Day Trip

I and a fairly new coworker are assigned to go to a site about an hour away and do some work. It's expected to be a single flight: zip up there, do the work and come back to base without landing. I say, "Just in case the work takes longer and we have to land for fuel, do you have a company credit card?" He doesn't yet, so I grab mine, just in case.

We fly to the location, but don't succeed in completing the work. The conditions aren't appropriate. We've just turned for home when my coworker receives a message on the satellite link. "Do you guys have overnight gear?"

The true answer is, "No," but we understand that it means, "Don't come home until the work is done." Never leave home in an airplane without a toothbrush and a change of underwear. I turn the airplane around and land at an airport nearby where we both know people. We get a ride into town in a veterinary van (no not driven by a Terminatrix), check into a hotel, call our friends, and go visiting.

Next morning we are preparing to do the work they sent us up here to do, but we are sent instead to another province. And then up north. Where we got snowed in. The new coworker goes home on the airlines. I eventually spend almost a week in the field, including the day I spent digging the airplane out of a snowbank. I think it was May. At least it was May by the time I got home.

When I finally get home, the vice president sees me carrying my gear into the office: my flight bag, a Wal Mart bag of emergency clothing and toiletry purchases, ten thousand dollars of credit card receipts, and a straw broom I bought to whisk the snow off the airplane. "What's that for?" he asks, indicating the broom. "Is that how you got back?"

So you see, management considers me to be a mighty and powerful sorceress. Or something.

Summer is Over

It's still sunny some places. I still have my cap on for shade not warmth when I step out of the airplane on the ramp, but the mornings are starting to get cold. I ran my finger through the morning dew on the wing yesterday morning, to make sure the sheen was not ice. They can look exactly the same, but only one flows harmlessly off the wing without dangerously affecting its aerodynamics. The sky is starting to pink up when we land about suppertime and it's still dark when we get up for flight planning. Winter is just around the corner.

Last week I scared my fellow crewmember on approach. It was a VFR arrival, already cleared straight in, but straight from where I was cleared would have been either through a hill or dive-bombing over it, so I was coming around the side of the hill, so as to enter the zone on final. I could see a structure on the hill, something standing out from the green trees. Towers tend to be on the ridge at the top, but this was on the side of the slope. Was it a banner? A piece of heavy equipment? An old wreck? As I got closer I realized what it was, "Whoa!" I said, in surprise: not something you want to hear your pilot say all of a sudden. I apologized. The thing that had caught my attention was a tree, an ordinary deciduous tree, bright yellow in fall leaves. We weren't even that far north,. Ten days later and a couple of degrees of latitude further north the deciduous trees are yellow and orange everywhere I look. In a week or two they will be bare.

Comes the seasons of block heaters, engine tents, toques and boots. This morning already I wore work gloves during the walk around, and not just because I was wiping hydraulic fluid seepage off the left main. (Maintenance knows about it. Replacement seal on order.) Someone asked me once which I preferred: winter or summer flying. Sure there's density altitude, sweltering taxiway queues, bugs to clean off the windshield, bugs eating you alive, and sunburn on the ramp, but does anyone not accept those things gladly to escape icy runways, frozen water bottles, de-icing, scraping snow out of the hangar door tracks and frozen condensation making things not work everywhere?

Wheelmarks in the Snow

Over at Sulako's Blog I started to comment on a post last year, but my comment got too long, so I decided to haul it back here to my own soapbox. Sulako was discussing an accident report in which an airplane he had once flown was written off. It's a weird feeling every time that happens: learning that the airplane that once carried you safely will never fly again. It's a little bit like hearing that an actor or author whom you didn't know personally, but whose work you admired, has died. If you live in a small community where you know who owns your old car, I guess you might find out if it was wrecked, but with airplanes accident reports are public and the identifiers don't usually change, so you can recognize your old ride at once.

In the post Sulako asks what you would have done if you had an hours-old report that the runway was snow covered, but snow removal was in progress. The accident crew proceeded to the aerodrome and lost control on landing, in unexpectedly deep snow.

I would have done the same. Unless weather forecasts indicated that it was still snowing at YYW and that I could expect a new accumulation by nightfall, the information the crew received made it sound as though the runway would be clear for their arrival. I would have thought that "in progress" meant that the crew was out there now ploughing, or at least starting up the plough, not that they were seriously thinking about maybe doing it tomorrow. If something happened to the plough while it was working, I would expect an urgent NOTAM to be issued, and passed to me as I updated my weather en route.

I feel for that crew. Beginning to flare over an all white surface, you really can't tell if it's "an unexpected amount of snow," a thin layer of ice, or some kind of twilight zone nothingness that will devour your airplane entirely. And as you touch down you can't really see the runway at all, just strive to keep straight from other cues. You know it should be under your wheels is all.

I've usually found airports tended better than I would expect, for example the time I called an operator to find out what the CFS called "limited winter maintenance" meant at his aerodrome. He said, "that means I don't clear the runway between midnight and five a.m. unless there's a medevac." I had been expecting something like the runway not being cleared to the full width or length, not cleared until snow was no longer forecast or only cleared in daylight. I've encountered some of those.

Ironically, the first time I learned of an airplane from my logbook being written off, it was also a landing accident in deep snow. In this case the airport in question was listed as "no winter maintenance," and the tendency of the rental pilots to obey laws was proven to be low, as their aircraft was also loaded over gross with bales of marijuana. Apparently while the accident pilot was awaiting trial, he had the temerity to go back to the same company and ask to rent another airplane!

Snow Go

The next day the weather is better, but there are some snow showers forecast along our route, and that's a no-go item for the PIC. The guys at the Shell are great and have no problem with us leaving the airplane there for a while. They say someone left a B747 here for four months once. There are a bunch of concrete-filled tires on the side of the apron. We park the airplane on the edge of the pavement and then roll three tires into position under wing and tail tiedown points, and tie everything down securely. Inside, we clean up the snack food crumbs and wrap the equipment we're leaving behind in plastic bags. The airplane looks secure against wind and rain and we know this is a very secure aerodrome. It's quite difficult to get in at night even to get to your own airplane. It's much better off here than it was at Brampton.

We leave contact information with the FBO and go around to the terminal to depart. As we board the flight on the jetway I can see our little airplane tied down at the side of the apron. This inspires me to scribble a note on the back of my boarding pass and give to the FA for the pilots. Something like "If you look over beside the Shell you can see a Cessna 150 tied down. You have two pilots in the back who flew it here from Brampton. It took us a whole day. Aren't you grateful for the speed of a CRJ?" I just needed to share our adventure with someone.

At the end of the flight as we are disembarking the captain is standing in the doorway of the flight deck and I hear him say to the FA, "Have the C-150 pilots got off yet?" I identify us to him and he takes a few minutes to talk to us before his next flight. It isn't until later that it occurs to me that he might have asked his question in an attempt to avoid us. I doubt it though. He was very friendly and sympathized with us, remembering the winds we dealt with that day. It's fun the way that whatever you fly, it's still an airplane.

The little airplane sat in Thunder Bay for a while, but my friend got some more time off work and last I heard, she's moving it west again, this time solo.

Llanding in Lloydminster

As you all cleverly deduced, I was sent to Lloydminster, the only municipality in Canada that straddles a provincial or territorial border. According to a historical plaque I found posted across the street from a natural meat slaughterhouse, the community was founded in 1903 by a group of British people. They had a falling out with their original leader, who was succeeded by the Reverend Lloyd, after whom the town is named. Note that it's Lloydminster, three syllables, not LloydminIster. Also Canadians pronounce Ll just the same as a single L, not with authentic Welsh gagging. A couple years after the Lloydministerians had established their town, the Canadian government decided that the Alberta-Saskatchewan provincial border would run down the 110th meridian of longitude, which as surveyed at the time went right through the middle of town. For a few years the town had to act as two separate towns, one in each province, but eventually special legislation was enacted to allow them to have one town--and later city--that is in two provinces at once.

If you recall, we were parked in Red Deer. At that airport we loaded and secured all our baggage into the clean airplane and ran up for departure. At the time we left there was no snow there, and after takeoff we didn't see any snow on the surrounding landscape either. We turned northeast and kept our eyes peeled for traffic while Alberta slid by underneath us. We pointed at things out the window and declared what towns we thought we were looking at, and then checked them on the map. I verified that our track wouldn't take us through the restricted area at Wainwright. From the air it appeared that the area under the restricted airspace was a different colour. And then as we progressed further north we realized that it was. There was still snow up here.

The FSS answered when we called and the runway was clear of snow, at least in the middle, so we landed and went around the piles of snow on the apron to the FBO. I had phoned in advance and they had assured us that parking, ample fuel and plug-ins would be no problem. The number on the hangar was easy to spot and the ramp outside was almost entirely cleared so there was plenty of room to park. We shut down there and unloaded. Inside the FBO, all the leather furniture was cat scratched. The cat's name is Margo, and in addition to her obvious claim on all the couches, she has a dog-sized cat bed and a cat-tree climbing/scratching thing. The manager's name is Dennis and he does not appear to have destroyed any furniture.

Dennis shows us around: washrooms, fancy coffee machine, all the access codes to get into here and the hangar, and how to turn on the fuel pumps and where to sign for fuel if we take it when he's not here. He also has a tow cart so we don't have to do an extra engine start just to move between parking and the pumps. (He knows we like to reduce the reduce the number of times we start an engine because every time we start, there are a few seconds with very low oil pressure, and also the starter on an airplane engine isn't as heavy duty as the one on a car, so it wears out easily too). It looks like this will be a good place to work out of. I suspect that if we need to fly in one of our own mechanics there will be no problem borrowing hangar space to work out of.

The airport is in Alberta, and so is the hotel, but the cab company has a Saskatchewan area code. All the cabs are in Saskatchewan, Dennis explains, because the regulations governing taxicabs are easier to comply with there. Even though the city is not divided, the provincial laws still apply whereever you are. The two jurisdictions aren't as different as Wendover, UT/West Wendover, NV, but they do have different time zones, different drinking ages, and different sales taxes. Plus rats are banned in Alberta. If you want a pet rat you'd better live on the east side of town.

Not Enraptured by the Weather

I wake up and look at the graphical weather forecast and see that the weather gods have pulled a switcheroo. The high we've been tracking has pushed south and the weather we're getting instead is a low pressure system bringing lots of snow. The first flakes are visible already in the lights outside the hotel window.

We eat breakfast and plan our day: nothing until afternoon, then go out at three or so, before it gets dark, and brush the snow off the airplane. Of course when the time comes that's a two step problem. Step one: brush snow off car so that car can be driven to airport. Step two: brush snow off airplane. The accumulation on the airplane is not great, and although it's a thick layer, it's very light snow. It's about -25°C so the snow is not at all wet and clumpy. Kind of the opposite of last year in Montréal with all the freezing rain. It's a good thing we came out, though, because one of the cords has come unplugged and a couple of tarps have loosened. The problem is that bungie cords completely lose elasticity in these temperatures. I'm not sure if it's just the temperature or if it's frozen moisture in the material of the cord, but the cords now have no tendency at all to retract from their stretched lengths.

We go to Canadian Tire and get some more bungie cords, then come back and do a more thorough job on the tarps. Finally there's Tim Horton's for coffee and doughnuts. Do you get a more Canadian Day than that? Snow shovelling, Canadian Tire & Tim Horton's?

The title of this post made more sense when it was combined with tomorrow's post, but I've run out of time to write both halves.