I Love the Smell of Avgas in the Morning

We spent 3 more days stuck in Chibougamau while a stationary Low pressure system had its fun swirling around in the North Atlantic bringing a mixture of freezing rain, low cloud and high winds in Northern Quebec.  In the meantime my colleague and I found a bar in town that served fantastic ribs and $5 pints.

Finally the weather forecast clears enough for us to take a shot at going north.  The weather in Kuujjuaq is currently showing the ceilings at 3500' with an improving trend, but the forecast still says its going to drop to 1500, but no freezing rain is forecast like what has been common for the past few days.  Thirty-five hundred feet is plenty, and I wonder if the forecast is wrong as it has been made several hours ago, even if its not it should still be enough to get make it in, even with the rising terrain in the surrounding area.  We have also found a good place to stop for fuel about halfway in between Chibougamau and Kuujjuaq.  On the suggestion of another colleague we found an airstrip belonging to a hunting lodge.  They had fuel and rooms available in case we had to stay overnight.  That meant if we stopped for fuel there we would have enough range to fly to Kuujjuaq and then come back to the lodge if the weather turned sour.  The runway at the hunting lodge was a 3500' gravel strip.  Under the current conditions our performance charts list the landing distance as 2500' under ideal conditions, which means 3500' is long enough to get into, but you also don't want to waste any time getting on the ground when landing, especially on a gravel strip where there will be limited braking effectiveness.

Before we take off I call to make sure someone could meet us at the airport to give us fuel.  The CFS notes to overfly the lodge prior to landing to alert them of the arriving aircraft.  I'm slightly disappointed when the woman I'm talking to assures me that won't be necessary and she'll make sure someone is there at the time we expect to arrive.  Two hours later and the airstrip comes into view.  We fly overhead first to check the windsock to determine which direction to land in.  The winds were pretty light, in the 5-8 knot range, 90° to the runway.  On final I shave 5 mph off our normal approach speed of 120, and tell myself if I'm not on the ground in the first third of the runway, we'll go around.  It always helps to remind yourself of the options, and review the actions you'll take, that way it will take less time to process and make the decision if you have to.  Hesitating at those moments is what leads to accidents.

The key to remember during short field landings, is that the landing flare always results in landing long of where you aim the airplane during your approach.  So if you want to touch down at the runway threshold, you have to start your flare slightly prior to crossing the threshold.  A flare is the process of trading in your last bits of excess airspeed (kinetic energy) in exchange for slowing the loss of altitude (potential energy), so naturally this will carry you further down the runway.  So I aim for 50 ft before the runway begins, and I smoothly pull the power off as I clear the last few trees.

Most of the runways we've been landing on this summer have been 10,000 ft long, so up until now I've been enjoying the extra space to try and finesse the airplane down with as little bump as possible.  To do so you leave a little bit of power on into the flare which gives you more time to find the sweet spot before your last bits of airspeed bleed off and the airplane stalls onto the runway.  I've been getting pretty good at it if I do say so myself, but I use up a lot of runway in the process.  This time however, the priority is not about greasing the touchdown, but to get the airplane down as close to the runway threshold as I can.  A power off flare means the airspeed diminishes rapidly and you have less time to find the sweet spot in the flare.  I manage to nail my target touchdown point, and the touchdown itself is not too bad either.  The next concern now is to keep the controls pulled back as much as possible to keep the nose of the airplane high and the props from sucking up bits of gravel.  The props on this airplane are brand new from the overhaul shop, and my boss would have my head if I put a ding in them from improper gravel runway operations.  Since I've managed not to waste any runway I can also keep the braking to almost nil as well, which also helps to keep the nose up.  We keep the airplane rolling (another technique to prevent gravel being sucked into the props) until we pull up onto the concrete pad at the fuel pumps.  I get a nod of "very nicely done" from my colleague, and we shut down.

Its cold here, we've gone from a crisp winter air in Chibougamau to a biting winter cold here in the interior of northern Quebec.  I was wearing my running shoes, but decide its time to put my boots on.  Winter has arrived, or I suppose more accurately we have arrived where it is winter.

Airplane gassed up, and we're ready to go again on our second leg.  We manage to quickly check the weather at the lodge, and its now saying 1700' overcast - looks like the forecast came true after all   The lodge airstrip here is in the highest terrain, pretty much everything from here on to Kuujjuaq is downhill to Ungava Bay.  The clouds here are also still pretty thin, and high enough not to pose a problem.  We shouldn't have any problems with the terrain rising to meet the cloud layer, and hopefully, not visa versa either.  I decide to continue on.  Turns out not so much.  Much of our flight is spent descending lower and lower.  The terrain is descending, but so are the clouds, and at a faster rate.  Fifty miles from Kuujjuaq and we find ourselves scud running at less than 500' agl and weaving around freezing rain patches.  In built up terrain like southern Ontario this would be a no-no as there are restrictions on how low we can fly over built up areas and other property and people (except during survey where we usually have permits to do so).  But in remote, uncontrolled airspace like northern Quebec, our only requirement is to remain clear of cloud, so from a legal standpoint we're still ok.  From a safety standpoint if it came down to it we could climb up through the clouds if we absolutely had to.

Finally as we near Kuujjuaq the last bits of higher terrain fall away and we find ourselves back at a reasonable altitude.  We made it, finally.