Hak's PIREP:
Nelson - Edmonton - Cold Lake
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28.Sept. 2002 - 07:44. Nelson airport.
The call for duty had arrived long ago, but numerous circumstances have prevented Victoria, the Waterpipe and me from packing our lot and heading towards Cold Lake. Victoria was seemingly anxious to meet the rest of our company. She usually only feels well if she knows all crew members safe on the ground. Anyway - we finally made it, loaded the Waterpipe with some goodies to be delivered to Tim's Lodge. A total of 722 lb cargo had been strapped tightly in the belly of the old Lady, abnd Victoria and me were preparing our trip to Edmonton. The weather was looking good, and we were looking forward to this trip. |
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Passing Crawford Bay, we began the transition from initial climb to cruise climb and began to configure her for the approx. one hour of hopefully smooth flight over beautiful scenery. We had packed our warm sweaters and the high altitude gear, as well as our freshly loaded and checked oxigen devices. In other words, we were prepared to climb until we are cleared of the big cumuli that were growing already, so early in the morning... |
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We passed Kaslo, Cooper creek and Howser and enjoyed the nice view down to "The four squatters" and the "Conrad Icefield". Soon, we saw the road to Golden, and began our approach to E111 - Tim's Lodge. When we were above Kapristo Lodge, Victoria and I lokked each other, and we both felt the same: good memories were comming up... what a scenery, what a region, and what adventures we lived here! |
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To our surprise, we saw that out alien friends have landed again. Now we also understood why the replacement parts also contained 200 lb of pure grade AA lab quality ethanol... Looks like we have made some new friends, now that time has healed some of the wounds... we can of course need their help in rebuilding the hangars, and upping our fleet :-) |
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I wasn't very professional on the final approach. We were too far right of the ideal glide path, and suddenly the trees were approaching pretty fast... Only my habit to watch the radar altimeter even in VFR conditions, and maybe the little scream that Victoria was emiting..., made me aware of the ground proximity, and I instinctively pulled the stick as hard as the Waterpipe forgives you... and she forgives easy IF you also give her enough gasoline to drink! We recovered from a still clearly controlled situation, and went straight into final approach. Touch down on the very nice ice waters went smooth, although we were surprised by 3.3 ft waves! |
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We have already commented a bit about our stay at Tim's Lodge - one perfect place to live... The time, however, wasn't standing still. And already being late, we couoldn't spend as many hours in the cave as we would have wanted to. So I brewed my famous "dark avenger" - a special coffee mixture approved and used by the long time Hemp height harvest quality tester team in the morning after... Yes, I had a good reason: a plain level flight of more than 350 nm. This was something I am no longer used to... flying straight for such a long time, only tracking a VOR here and there... so I could use some extra energy to keep my eyes open . |
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We left Tim's lodge the 29.9.02, around 8:30. Take off from the lake was exactly at 9:22 and we soon found ourself on cruise altitude and speed. Everything seemd to hint towards a rather boring flight. I kept the Waterpipe somewhat over the standard cruise speed at a constant 140 kts, because we had a medical emergency package. Obviously the aliens brought some samples from their "blue spot virus" to analyze at the earth. We now had to ship the sample to Edmonton ASAP. However, the weather was getting worse faster than we both liked. Approx. after 1:55 h of steady, uneventfull flight, the HSI went down. Holy goat! This suddenly made the clouds much darker and the raindrops much bigger and more numerous... and I quickly gathered the facts. |
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No way to make me fly IFR with no HSI... so I asked Victoria to check the map for alternatives short of Edmonton. There was no airfield in the very near vicinity, but Pigeon Lake was next to us. In short: we made a safe manual landing and called the mission "partially successfull". No damage to man and machine - and we should make it to Edmonton the next day. |
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The last part of the trip - to Edmonton, unloading the goods, and repairing the Waterpipe, and straigh to Cold Lake, went smooth, thanks to the great flight instructions from our campaign leader Sir DW. Weather wasn't that good, but ok enough to have a quiet and safe flight to Cold Lake. |
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Thanks to the new video card, I got good visibility with max res and 32bit on the final approach to Cold Lake. It is one hell of an approach! Wow, what a scenery! I was taxiing around for at least 15 minutes, just to have a chance to see at least a part of all these interesting aircraft! So, Victoria and me have arrived in Cold Lake, and we probably don't need more than two days to refresh the waterpipe and ourself - and be ready for new missions. If nothing is in the pipeline, we will provide some sight seeing flights for a few aeronautical enthusiasts that asked us to take them up with the old Lady... we can use some $, since we had no job for the last part of our trip... Clear sky! Hak |