I had both an eventful and interesting day today. I'm not quite sure where to start, so I suppose I'll go chronologically. Beware this may be a lengthy post.

My day started slow. I knew I had a bunch of trips lined up, but it was supposed to snow in the morning, which it did. So when my alarm went off I woke up and immediately knew I had to look out the window. I tried to imagine what it would look like out the window and draw a conclusion from that so I didn't have to get out of bed (it seems reasonable when you're still half asleep), but using that method I could not ascertain an accurate observation as to weather or not it was ok to fly, so I had to haul myself out of bed and to the window to have a look. Yep, it was snowing, pretty hard in fact - and its May 1st. No flying yet, oh well, I'm going back to bed.

So an hour rolls by, and what seems like a more reasonable time to get up arrives, so I get up, even though its still snowing. I milled about the house for a bit, had a shower, got dressed, and before I knew it the chief was knocking on my door asking if I could go gas up the Cherokee and then take the fuel truck to get it filled up. During the morning routine the weather had indeed cleared up. So, as I've learned, even though he didn't actually ask me to get ready to go flying, chances are that before I get an opportunity to return to my house it will be time to take to the skies, so I got my bags ready, made some sandwiches and packed some food, and headed out.

I got down to the airport to gas up the plane and the Chief was already there scraping the snow off the airplane. What a guy, I always appreciate help. I pulled the fuel truck up and started fuelling. Empty. Dang, there was no fuel left in the truck, I was hoping there'd be enough before taking the truck itself to get refuelled, cause then we'd have a completely full fuel truck for the weekend. Oh well, off I go to the fuel depot. When I got back to the airport, most of the snow was melted/scraped off the airplane, except for a stubborn little chunk inside the propellor spinner. We spent about 20 minutes scraping, tapping, and melting that chunk out from inside the spinner so there wouldn't be excessive vibration with the engine running due to the off-balance spinner.

Finally by noon I'm under way for the day, and just as I expected I didn't really have a chance to go home, so lucky thing I'm already good to go. The winds were very strong at 20 knots, which made things a little more fun and interesting with the landings, and there were spotty snow showers in places as well. Most of the airports up here have only one runway, so its almost guarenteed there will be some sort of crosswind component. My first trip was up the coast to a small mining town.

On the way up there was a Hawker twin turboprop aircraft inbound on the reciprocal track as me going outbound, so on my departure I stayed at 1000 ft while he passed over me at 2000. It was a cool sight to see this big twin turbine bearing down on you at 12 o'clock. I didn't think about grabbing my camera in time, it would have made an awesome photo.

The mission was to land there, pick up an Canadian Forces Ranger and bring him and his stuff across the river to the other small town about 8 miles away. Each town has an airport, but since the ice road across the river has melted but its still too icy for boats, an airplane is the only way. This guy was an instructor for the Canadian Forces Rangers. I talked to him for a bit and I guess they're up here training and getting ready for the spring thaw, in case these communities flood and that have to evacuate the residents. Who knew? Can I say I've served my country now? I was responsible for relocating the Canadian Forces equipment and personnel (singular) to a different location. I guess when they only need to move one guy, a bunch of cots and radio equipment, it makes more sense to hire a Cherokee then fire up a C-130 Herc. I felt pretty important flying a guy in Canadian Forces Camo greens around. He was an older middle aged man, and he seemed to enjoy the short flight, despite it being terriby bumpy due to the strong winds. I made two trips across the river, the first to bring him and half of the equipment, and a second trip to bring the rest of it.

After that I was to bring two passengers back to home base with me. On the way back the same thing happened, a Turbo Beaver passed almost directly overhead of me. This time I did have my camera ready. I kind of wondered what my passengers would think about the pilot taking pictures of airplanes and not flying the airplane, but they didn't seem to mind. My front pax asked me if I got the shot, to which I nodded yes. A Turbo Beaver is a cool airplane, its just not quite as intimidating as a big twin turbine, so the picture wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. Oh well.

My next trip was back up the coast to the reserve to bring some passengers back. Origionally the intel I got was it was supposed to be 3 adults and two kids. However when I showed up there were two vehicles waiting for me, a minivan and an extended cab pickup truck. It turns out these people were expecting to bring 4 adults, 3 children and all their baggage. The Cherokee only has six seats, and while its reasonable for a child to sit on an adult's lap for the flight, there is a certain amount of reason that has to be excercised. They had expected that 3 of the adults would have the kids on their laps, including an adult in the copilot seat with a child on their lap. This is a big no-no since its easy to understand that a child in someone's arms in the cockpit can be a very deady hazard simpy by the fact that I would not have full movement of the controls. I'm sure we could all think of at least 3 other hazards associated with baby's in mother's arms in cockpits as well. So anyways 8 people (including me) in a six seat aircraft was pretty much an impossibility. Next you should have seen the amount of baggage they brought along. It was enough to fill the airplane with no seats installed at all! I tried to explain it to them that there simply wasn't enough room, but they didn't seem to understand the problem. I suppose I could have made my point well enough by asking one of them to pack the airplane, and then they would have seen the unsolvable volume issues, aside from the fact that care must be taken to load the airplane within its center of gravity limitations.

Anyways after more explaining then I thought would be necessary, I managed to get across the point that either all of them could come but they'd have to leave most of their bags, or only some of them could come and we could remove a couple seats and fit in most of their bags. They eventually came to the conclusion that one of the family's wouldn't go at all. Sweet. That made it much easier for me to only have to fit half the stuff and half the people in. I suppose I should have felt bad that they had to cancel their trip (I'm not sure where their final destination was), but I don't have much sympathy for people who think its realistic to charter a small airplane at a small airplane price and expect it to carry what a large airplane does. I mean come on, they needed a pickup truck and a minivan to get everything and everyone out to the airport! Sheesh.

After that trip I had two more trips up the coast before the end of the day. These were freight trips. By now the winds that I had been wrangling with all day had calmed down significantly. Too bad, I was enjoying them. One thing I have noticed now that the snow on the ground is started to melt is how much of the terrain is actually wetland. All the open treeless areas I think I mentioned in a previous blog is treeless because its actually swamp area. Turns out there's fewer spots then I thought that would make an ideal put-down area in case of engine trouble. Surviveable probably, but not ideal.

So I did my last two trips, with the sun starting to set and a good amount of fatigue setting into my body. After I landed from my last trip I parked the airplane, pushed it back into its place, fuelled it up for tomorrow, put the wing covers and engine blanket on and heater in, and done. Time to go home. Not quite done yet though. I now have a crapload of log entries to fill in at some point tonight, make dinner, and write a blog. Goodnight.