(Precedent story: unexpected thunderstorm cells)
After a proficiency check, I soon find myself flying a Cessna 170B (tail wheel) on a flight across Canada, from St -Jean-sur- Richelieu, Quebec, to Edmonton, Alberta. I am accompanied by the aircraft’s owner who has not yet completed his private pilot course. The 1952 Cessna flies well, but has absolutely no instruments for air navigation, not even a VOR nor ADF. And the era of the portable GPS is not yet upon us.
Fourteen 1:500,000 VFR charts, covering the planned flight, are folded, glued and numbered. I trace the expected flight path on each chart, with 10 miles landmarks. This will facilitate the monitoring of our progress, considering the absence of navigation equipment. The preparation now completed, the take off is done on a beautiful summer day of 1981.
We do stopovers at Gatineau, North Bay, Sudbury and then fly along Lake Superior to Wawa.
We fly around Lake Superior to our next stopovers, Thunder Bay and Fort Frances. Over large forested areas, with no major landmarks, the gyroscopic precession must be corrected frequently so as not to stray too far from the intended track. Sometimes when it facilitates navigation, we either follow a railway or main roads. There are some instances where the westerly winds are so strong that our ground speed is slower than a car on a highway.
Our flight path follows a line that keeps us away from areas of high air traffic. I choose to fly north of Winnipeg terminal control area, thus avoiding frequent radio exchanges with air traffic control in a language I do not master. The underperforming radio would not be of any help at any rate. This option eventually means that we must fly over Lake Winnipeg, in its southern portion. We have enough altitude to be able to glide to the other side in case of an engine failure. Nonetheless, we realize that we are gradually loosing several thousand feet due to the cold air mass above the lake. This with maximum power applied. The unexpected descent eventually ends, but it is now impossible to have an engine failure without ditching in the lake…
Near Lundar, Manitoba, the aircraft’s old gauges indicate a significant loss of fuel. It is surprising since we refueled an hour ago. We must land the plane on the nearest runway, but the strong crosswinds exceed the capabilities of the aircraft. Nonetheless, an attempt is made with the result that only the left wheel accepts the contact with the runway. As soon as the right wheel also touches the ground, the aircraft becomes airborne again. A nearby field is selected to make a precautionary landing so that the fuel status can be verified. We fly at low altitude over the electrical wires and the cows in the adjacent field, and touch smoothly at a ground speed not exceeding 15 knots. A farmer witnesses the landing and arrives in his red pick-up to offer some help. The tanks are almost full, so the plane only needs few liters of gasoline. Once this is done, we take off westward. It appears that the old fuel gauges of this 1952 Cessna are now totally unreliable…
We leave Manitoba through Dauphin and enter Saskatchewan. If we were to experience an engine failure above such uniform fields, the risk of serious problems at landing would be virtually nonexistent.
The weather is slowly deteriorating. We choose to land in Watson, Saskatchewan, on the nearest runway.
The runway surface consists of muddy earth and grass, and it’s delimited by small red wooden panels. As we touch the ground, the tires splash mud everywhere, including under the wings.
Finally, the weather improves and a takeoff is made toward North Battleford, the last stop before Edmonton. The sloping terrain forces us to fly lower and lower near Edmonton, under an overcast stratocumulus, limiting our ability to see a long time in advance the correct airport from the three available (international, civil , military ). Luckily, everything goes well in choosing the right airport and approach, but we cannot say the same with radio communications. The sound quality coming from the old speaker is awful and the English spoken by the air traffic controller too fast for us. The combination of these two factors causes the controller to repeat more than once his instructions until he finally decides to slow down and we can officially say: « Roger! »
After spending few days in Edmonton it is now time for the return flight to St-Jean. This proves to be much easier and faster because the westerly winds push the aircraft. Our ground speed is sometimes double what we had managed to get on our trip to Edmonton. The journey took us twenty-five hours to go and eighteen hours to come back.
Over North Bay, Ontario, the weather is ideal. But we will have to land in Ottawa while waiting for thunderstorms to move away from Montreal and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. After a total of forty- three-hours of flying time, the old Cessna 170B is landing back to St- Jean -sur- Richelieu.
(Next story: the flight instructor license)