Merrill Pass, Alaska!
I left the wheeled Cub in the Caribbean and did the Merrill Pass flight from PASV to 9AK3. This is a challenging flight depending on the weather and I've made it many times in the Cub.
All I knew about the weather before I started was that it was COLD (-25C), cloudy, little wind and no areas marked with reduced visibility. I figured I could land on my skis anywhere if I decided I couldn't continue.
After getting the Cub set up and reloaded with the oil at ambient temperature, I gave it a try. I was actually able to get the Cub started by hand propping it. Procedure: fuel on, mags off, carb heat on, throttle about 20%, prime 3 times, pull the prop through 10 blades. Mags on, didn't wanna start. Prime 3 more times, got it started right away. I was shocked.
Many minutes spent at 700 RPM waiting for the oil temp to get above 40F. When it finally got there, RPM 900, oil pressure about 50 psi. When it got warm enough to increase RPM I discovered that I couldn't go above 1000 or the plane would start moving. I had to take off with oil temperature below 60, and it should be around 100. Oil pressure got well above 60, "red line" is 54 and I'm gonna pretend that's only for cruise flight. I guess I warmed up for 15 minutes total but it wasn't gonna get any warmer.
Aloft on a course of about 80 degrees for 44 nautical miles, I had to dodge around hills east of the airport. Wasn't too bad but I had to stay below the clouds. During the flight to the bend in the river where I'd turn to 35 degrees for 19 minutes there were areas of clouds that went all the way to the ground. Looks like fog acts like fog, actually works better in the sim as fog, but it wasn't just fog's reduced visibility, it was actual clouds. I dodged as much as I could, but getting close to the river I couldn't avoid them.
Got turned to 35 degrees and ran into almost continuous cloud cover at ground level. I was flying with only occasional glimpses of a horizon, sometimes with only occasional glimpses of trees 100 feet below me, and sometimes in complete white-out. I couldn't see the hills on either side. I can fly well enough with needle-ball-and-airspeed, but I'm missing a needle and ball. Oh well, typical day in the life of a bush pilot.
I had just decided I was gonna put down on the skis, pitch a tent with a heater and wait it out. A few seconds before I was adjacent to the valley where I'd be turning right (93 degrees for 7 nm) the clouds lifted enough that I could actually see the valley. Flying up the valley and through the pass itself wasn't too bad, skimming the bottom of the clouds. Through the pass was 63 deg 2 nm, 122 deg 1 nm, then turn 78 degrees for 8 nm and I'm over the lake. By this time the weather was almost clear and I'm 500 feet below the clouds. 70 deg for 23 nm then 105 deg for 25 nm and I'm at 9AK3.
The Cub heater wasn't all that bad. I was getting around 47 to 48 degrees fahrenheit over outside air temperature, making the cabin a balmy 55 degrees. That's t-shirt and shorts weather in Alaska.
Oil temperature never did get to 100 degrees, but oil pressure stayed below red line, around 47 psi most of the flight. Oil temp ran from 75 to about 95. Our temperate weather oil ain't gonna work for this, we're gonna need some winter weight oil to keep the oil pressure within reason.
If I spend much time flying in Alaska winter I'll code that, already got it for another aircraft.
(Note that I've got my gauges calibrated to read the same as the tooltips. The tooltip numbers are more likely to be correct. Scott has my code if he wants to put it in an update.)
Clicking Cold Start will immediately set the cabin temperature to ambient, but the oil temperature doesn't seem to change unless you save the flight after Cold Start, then reload it, or reload the aircraft. Sometimes this is what you want considering how hard it is to start a cold soaked engine. I suspect it has to do with how fast the oil temperature changes.
When I took off from PASV the skis didn't make any sound on the runway. When I landed at 9AK3 the skis sounded like they were on gravel, but it didn't affect the plane. Maybe I should have landed on the bare ground beside the runway, which had apparently been cleared of snow.
Hook