On September 16 and 17, 1999, I traveled out to the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula to visit various FAA sites and facilities.  This is one way that we personally keep on top of what's going on with the condition of our National Airspace System equipment.  I'd not been west of Dutch Harbor and was glad to have the opportunity to see a new part of the state.

Our itinerary included Dutch Harbor/Unalaska, Adak, Shemya, Cold Bay, and Sand Point.

Dutch Harbor was our first stop.  We had to land there and fuel up to make the hop to the end of the Aleutian Chain (Shemya).  The air distance from Anchorage to Shemya is greater than that of Anchorage to Seattle (i.e., over 1,500 statue miles!).  Furthermore, landing at Shemya put us past the halfway point to Tokyo!

But more about Shemya later.  Dutch Harbor, the easternmost community on the Aleutian Chain, is the busiest fishing port in America - a distinction it has gained within the past ten years thanks to the bottom-fishing industry (i.e., turbot, etc., that end up as fish sticks in school lunches).  My last visit to "Dutch" was three years ago, and in the interim there has been a tremendous amount of construction out there.  The fishing industry has obviously pumped a lot of money into the local economy, as well as created the need for modern infrastructure.  FAA has kept pace with this by installing a microwave landing system (MLS), which some of the air carriers use to navigate their way in and out of the airport.

While Dutch has evolved into one of Alaska's economic hotspots, it has not lost contact with its religious roots.  The magnificent Russian Orthodix church had been renovated since 1996, and serves the cultural centerpiece of the city.

After we were done at Dutch Harbor, weather conditions required us to put down at Adak before proceeding to Shemya (at the time, the weather at Shemya was not cooperating!).  Adak is an emerging community, and it has a history, too.  During the Second World War, Adak served as a logistical staging point for U. S. forces as they prepared to take Dutch Harbor/Unalaska back from the Japanese.  As you might imagine, there is a military base at Adak.  Following WWII, the facility served as a naval air station and submarine base.  Like so many other military sites, Adak was impacted by the end of the Cold War and associated defense spending cuts.  At the Cold War's height during the '80's, a tremendous amount of construction took place there.  The Navy built hundreds of housing units, a high school/middle school complex - even put in a McDonald's restaurant!  Then the roof came crashing in and Adak NAS got caught up in the base reutilization exercise.  The military presence is now a sliver of what it once was:  less than 500 now as opposed to many thousands just ten years ago.  The beautiful high school, named for Alaskan aviation pioneer Bob Reeve, is used as office space for the caretakers and the McDonald's arches have long since been removed.

But there is hope on the horizon for Adak as the local native corporation struggles to find a viable use for the island's facilities.  One of the more popular (to some) ideas is to use the base as a prison.  No one could swim off this island and survive!  The military air navigation aids will likely be turned over to the FAA for operation and maintenance, making this visit to Adak timely as well as important to us.  The Navy operated a full instrument landing system and airport traffic control tower (currently unmanned and nonoperational).  And there is 8,000 feet of runway on the island.

One of Adak's hilltop vistas provided this view of the "city":

As luck would have it, conditions at Shemya improved and we were able to get out there.  Like Adak, Shemya has felt the pinch of military downsizing.  This is truly a remote venue.  The party line bandied about by people who have been stationed at "The Rock" is that it's not the end of the earth, but you can see it from there!  And having been there, I believe them!  Our visit started with a landing in 35-knot crosswinds (very exciting).  Lots of wind, lots of rain, not much of anything else.  Notwithstanding all this, Shemya is a very important location for civil air traffic control, situated as it is in the middle of the North Pacific high-altitude air route structure.  Our facilities there include a nondirectional radiobeacon, radar, and voice communications station.
 
 

From Shemya we flew back to Dutch Harbor and spent the night.  Next morning we departed for Cold Bay.

Cold Bay's reason for being is its runway.  10,000 feet of precision-instrumented asphalt at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula make Cold Bay an important resource for transpacific and transpolar aviators.  It is an official ICAO alternate landing site - and is also one for the space shuttle!  When the volcanoes around Anchorage blow their stack, the planes that are en route to the city and can't land there put down at Cold Bay or Fairbanks.  When Mt. Redoubt went off in the early '90's, the ramp at Cold Bay filled up with about 10 Boeing 747's.  Quite a sight!

FAA used to have a major presence at Cold Bay - our own little community of air traffic controllers and airway facilities technicians.  Including family members I would venture to guess that we had upwards of fifty souls stationed there.  We provided everything: housing, water, sewer, electric power, commissary service, etc.  Advancing technology and improved work practices have enabled us to un-man Cold Bay; it is now maintained remotely from Anchorage.  The Flight Service Station is still in operation, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.  As long as the airport remains open, there will be a Cold Bay!

The fishing community of Sand Point is on an island 90 miles east of Cold Bay.  The State of Alaska has made recent major improvements to the airfield there, and we have followed suit with the installation of a nondirectional beacon with distance measuring equipment, weather, and communications facilities.  These facilities enable pilots to make instrument appraoches to the airport.  This has enhanced the community's aviation lifeline.

En route to Anchorage, we flew by one of the many volcanoes dotting the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands.  Unfortunately, I didn't get this one's name!  You can see some steam coming out the top.  Thankfully, that was all that was coming out the top!