Airplanes!

Time remaining: 9 weeks
New bird count: 7

So here are some photos of the refuge's airplanes as I promised.

The first of which is the de Havilland Beaver.
Note how the trailer is tipped over? It wasn't my fault this time. I think this is my favorite one. Not only is it the classic bush plane, but the orange and black color scheme is a reference to the paint job on Clarence Rhode's Grumman Goose airplane. Clarence was an important part of the development of the Service in Alaska, and went missing in 1959. The plane wasn't found until two women hiking in the Brooks Range came across the wreckage in 1978. I also got to "hold the leash" on this plane, i.e. keep the plane from floating away until our pilot got to the launch site.
This is one of our Cessna 206's. It's actually a U206, a utility model. It's the favorite plane of our supervisory biologist.
And here's our Piper Super Cub, a cute little plane. As I found out, the body is NOT made of metal, but of painted canvas. A few of the biologists told me they've seen it crumpled and crushed a number of times, and I said that if I was ever invited to ride in it, I would say, "No thank you."

We have at least two more planes I didn't take pictures of, including the Husky and the blue Cessna, which I will be flying in regularly during my field work.

The work we were doing on the planes yesterday was launching them into the Kuskokwim River, and then our refuge pilot flew them over to Hangar Lake, an appropriately named body of water where we store our float planes over the summer. My main duties were just generally assisting in launching, watching the planes while the pilot was ferried back to the launch ramp, and then small maintenance around the Hangar Lake facilities. I'm excited that I will eventually get to ride in at least one of these planes after doing all that maintenance!