OUTSTANDING! Alaska Wing Men on Nat Geo!

mikea

mikea

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Alaska Wing Men is a new three-part series on the National Geographic channel and is available in HD.


IT'S ALL FLYING ALL THE TIME with amazing quality footage!

I caught a bit last night where they put a camera in the Cessna 150 with a very-capable flight student making her 150 mile solo to a short gravel airstrip. She's tracked by her CFI-father.

They also follow a commercial pilot who flies charter in an Grumman amphibian - landing on the water and taxiing up the dock to the shore. Way, way cool.

There's no link to a show page - each episode is separate - but you can check the schedule to see when the shows will repeat. Or use Google to find each of the three episodes.
http://on.natgeo.com/eT86Au
If you have a TiVo like me you can set a season pass for the series and get all three episodes.

Even before it airs, I'll lay money that these three episodes smoke the new reality series on Discovery, which may be why Nat Geo got them out.
 
I agree Mike I posted on this in the other Alaska aviation thread. This was a great show.
 
Is there a place online where this could be downloaded? I don't get National Geographic channel. :sad:
 
Thanks guys for watching...I wrote this 10 years ago and submitted to Nat.Geo. They liked it then but weren't ready for it. Now, Alaska is hot (they say) and I approached them last January again...and they loved it. The first 3 episodes you saw are very tame and not what I really had envisioned. They are buying 7 more because of the good ratings and I will be heading back up there to film soon...I guarantee it will be WAY better and edgy!! I really appreciate you guys watching. This is merely my way of giving back after having flown up there for a number of years. I fly for the airlines now but still go up there often....

Keary
 
alaskabushpilot said:
Thanks guys for watching...I wrote this 10 years ago and submitted to Nat.Geo. They liked it then but weren't ready for it. Now, Alaska is hot (they say) and I approached them last January again...and they loved it. The first 3 episodes you saw are very tame and not what I really had envisioned. They are buying 7 more because of the good ratings and I will be heading back up there to film soon...I guarantee it will be WAY better and edgy!! I really appreciate you guys watching. This is merely my way of giving back after having flown up there for a number of years. I fly for the airlines now but still go up there often....

Keary
Click to expand...
Welcome Keary!

GREAT JOB! It just occurred to me that we need to pull this one out the next time we hear "just a bunch of rich pilots..." Talk about GA serving America.

Tell National Geographic to set up a web page for your show! The series is a phantom on the web site. They only have pages for each episode, which requires you to KNOW THE NAME of the episode, and you don't get any results when you search for Alaska, Wing .... I tells ya, the kids these days and their (overrated non-existent) techie skills.
 
It is really good.

My only nit-picking gripe: "Continuity" - or lack thereof. When the turbine Otter lands on the Denali glacier to fetch the group of hikers, it mysteriously morphs into a piston Beaver with the same paint job, and back again to an Otter several times. (Must have been that both airplanes were involved in the actual operation, but the producer elected to simplify the story.) And as the pilot with the C-185 floatplane nears the end of his flight at sundown with the snowmobile strapped to the float, there is a view out the airplane's window at the beautiful sunset. Funny thing -- that C-185 has a 'V' strut and fabric wings!
 
Keary, I also vote for being able to download it from the website. We
don't get NatGeo here either.
I would LOVE to be able to download and watch those!
 
OffCenter said:
Keary, I also vote for being able to download it from the website. We
don't get NatGeo here either.
I would LOVE to be able to download and watch those!
Click to expand...

Or even iTunes - These would be worth paying for, and keeping! :yes:
 
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Watching this one now. Also good!

Of course, I'm wondering if this guy is going to get busted for doing VFR into IMC on TV. :eek:
 
Watching this one now. Also good!

Of course, I'm wondering if this guy is going to get busted for doing VFR into IMC on TV. :eek:
 
On the first episode "Explosive Cargo" I got especially annoyed at the cliff-hanger-before-the-commercial-break reality show technique a few times. The pilot is descending in a tight hole in the clouds and ignoring the terrain alert on the Garmin 430..Really? Really? or was that a bunch of drawn out scenes repeated out of sequence? It had me on the edge of the comfy living room pilot seat but I resented it a little.

There were more similar cliffhangers later but they weren't as upsetting.

I'm still liking the series a lot and hope they do more.

The narration is nowhere near as annoying and repetitive as Thom Beers.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Watching this one now. Also good!

Of course, I'm wondering if this guy is going to get busted for doing VFR into IMC on TV. :eek:
Click to expand...

I couldn't tell whether the guy really was in the cloud, or if it was a cloud bank ahead of the airplane. Most of the time it looked like he was under a ceiling.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Watching this one now. Also good!

Of course, I'm wondering if this guy is going to get busted for doing VFR into IMC on TV. :eek:
Click to expand...
It's Alaska... :wink2:

Seriously, I wondered too, and although overall the episodes are excellent, IMHO, I was also annoyed by the constant injections of drama... but that's SOP for reality TV nowadays. :dunno:

The only thing that really irked me was hearing a veteran bush pilot describe dead reckoning as "looking to see where you're going"... that, if I remember correctly, is called "pilotage", whereas dead reckoning is figuring out where you are without necessarily being able to see anything. :rolleyes2:

But again, it's Alaska... :D
 
rottydaddy said:
The only thing that really irked me was hearing a veteran bush pilot describe dead reckoning as "looking to see where you're going"... that, if I remember correctly, is called "pilotage", whereas dead reckoning is figuring out where you are without necessarily being able to see anything. :rolleyes2:

But again, it's Alaska... :D
Click to expand...


Hmmm. I thought Dead Reckoning was pushing the "Go to" button on your GPS. :goofy:
 
so, is there a way for someone w/out a TV access to the show to watch it on their computer? I'd like to.....
 
I finished all there episodes (it helped that $%&* Comcast cut my cable Thursday and then took until Sunday morning to run a new one.)

Can you call dem whirly bird flyers "Wing Men?"

Every CFI should be lucky enough have a student as sharp as Veronica "Ronnie." Great job, Dad! BTW, they're CAP pilots. What a great technical job placing cameras in a solo flight cockpit, too.

There was some guy named "Keary" as a producer in the credits. MORE Keary! Tell them we want more!

I felt so bad for those sick kids having to travel across the state to get to the Anchorage hospital.

It is so cool "I'll just land here to get close that bull moose." "In Alaska it's legal to land on any highway. Let's try a highway landing."

It don't get no better.
 
Anthony said:
Hmmm. I thought Dead Reckoning was pushing the "Go to" button on your GPS. :goofy:
Click to expand...
So many pilots think nowadays... :rolleyes2:
At least the series showed pilots using more fundamental skills, and a lot of
bush-specific saavy. But what about that same veteran pilot getting suckered by a hole in a broken layer? When they showed the gap, I actually said aloud "Don't do it- that's a sucker hole!"
 
Saw all three yesterday. Wow. Icing up on a VFR flight. Landing highways. Putting down on mountain tops. Just wow.

My favorite was Dan Lee. His best quotes:

In airplanes, the only speed limit is money
Click to expand...

Guys are either horny or hungry. So if he doesn't have a woody, give him a sandwich.
Click to expand...

What a wonderful character.
 
alaskabushpilot said:
I really appreciate you guys watching. This is merely my way of giving back after having flown up there for a number of years. I fly for the airlines now but still go up there often....

Keary
Click to expand...


Finally got to see two of the three - VERY entertaining!! Lots of fun to watch and the scenery is breathtaking. Good job and hopefully more to come. About 20 years ago, we were able to take an aerial tour of Denali - wonderful experience, brought back lots of good memories!!

Gary
 
Pilawt said:
It is really good.

My only nit-picking gripe: "Continuity" - or lack thereof. When the turbine Otter lands on the Denali glacier to fetch the group of hikers, it mysteriously morphs into a piston Beaver with the same paint job, and back again to an Otter several times. (Must have been that both airplanes were involved in the actual operation, but the producer elected to simplify the story.) And as the pilot with the C-185 floatplane nears the end of his flight at sundown with the snowmobile strapped to the float, there is a view out the airplane's window at the beautiful sunset. Funny thing -- that C-185 has a 'V' strut and fabric wings!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noticed that too. I got a good belly laugh out of it. :D
 
steingar said:
Saw all three yesterday. Wow. Icing up on a VFR flight. Landing highways. Putting down on mountain tops. Just wow.

My favorite was Dan Lee. His best quotes:

In airplanes, the only speed limit is money
Click to expand...
Guys are either horny or hungry. So if he doesn't have a woody, give him a sandwich.
Click to expand...


What a wonderful character.
Click to expand...
So are either of these going to make your book? And I told Leslie as we were watching it that I should make that second line my sig file!:goofy:
 
My trusty TiVo tells me the Nat Geo Channel will be repeating all three episodes starting with the first episode at 6 PM CST 2/14 repeating at 1 AM Central 2/15, with the next two episodes the two following days at the same times.

Hey! They finally put it on the web site! Keary must have passed along my complaints.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/explosive-cargo-5531/Overview
 
gprellwitz said:
So are either of these going to make your book? And I told Leslie as we were watching it that I should make that second line my sig file!:goofy:
Click to expand...

Nah, the first wouldn't be understood by most non-pilots, and the second would be somewhat less than welcome by my publishers, who would like to keep my book PG-rated at least. I suspect they're going to dump some of the ones I sent them as it is.
 
Pilawt said:
It is really good.

My only nit-picking gripe: "Continuity" - or lack thereof. When the turbine Otter lands on the Denali glacier to fetch the group of hikers, it mysteriously morphs into a piston Beaver with the same paint job, and back again to an Otter several times. (Must have been that both airplanes were involved in the actual operation, but the producer elected to simplify the story.) And as the pilot with the C-185 floatplane nears the end of his flight at sundown with the snowmobile strapped to the float, there is a view out the airplane's window at the beautiful sunset. Funny thing -- that C-185 has a 'V' strut and fabric wings!
Click to expand...

I agree, really good show, much better than that other Alaska flying show. I also have a very minor gripe. Season 2, Ep 2 at one point the narrator refers to one of the sled support aircraft as a Cessna 182. It is clearly a Cessna 180 from the 50's (probably 1955 guessing). Overall, the show does a great job of giving the viewer a real sense of what bush flying is like. Love the show and I hope NatGeo keeps it on the air!
 
I really liked the show. However, I have one minor gripe. Season 2 Ep 2 the narrator refers to one of the sled support aircraft as a Cessna 182. The aircraft is clearly a Cessna 180 taildragger built before 1962. I say before 1962 because it has two windows on either side of the fuselage. After 1962 Cessna switched the fuselage on the 180 to share the 185's fuselage, which added a third window.

Despite some continuity mistakes, the show really gives the viewer a good sense of what it is like to fly off airport in bush country. I hope NatGeo keeps it going! Maybe NatGeo can even come down to the lower 48. There is some really great flying going on in places like Idaho, Montana and Colorado.
 
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