Lycosaurus
Well Known Member
Alternate thread titles that were considered:
• World round robin record of ~1300nm in 12 hours? … in an RV9A… in Canada… to James Bay? Vlad… Vlad? (Bueller…Bueller). Vlad will probably have a story to beat this one.
• Flying is a hoot
• World round robin record of ~1300nm in 12 hours? … in an RV9A… in Canada… to James Bay? Vlad… Vlad? (Bueller…Bueller). Vlad will probably have a story to beat this one.
• Flying is a hoot
Our vacation week was not looking very good. Weather was somewhat unstable except for maybe day flights. We stayed home and we started doing yard work. I should have just gone back to work.
A request came in from PilotsNPaws Canada for a Snowy Owl transport mission from St. Catharines (CYSN) to Ft. Albany (CYFA). Fort Albany is a landlocked community only accessible by airplane and ice roads in the winter, and boat in the summer. It has a gravel strip but no 100LL fuel.
Route:
CYRP CYSN - Carp to St. Catharines ~ 1 hr.10
CYSN CYYU – St. Catharines to Kapuskasing ~ 3 hrs
CYYU CYFA – Kapuskasing to Fort Albany ~ 1hr. 10
CYFA CYTS – Fort Albany to Timmins ~ 1 hr 45
CYTS CYRP – Timmins to Carp ~ 2 hrs
Flight time ~ 9 hours
Duration (departure time to arrival back at CYRP, including fuel stops etc.): under 12 hours (1300nm = 2400 km)
As a background story, our friends Dave and Matt fly an RV7 and introduced us to the PnP flights a couple of months ago. They were the team that flew the owl from Timmins on the pet rescue mission to St.Catharines last fall.
Long story made short, I got out of doing some yard work. Shirley was my co-conspirator and assisted with the flight duties (chart reading, frequencies, in-flight meals, sanity check).
Our original plan was to fly Thursday, however freezing rain was forecasted on our route so we cancelled our departure. Friday looked promising, so after rising at 5 AM to check weather we generated flight plans for all our flying legs, packed up our survival gear and in-flight meals, and headed for the airport. We were airborne before 7 AM and arrived at St. Catharines shortly after 8 AM. We fuelled up and then we proceeded to meet Bruce (The Owl Foundation Canada volunteer) at the terminal, who was up bright and early to deliver us the owl.
Landing at St. Catharines
Owl airport delivery service courtesy of Bruce
St. Catharines to Kapuskasing
Town of Kapuskasing
We had received some warnings from our Flight Service Station regarding some possible freezing rain and isolated TCU thunder showers beyond Kapuskasing. Towards our flight to Kapuskasing we get a call from the control center (flight following) to change frequencies since FSS wanted to speak with us. They had one anomaly to clear up with the series of flight plans we had filed, and that was quickly resolved. They then proceed to inform us that they had received some pilot reports indicating freezing rain below 3000 ft. just north of Ft. Albany. Very impressive service from our Nav Canada FSS.
For those that don’t know it already, unlike in the US, flight plans in Canada activate automatically at the designated departure time. You do not need to contact FSS again for this to happen. If you will not make a flight, then you need to cancel the flight plan unless you want search and rescue services hunting you down.
We fuelled up at Kapuskasing, ensuring the tanks were filled to the brim since there was no fuel available for us at Fort Albany. We had alternate destinations with fuel such as return to Kapuskasing, Moosonee, and our return destination Timmins.
Calling the FSS at Kapuskasing they informed us that the weather looked better now and the pilot report was well over 2 hours old. Several “outs” were proposed to us such as flying the James Bay shoreline back towards the south if we encountered the weather system from the north west that was being forecast. Weather forecasting is somewhat more difficult in the northern regions since there is no radar weather service. They do utilize satellite imagery and pilot reports.
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