The Far North

Well we have made it to the far north. I flew up on Monday, while my operator made it up by Airline the next day. We managed to get our FOM flight done with our last day of great weather, and then one survey flight. And then we spent the next couple days sitting. With springtime comes bad weather. The fog here rolls in quickly without warning, and then just like that clears out a couple hours later. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on the temperature/dew-point spread. When the temperature is close to the dewpoint, that means the relative humidity is high, and therefore so is the possibility of fog.

Yesterday afternoon the snow and low cloud seemed to have cleared enough that we decided to try a flight. We got out to the airplane and by the time we got it ready for flight it had started lightly snowing again. We started up and taxied out, and I called for a weather report before taking off. It was still calling 7 miles visibility, ceilings 1500 ft, so off we went. Well the flight didn't last long. We got out to the block and it was terrible conditions, fog on the ground with multiple other cloud layers below 1000 ft. It was an easy decision to turn back. By the time we got back to the airport, it was snowing heavily and we landed with visibility around 2 to 3 miles. I have a feeling this will be a common scenario for the next few weeks.

Today we finally got up for a couple hrs survey in the afternoon, and it looks like the weather is going to be decent for the next few days, so hopefully we can get some work done. My operator and I weren't prepared for how cold it turned today however. It was close to 20 C below. Up until now the heater knob in the airplane has hovered somewhere around the quarter to halfway out position. Today it was full on the whole flight, and still the cockpit stayed JUST warm enough. By the time we landed it was almost 8 pm. Fueling the airplane and putting it to bed was miserably cold. We are fueling out of barrels, so its a huge process to refuel the airplane. We have to unpack the fuel pump, assemble it, roll a barrel over from our cache, set the pump up, fuel one wing, slide the barrel over to the other wing, fuel it, and then disassemble the pump and put it away. And then we have to put the wing covers on, and engine blanket, and make sure the space heater is plugged in to keep our survey equipment in the back warm. We both ended up putting on our winter overalls that we keep in the back of the airplane. I even broke out a couple hand-warmers, and my fingers were STILL numb. Holding a metal fuel pump nozzle with sub-zero temperature fuel flowing through it can suck the heat out of your hands insanely fast.

Welcome to Nunavut I guess. Tomorrow I'll be sporting the long underwear and an extra sweater, along with my overalls standing by. Being a pilot is so glamorous.

The town itself isn't bad to live in. Its comprised about 50/50 white people and Inuit, and everybody seems friendly enough. Its quite a difference to some of the reserves in Northern Ontario where there is almost hostility against us "whitey's". There are a few restaurants here as well, so we have a bit of variety, although much of the selection is still your typical diner style food. There are a few good dishes I have discovered however that are reasonably healthy and a good change from greasy food.