In June we planned to head out to Anchorage to fly a few days with our Austrian friend Dietmar Schreiber, as he is definately the ‘master of Alaska’ when it comes to chasing all that fantastic old metal that is still flying there.

And it certainly was a great roadtrip with a lot of interesting stops to indulge ourselves into the floatplanes and Beavers…Alaska style. We even got to fly in one to get some cool air to air photos of the alltime classic Beaver on floats. We also had a great visit to Everts Air, the company still flying the DC-6 for freight and fuel all across Alaska.

However, this report is about our unexpected but brilliant encounter with the jetfighter power of Eielson airbase. It’s great to have friends in aviation all around the world.

Fairly close to our departure date it became clear that approval was granted to set up an aerial photomission with the flagships of Eielson airbase: 2x F-35 and 2x F-16 from the 354th FW. 18th AGRS offered two of their F-16s in that super attractive colourscheme and both 355th and 356th FS took part with the F-35A.

Since there are no longer Skyvans flying in Alaska, we used the Piper Navajo as a photoship. Now the scenery there is breathtaking and so unique, combine that with 4 jets that were on our wings for a full hour and you will understand that this was an EPIC photoflight. All manoeuvres were carefully briefed and perfectly flown. This was very differently from how we normally operate with the Skyvan photoship, we were flying at 11000 ft with 165 kts.

The photos only give you an idea of just how superb this was!!! We can’t wait to be back and do it all again…& again & again!

Our special thanks goes to Dietmar and Devon, and a very big round of applause and THANK YOU to ‘Drift’ and his Eielson team for putting that dancecards together! I’m pretty sure we gonna meet up some day for another round.