137: North To Alaska In The Stemme S12: Michael Reid

Born on an Island in south east Alaska Michael Reid made his living as a pilot for 41 years, and retired from Alaska Airlines five years ago. After retirement, Michael decided to purchase a Stemme S12 motor glider, which he now flies out of Anchorage, Alaska. He will be sharing his aviation journey with us and will put us in the cockpit of his Stemme S12 as we soar among the highest peaks in North America. Michael has given us some great links for you below to checkout after you hear his story. Join us now as we go north to Alaska on episode 137 of Soaring The Sky. 

Michael Read mareid@mac.com

Assembling a Stemme from a Cobra trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vtn-32cvY8

A short clip from a full length documentary made by an Alaska Airlines pilot about the 737-200 Combi airplanes before they were retired in 2007. 
That’s me complaining about the early departure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu1x-uskA0w

Soaring Safety Foundation Incident Reporting Database: http://soaringsafety.org/forms/incident.html

 

How Michael gets a lot of his weather briefing: https://weathercams.faa.gov/map/-162.13732,58.75623,-137.7257,65.19178

Alaska has more than 200 weather cam locations throughout the state at airports, in mountain passes, etc. The FAA is starting to spread the program to the other states.

Alaska Mountain Soaring Association, a fledgling glider club in South Central Alaska: http://www.akmtnsoaring.com/