[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] "Island Cruise Excursions" visits southern Alaska in the Duckworks DC-3!

On a rare FNO-less Friday during a month where I had to drop a handful of streaming dates, we decided it was an ideal night to squeeze in a "Slant Alpha Island Cruise Excursions" trip in the Duckworks mod of the DC-3! And, given that the inspiration for our guarantee ("We guarantee you'll see at least one island during your island cruise excursion, or your money back!") came from a whale-watching trip I took on a cruise in Juneau, what better way to change things up than by doing some island-hopping in southern Alaska?
We started the evening on Wrangell Island (PAWG), whose airport is just a hop, skip, and jump from the cruise port. On these streams we figure you've gotten off of the ship, hopped on a shuttle, and been dropped off here to board our vintage DC-3. The first stop on our itinerary was Petersburg (PAPG), just 27 miles northwest along the Frederick Sound. We had actually landed there once before, on a night where we demonstrated a circling approach in the Boeing 737 doing some Alaska Airlines ops. But tonight we were purely VFR, and hugged the east edge of the sound as not to encroach on departures coming off of Petersburg. We then entered a left pattern to the eastbound Runway 5, swinging it as widely as we could in order to allow our Douglas time to bleed off the speed without doing a lot of throttle tinkering. Even deploying basically all of our drag at once, we ended up landing a bit fast -- but still managed a decently reasonable arrival.
Trip two was to Kake (PAFE), and we followed the water to the north, the west, and then the southwest to find it. Entering a left downwind for the northwest-bound runway, we found ourselves over some high trees on high terrain and had to drop the plane in after passing over them. We had cheated the power down a bit on final in order to avoid speed building up too quickly during that maneuver, but, the resulting loss of energy meant that we kind of slammed the plane into the runway a bit. It wasn't hard enough to break anything, except my pride.
Our third hop was to Sitka (PASI), and we looked extensively at the various channels and valleys along Baranof Island to see what the most direct way would be without taking the plane up to 6,000 feet. Our past experience led us to come up with backup plans, though, based on the question of whether we'd find our specific inlet ("Hoggatt Bay") to follow, or, take the one just north or the one just south of that by accident. It looked as though any of those three would work. But fortunately we managed to find the exact one we had intended to, and came out on the west side exactly as planned. Our pattern into Sitka was a little more controlled, since we had the a nice wide bay (the Sitka Sound) to make turns over and get set up on a stable final approach. The touchdown was nice and buttery smooth -- our best of the evening.
The last task of the evening was to head back to Wrangell (PAWG) to return you to your cruise ship, and we charted out a 159-mile path zig-zagging through the various waterways. Once we got airborne, we challenged ourselves to cut a few corners but still navigate the route purely visually, and we managed to do so without relying on the crutch of a radio-based nav-aid as a backup -- although we definitely had a few "Where am I" moments where we doubted our plan was panning out the way we'd drawn it up on the chalkboard. When Wrangell came into sight, we elected for a perpendicular overflight and a direct join from midfield onto the downwind -- although we feared that would result in turns too tight to maneuver the plane in. Miraculously it all worked out perfectly and we closed the show with a nicely-executed touchdown! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures