North To Alaska for the Fifth Time

It’s a great honor to introduce my long-time friend, Doug Turnbull. I’ve known Doug going back to 1977, when my wife and I lived in the Finger Lake Region of Upstate New York. Doug’s parents, Terry and Joan, were close family friends and owners of Creekside Gun Shop in Bloomfield, NY. The sprawling Creekside property contained the Turnbull residence, a large, well-appointed gun shop, a generous airplane hangar, a blacktop runway, a fishing pond, extensive shooting ranges for rifle, pistol, clay traps, and archery.

Terry (pictured on the left) and I held Private Pilot licenses along with another flying buddy, Ted Weiss, and were known around as The Three Musketeers. We hunted white tail, fished freshwater, played euchre for quarters, and flew airplanes together. Terry added a Single Engine Sea rating and soon after purchased a Cessna 185 Skywagon on EDO floats. That’s when our Canadian flying adventures took off. We would depart Creekside and fly northeast up the St. Lawrence Seaway, land to clear Canadian Customs, and then continue flying 150 miles north for some memorable fishing adventures.

At that time, Doug was a senior in high school and worked on staff at Creekside along with a number of highly talented gunsmiths and experienced woodworking craftsmen. Doug was always experimenting with various metals using heat and chemical baths to create unique colors on gun barrels and receivers. This talent eventually developed into a specialty market in firearms metallurgy and restoration. The rest is history: Turnbull Restorations and Manufacturing.

Like his dad, Doug earned his Private Pilot license, purchased a tailwheel airplane, and began flying extensively. He has completed four round-trips to Alaska, traveling far and wide to some of the most remote outposts.

I recently invited Doug to share his remarkable Alaskan flying experiences and photography with our readers. In a few short weeks, Doug will depart on his 5th trip to Wales and Barrow in June 2026.

Leo Berube, CFI, CFI-I, MEI, FAASTeam Representative

North To Alaska for the Fifth Time

By: Doug Turnbull
Courtesy of: Leo Berube, CFI, CFI-I, MEI, FAASTeam Representative

My name is Doug Turnbull. I am the former owner of Turnbull Restoration, which is well known for historical metal finishes on period firearms. I, with my staff, created an acceptance for quality restorations on 1870 to 1940s collectible firearms. I perfected the bone charcoal cause coloring process and charcoal bluing finish. We were able to get very consistent, beautiful results. I had a staff of 15-20 employees that put their heart and soul into the work that they did. If it wasn’t for my staff, I wouldn’t have been able to put out the quality, and amount, of work that we did over the 40 years I ran the business. I sold the shop to family in August of 2022 and retired in January of 2023. My father, Terry Turnbull, opened a gun shop in 1959 (before I was born). His father, Norris, who worked at DuPont Chemical, was a pilot. Terry took up flying as well. He realized that flying a float plane would allow him to go to Canada to fish in areas that were inaccessible without the use of a seaplane.

I grew up in the family business, Creekside Gun Shop in Holcomb (now Bloomfield), NY, run by my dad & mom. It was the largest specialty gun shop in the northeast. At one time they had 4000 firearms in inventory. One of the unique aspects of this shop was an outdoor range, with 25, 50, 100 yard backstops, where customers could “try before you buy” any gun that was on the shelf. This helped sales tremendously, as customers felt a bond to the firearm after they’d shot it a few times. An additional interesting part of the shop was a 1200 foot paved runway behind it. My dad flew a Cessna 185 Amphibious aircraft. It was a lot of fun to go to Canada with him, and it gave me experience in flying, navigating and seeing how the weather, density altitude, and stowage loading would affect the performance of the aircraft.

These experiences really helped me while I was doing my flight training and after I got my private pilot license. The experience of flying floats and glassy water landings and takeoffs helped me this past winter when I put skis on my plane. We had 12-18 inches of snow and, in flat light conditions, landing & taking off felt similar to glassy water takeoff and landings.

Because of all of these experiences, I was introduced to flying early in life, and I received my private pilot license in 1984. In 1988, I bought my first aircraft: a stock Piper PA-12, which I flew for about seven years. I sold it as my family and business began to take up more of my time. As time passed, my business became very well established. I was able to renew my interest in flying in the early 2000s. In 2013, after hunting moose and brown bear in Alaska, I got the bug to purchase another plane. I found a Piper PA-12, highly modified from a stock aircraft, with an engine upgrade from 108hp to Charlie Center 180hp, with flaps, -18 balanced tail, -18/3” extended gear, 31” Alaskan bush wheels, cargo pod, and many additional STCs. I purchased N7748H! I decided that I needed to fly my plane back to the camp in which I had previously hunted. Also, in 2013, I spent 2 weeks in the same secluded cabin, contemplating life. That time I flew up commercially.

Finally, in 2016, I completed my goal to fly my plane to Alaska, to the same hunting camp that I had been to twice previously. While I was there, I competed in the Skwenta STOL competition, coming in 3rd place, out of a group of 5 competitors. Not too bad for a guy from upstate NY! While flying to Alaska, across Canada, doing customs in both, created some interesting issues to consider, I found the information that I needed at this website: https://fly2ak.com. This website answered a lot of questions for me. Ted Waltman, who created this website, is a wealth of information, especially about how to complete these tasks.

I have flown the trench and the highway, and found many airports for fuel. The best way to find these is by searching the Canadian Flight Supplementals. I was able to locate many along my route. I found that traveling across Canada and into Alaska is different than flying the lower 48, especially in Alaska. The two things that you become very aware of are weather and fuel. One can become just as troublesome as the other. You really have to pay attention to weather and plan your fuel stops. A couple of the highlights of my travels are landing on the Alaska Highway (parking and having coffee or lunch) and landing on the gravel airstrip’s that are so common in Alaska.

There are also interesting areas to see:
North of Anchorage, the KNIC River airstrip, which is near some glaciers, are training grounds for pilots locally, and a great place to gather with other friends. Flying southwest, towards the Aleutian Islands, I’ve landed on Bristol Bay as well as Pacific Ocean beaches. While there, I look for glass balls, which are buoys from Japanese fishing boats, which have floated across the ocean. I also found the remnants of dead whales, and dead walruses. *Weather and fuel become very notable concerns as you venture out into these areas.

Since 2014, when I purchased my PA-12, I have flown over 2500 hours, including four trips to Alaska, as well as adventures in northern Quebec . These trips have been a great learning experience regarding aviation and how weather on an aircraft (and pilot) can really be tested to it’s fullest. The conditions change day-to-day, and sometimes hour-to-hour. I’ve had times with 15-20 knots on the tail at 1500 AGL, and times when I’ve turned around to land at a strip in the opposite direction, with no windsock to determine wind direction. I was thinking that I had a headwind when, in fact, as I’m landing, I see white leaves indicating that I have a tailwind. I then realize that I have to make some quick changes.

Somethings to consider while traveling in unfamiliar territory are:

• The effects of trees and other obstacles in your landing area, and how that affects your wind flow, and dead airspaces from obstructions, that may affect the winds as you are landing
• Always check out the area where you’re planning to land, looking for debris as well as how rough the ground is.
• Beach landings that are sloped, and how that affects the aircraft’s ability to maintain a straight line landing (the plane will tend to turn uphill).
• Landings on hills that might have a 10-15 degree slope up, as well as down, and how that affects takeoff and landing.

I’ve learned to read the land, looking at trees, water, ponds, flags, and all sorts of different things, to determine what’s going to happen when I decide to land or take off. Performance of an aircraft is something that, through flying many hours, as well as talking to other pilots who have thousands of flight hours, can teach you much. You can then take that knowledge and apply it to your own use as you adventure out. This knowledge will carry you, hopefully, safely into new areas of exploration.