A Dillingham pilot made a successful landing in snow-covered tundra northeast of the Southwest Alaska town recently after his engine gave out, according to Alaska State Troopers.
Pilot Eric Shade took off in his Cessna 207 on Nov. 17 from Dillingham headed toward the village of New Stuyahok 84 miles away with two passengers. They were flying at about 700 feet when a rod shot through the top of his No. 2 cylinder, he said Tuesday.
"The airplane was running really smooth and we were just cruising along, and I was just talking to my wife on the VHF (radio) and all of a sudden, just, 'Bam! Boom, boom boom,' the engine was just shaking like mad," Shade said. "The last thing I said to her was, 'My engine's quit. I gotta go.'"
"That wasn't what she wanted to hear," he said.
Smoke started pouring out of the engine compartment and into the cockpit, Shade said. He started looking for a place to land. There was nothing close by except a lake a little ways off, but they didn't make it that far, he said.
"There was no way," Shade said. "It was coming down."
There was still a little bit of power, he said. The engine was trying to run, but it was "shaking pretty good" when he turned toward the lake, Shade said.
"I was heading for it, and then the engine just kind of puked and I turned and landed in the tundra," he said. "When we touched, we just kind of settled in the tundra. The nose went over, and we slid for about 200 feet and stopped."
The muskeg was frozen with about 4 or 5 inches of snow on top, Shade said. The three men were uninjured, and Shade radioed for help to come pick them up. Then he called his wife on the VHF radio, he said.
"I told her 'We're sitting on the ground now. Everyone's fine,'" Shade said.
It was a nice clear day, he said.
"We hung out and talked for a while, and (the passengers) said, 'Can you take us up tomorrow?' and I said, 'Not in this plane,'" Shade said, laughing.
Help arrived a short while later, but the two planes landed at the lake about eight-tenths of a mile away, he said. That was the hardest part, he said: the 25-minute hike through tundra to the lake.
Damage to the wrecked plane was limited to the nose landing gear, which was torn off, and part of the nose was dented, said Shade, who flies for his company, Shannon's Air Service. And, of course, they're looking closely at the engine to see what went wrong, Shade said.
Asked if he was afraid, he said things happened very quick.
"I didn't have time to get scared," he said. "I thought I could get it down without killing anybody, but I figured it would damage the plane more."
Find Casey Grove online at adn.com/contact/casey.grove or call him at 257-4589.
By CASEY GROVE
casey.grove@adn.com