, and then the perils the pilot (and owner of the flight operation the show follows overall) had when immediately on takeoff his left rudder pedal broke. Again, the writers had to dumb-down the description of the problem, but the solution was pretty obvious and yet I had to ask myself: would I have thought of it? The pilot just got into the right seat and everything was normal.

The show follows the exploits of Jim Tweto, owner of Era Aviation which operates a rag-tag fleet of all kinds of passenger and bush planes in Alaska. His wife is an eskimo and the tough-as-nails ground operations head. Her quote in the trailer cracks me up: "Ice Road Truckers are a bunch of pussies!" And his 22 year old daughter is a total crackup, describing herself as "the world's worst eskimo because I'm always cold" but she's cuter than hell and entertaining on the ramp.

Anyway, it's a good show. Time will tell whether it can sustain a level of interest for more than a few episodes, but I'm enjoying it so far.

[74657]

Agreed.  I have my DVR set to record the series.  I think the series will do well.  It seems that Discovery is all about Alaska now.  Sarah Palin, Gold Miners, Airplanes.....

[Amelia]

I love anything with Alaskan scenery and airplanes....

That said, the silly melodrama is just a little over the top. (All that repetitive hyperventilating about the 'pumpkin'... have these people never heard of a ferry permit?) Why can't Discovery just play it straight? The real thing would seem to be plenty exciting enough. And another thing: If all they got is a half-hour show, I wish they'd schedule it as such, and make the tedious recaps after every commercial break go away. If we can't remember what they said two minutes ago, they didn't say it very well in the first place.

[Sven]

There's another show called "Alaska Wing Men" on National Geographic. It follows the adventures of several pilots in many areas of Alaska. Two years ago there's nothing about GA and now we have 1) Ice Pilots, 2) The Aviators, 3) Flying Wild Alaska, 4) Alaska Wing Men. I'm thinking of another GA reality show about a Mooney in Santa Rosa that never flies because of the constant fog and non-ifr pilots. I'm calling it "Mooney in the Mist."

[John Pleisse]

Ice? Zero viz? Mountain obscuration, landing on grizzly bear infested beaches? This is your guy. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old-bold pilots.

www.youtube.com

Alaska Wing Men : Explosive Cargo : MON JAN 11 8p et/pt : http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel

[jax88]

I thought I had the market on fogged in Mooney pilot cornered here in San Antonio.

[thinwing]

Nah...fog...definitely Sacramento central valley.got that beat...Red Bluff to Bakersfield,70 x 300 nm strip of 300 ovc....not a single break in the overcast last monday....kpc

[Hank]

While I enjoy the show overall, the producers try too hard to add drama where there is none.

I never realized until this weekend just how much danger I put myself in everytime I enter IMC while on an IFR flight plan or pop-up clearance . . .

Until  n

[Hank]

While I enjoy the show overall, the producers try too hard to add drama where there is none.

I never realized until this weekend just how much danger I put myself in everytime I enter IMC while on an IFR flight plan or pop-up clearance . . .

Until  next

[Hank]

While I enjoy the show overall, the producers try too hard to add drama where there is none.

I never realized until this weekend just how much danger I put myself in everytime I enter IMC while on an IFR flight plan or pop-up clearance . . .

Until  next Friday

[Sven]

I loved it when the young lady student pilot was landing and experienced a little turbulence. On the tape she remarks, "That was a little bump." Then, narrator said, "...and then something went terribly wrong." Cut to commercial.

I did learn something, though. I learned that in Alaska, IFR means "I Follow Roads."

Ice Pilots is a much better show because there is no alarmist narration. What happens, happens.

[Hank]

Hmmm . . . I remember seeing last weekend that "IFR" means "I Follow Rivers," but that may have been on Saturday evening's Alaska Wing Men on the National Geographic Channel. All of a sudden, there is a  huge amount of flying in Alaska on TV.

[Jeff_S]

So, I just watched the second episode last night. There was one glaring error, when the narrator described following the landmarks as "dead reckoning" instead of "pilotage". You'd think someone would have caught that. And as I feared, I think just in two episodes they're starting to run out of interesting flying footage and flying stories, so we get to see suspenseful pictures of people in a waiting room hoping the fog will lift, or a village elder butchering his moose and eating a bit of raw heart, or the (admittedly sorrowful) funeral arrangements for a teen suicide.

I wasn't aware of Ice Pilots or the other show mentioned above so I'm going to check them out. But hopefully Episode 2 of FWA was an anomaly.

[AustinChurch]

What network is showing "Ice Pilots"?

 

[Jeff_S]

I investigated this yesterday only to learn that it shows on "History Television" which is not to be confused with "The History Channel".  The former seems to be only on Canadian soil...at least I know DirecTV doesn't carry it.

[AustinChurch]

I couldn't find it around here either.  Oh well, maybe it'll make it to DVD on of these days.

[Sven]

It was "available" for a while online. The site I saw it on worked for about two weeks. I was talking with the producers at Oshkosh about the show when they asked me, "You're American. How did you watch the show." I replied, "I saw it on a friend's computer." He gave me a suspicious nod.

 

The DVD set is available on Buffalo Airways' product page. It's $45 Canadian.

http://www.buffaloairwear.com/

 

 

[231Pilot]

Even with the narrator's attempts to create drama, Flying Wild Alaska is entertaining.  Beautiful scenery, nice airplanes, even if there are no Mooneys.....sure wold hate to see what some of those bush strips would do to my J.....ouch!

[DaV8or]

You can watch "Ice Pilots" by setting your Proxy Server to a Canadian Server, unless they have plugged that hole.

[sleepingsquirrel]

I love the beautiful scenery. I'd love to spend some time in Alaska in the Summer. I doubt my wife would let me do any bridge jumping with the locals. Especially after this weeks episode. I'd probably make a pretty good bush pilot . I used to fly off of a  short strip cut out of a piece of land too small to grow cotton. There is one strip here so short that once you are in many pilots opt to truck the thing out. One of our smarter pilots , tired of taking the wings off  airplanes,  told me "Lookie here son , just taxi out on the highway and follow me". Thinking we were going to a neighbor's field down the road, I tried to keep up , about  65 I broke ground. That's what we call trucking the thing out. I'm sure I'd make a good bush pilot.

[thinwing]

SQ..very funny story,thanks for sharing...reminded me of a gear malfunction on a lake amphib I used to own.The nose wheel refused to entend..even after cycling the gear 3/4 times...so retracted the gear and got a fellow pilot to fly formation and check out nose gear doors...yep retracted .A few miles from my home airport is a large reservoir and made a water landing there,taxied to shore and after some underwater hammering finally got the nosewheel down and locked.The problem was a centering device designed to keep free nosewheel centered in wheel well and thus centered.This one had failed and upon gearextension would jam in the wheel well.So with the gear down I taxied up a boat ramp into a private campground.Fortunately  the campground owner took a liking to me and we spent the afternoon removing or bending over any street sign up to the main highway that would interfer with the wing passing by.After the campground the main road had a straight stretch for about 800 ft than a sharp left bend along side some high tension wires.I measured about 2/3rds down the high way and threw down my hat to act as liftoff/no go marker .The takeoff went fine and I flew back to my home field without touching the gear handle.A mechanic fixed it the following week but the cool thing arrived in the mail about 2 weeks after.Inside a box was a packet of photos of the whole operation including the takeoff.....and also my hat with a set of tire prints from the noseheel on the brim..sinc kp couch

[N513ZM]

well, I like to watch planes - a lot, and the scenery is beautiful and the guy is a sympathetic character and the wife is kinda cute and the daughter is kinda cute but the show basically sucks if you ask me.. I know you didn't..

too much fake drama, too much repeated content after each commercial, too much voice over. LAME. Pretty much par for the course for Discovery Channel these days.

I stopped watching. And that says something as I will watch almost ANYTHING with an airplane in it - been that way since I was 8 and I'm 56 headed for 57 now..

just one man's opinion

 

Why can't we have a show about a charter outfit somewhere in the lower 48? or a flight instruction school? or NetJet pilots? or corporate pilots? or even FREAKIN Airline pilots? Any of these would be an interesting topic for a season or two if done with the right approach and skip the fake, induced drama..

stepping down from the soapbox..

 

 

[sleepingsquirrel]

I had to laugh at bending the road sign over .  I'm sure the road crews could only imagine the straight line winds of 300 MPH that blew them over! Ya gotta do what you gotta do. It was either that of saw 4 or 5 feet off each wing!

[Jeff_S]

I have to admit that I've lost interest in the show for much the same reason cited above. Too much invented drama, although with a DVR I can easily skip past all the repetition that occurs after the commercial break. I am still recording it, but only to skip quickly to the flying scenes, and hopefully catch one more peak of Ariel in a bikini!

[sleepingsquirrel]

Well, I guess you are all right about the lack of content. I'm sure the "surprise visitor" in the bridge jumping episode was antoher gimick to maintain ratings. These girls could easily be the next Kardisians. We just need to see more of them.