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Yury Avrutin


Robert Hicks

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4 hours ago, Robert Hicks said:

 

Does anyone here happen to have a copy of Yury’s tale to Berlin? A friend gave me a printed copy and it ended at page 49 right when his battery died in Iceland. I’d love to finish the read. TIA

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I remember Yuri from the mailing list. He was quite a character. I’ve never read the his account of that trip but would like to get a copy if you manage to find one. 

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I came along too late for Yuri. But I've certainly heard of his Viking Route to Europe in an unmodified C.

Last I recall, his family was prepping the story for publication, then stopped. It's been a whole lot of silence for a long time now. 

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@bumper said the following some time ago:

'I came to this forum too late to get to know Patrick in print. His accident reminds me of another really "good guy" who we lost back in '02 off the coast of OR. Anyone else here remember Yury Avrutin? A personable, intelligent, and adventurous soul who I was fortunate to meet a couple of times at Buchanon Field, Concord, CA. He sent me a draft of his planned book, "The Viking Route" about his Mooney flight to Europe. I will say he made flight and planning decisions that I thought on the ballsy side. Such a sad loss though, and it seems the same with Patrick.'

Perhaps @bumper may be able to share?

Edited by smwash02
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Yuri's story, "The Viking Route",  was widely disseminated back in (~2001) on Mooney list back when he wrote it.  The only copy I recall him disseminating was well written with only a couple typo's; it didn't need much editing. Too long ago to remember now, but I don't recall a spouse being involved but a sister whom was retaining rights to the story and asked us not to further disseminate. 

It seemed like people came out of the woodwork to criticize him for his boldness after his fatal accident 6 months later off the coast of Oregon. Maybe they were right though since when he departed from Arcata CA to head back North for Port Angeles WA, he departed VFR with ceilings at 1500' to head up the coast off shore where he apparently figured he could simply fly under the ceiling all the way up the coast line. The NTSB report said it picked up radar returns presumed to be his aircraft following the coastline at variable altitudes below 1000'. I recall one poster back in the day that seemed he had some better wx info indicating strong winds could have been a factor. Maybe so, but Yuri had already made the trip down down from Renton WA to pick up his friend in Arcata, CA that morning, perhaps also following the coastline. Plus the final NTSB report told us winds were only 4 kts at 6pm in the vicinity of where the plane went down with a ceiling of 1900' . But I always thought the biggest hazard was that he didn't depart from Arcata till  4pm on a December day and it would soon be dark. They did manage to get about two-thirds of the way back up before the plane went down. The plane was never found but pieces of the gear washed up along with personal effects spread out over 30 miles of coast line. Yuri passed away at age 43 with 900 hrs per the NTSB.  

Before the accident I had thought people were critical largely from the way he introduced his Viking Route story. He began his story on a Memorial Day weekend, in New York, saying he had a conference to attend in Berlin in just a few days and didn't yet know how he would get there but flying his M20C was one of the options.  Frankly, I thought this was just a bit of dramatics as he also discussed his own mortality recognizing if he did go down he realized it likely would not be survivable. Yet he could have been planning an Atlantic crossing for years and wondering if now would be the time. But who could not say flying an M20C across the Atlantic wasn't balsy to begin with? But I knew nothing of Yuri till reading his story. What I did find to be surprising is that I had no idea just how cheap, a Mooney CB'er could be! Not only did Yuri avoid buying costly Jepp charts for the crossing, he purchased very new for the era Garmin GPS 190 portable but with a European data base that also covered Iceland and Greenland. (i had the same with a US database), he already had an earlier GPS with a US database. Since the GPS databases at the time didn't have terrain info, he bought some old GNC and ONC charts to fill that gap. Rather light on flight planning information, he then scavenged for as much info as he could a leg at time for his next destination. He also departed on this trip with a known starter deficiency that would not allow him to hot start, not till after he returned from the trip and had time to repair the starter. I recall this made for some exciting starts while enroute. If that wasn't enough to drive home his CB reputation as well earned, when he did return back home, re-boxed his new GPS 190 and returned it for a full refund. 

For a relatively inexperienced pilot at the time, I found his story fascinating and was in awe. I still think if he hadn't tried to fly up the coastline in the dark he probably would have been ok; although not something I would do myself even in daylight (scud run). 

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