Salmon Arm

One of the most exciting things about this trip already is that I never know where I'll be next. I don't know where I'll be spending the night, what I'll be seeing, who I'll meet. Salmon Arm 3 weeks ago to me was just another BC interior town along my route, one where I didn't have any relatives or friends, but one that could still be a potential stop over. I think Scott and I were pretty pleased to make it as far as Salmon Arm on our first day of mountain flying, so even if the weather hadn't forced us to stay, we likely would have stayed the night anyway. So, our first overnight stop in a place where we didn't know anyone, and it was still early in the day!

We were immediately greeted by friendly locals, all older pilots with a real love for flying. They took a lot of interest in the Aircoupe, asking all sorts of questions and walking around the plane to look it over. We filled up with fuel, had a nice picnic lunch, and then parked the coupe on the grass once we decided we'd be staying the night. But where we'd sleep was still to be determined.

John, the airport manager told us that we could rent the Flying Club's courtesy car for $15/day plus whatever gas we used, so we did. We threw all our stuff into the car, a 70's era giant orange boat, a Ford something or other, and drove into Salmon Arm to check out the town. We bought ice cream, went to the tourist info office and found out where to do some day hiking. As training for the WCT we decided to hike a nearby hill/mountain to a lookout with a view of the town where we had a picnic supper, canned food and other cheap groceries. We also took a walk along the longest freshwater pier in the world north of Kelowna, east of Kamloops and west of Revelstoke. (it wasn't spectacularly long).

In our driving around town, Scott noticed a sign at the Five Points Pentacostal Church advertising an evening of discussion about Dan Brown's novel "The Devinci Code". Since we had nothing to do and we were obsessed with spending as little money as possible, a free church event sounded like the perfect entertainment. I found it to be very insightful, even though I haven't read the book, and, after we left the church we drove downtown and noticed that "The Devinci Code" was playing at the local theatre so we caught the 9:30 show. Even though it meant spending some coin, we had just come out of this deep discussion of the novel, so it was the perfect time to see the movie. Or is Scott's case, the first half of the movie. I think he was having trouble staying awake towards the end.

Now it's almost midnight, and we still have no place to stay. Being the penny pinchers that we are, we decide to spend the night in our rented courtesy car. The front and back seats were both benches and super wide, so we just parked the car back at the church parking lot, wrapped ourselves up in whatever clothes we had, and tried to get some shut eye. In the morning we drove back out to the airport, returned the rental car, packed up the plane and checked the weather. It didn't look real hot, but it was clear enough to at least take off and get a first hand look at the clearance between the ceiling and the valleys. We thought we could at least make it to Merrit, only a short flight, we could spend the rest of the day there. But only 15min after taking off from Salmon Arm, the clouds looked pretty ugly. We were being pinched by layers of broken cumulous above and scattered cumulous below, so we turned that bird around and landed back at Salmon Arm.

This time we chose to save some more money by not renting the flying club's car and instead spent most of the day hanging out in the flying club lounge. An older member came to talk to us and he gave us the code to get in, inviting us to make ourselves at home. So we did, we watched tv, used he shower, made some coffee, and then after hitch hiking into town to get some groceries, we hitch hiked back again and cooked pasta in the coffee maker! Then we watched a movie on my MP3 player before going to sleep in the sketchy basement. We used old pleather couches and chairs for our beds and froze all night with no blankets or pillows. When I woke up I looked over at Scott and saw he had laid the hiking backpack on top of himself to stay warm. What a sight we were.

By this time the weather moving up off the coast was improving a lot, so we were able to fly to Merrit no problem and then after a quick fuel stop all the way on to Vancouver, landing at the Delta Air Park.

Over the ROCKS!

Flying at low altitudes through mountains is not a trivial task, nor is it for the faint of heart or inexperienced pilot. That is why I had originally intended to take on the Rockies at the END of this trip and fly to the East coast first. However, my plans got jumbled up when my fellow engineering/hippy friends decided we should all hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island in June. So, if I switched everything around and flew West first, I could join them on the hike. So that's what I did. And this way Scott was able to fly with me from Ponoka to the west coast.

So we left Ponoka last Wednesday, May 31st, at about 5pm. Just before our departure I took my high school friend Rodney for a flight over Ponoka. The flight to Innisfail was only 0.6hrs and there we met Nancy and I gave her a short ride in the plane, flying over her nearby buffalo farm. Then Scott and I flew the rest of the way to the Springbank airport (a 0.7hr flight) at the west end of Calgary where we were met by our university chum Ben Danic. I gave Benny D a quick plane ride and then we drove down a small dirt road near the airport to drink a beer and watch the sun set over the Rockies in the distance. Our hunger then prevailed and led us to the only open grocery store in the city where we picked up some grub for a late night dinner and food for the next day. Ben put us up in his apartment and then early the next morning drove us back to the airport just after sunrise.

We had excellent weather in Calgary and over most of the mountains, and by leaving in the early morning we were able to avoid the normal daily turbulence that comes from rising warm air and winds over the mountains creating strong updrafts and downdrafts in the valleys. We took off from Springbank around 7:30am and followed the Trans-Canada highway past Banff and Lake Louise, landing in Golden 1.6hrs later. The scenery was completely breath taking, flying only about 1,000ft over the valley floors, completely surrounded by towering, jagged, snow covered mountain peaks.

After fuelling up at Golden and checking the weather by phone, we took off and headed for Rogers Pass, a tight narrow valley between 10,000ft peaks that has claimed the lives of several pilots. What gets pilots into trouble in this and other similar passes is when weather is marginal, visibility is poor, winds are strong, or the pilot is in a hurry to reach their destination and pushes the boundaries of the plane or his/her skills. Scott and I were very lucky to have extremely calm air through the pass, where the steep and high mountain sides often create strong up and down drafts. We crossed the highest point of the pass with an altitude of about 7,500ft, plenty of clearance from the inhospitable terrain below. After the pass we flew over Revelstoke and then finally landed at Salmon Arm, another 1.6hr flight. Since our flight times were all relatively short, we were able to fly lighter by taking on less than a full fuel load. Weight is such a critical factor in fighting down drafts and climbing out of valleys after takeoff. The tricky part was calculating just the right amount of fuel to carry so that we would be below max gross weight but still have sufficient fuel to make it almost to our next destination and still be able to turn back to our point of departure if the weather turned bad. Fortunately this never happened and we were always able to land safely where we planned with plenty of reserves in the tanks.

Descending into Salmon Arm was incredible, the view of the Shuswap Lakes was amazing, not to mention all the beautiful farm land, rolling green hills and thriving marinas. Our time in Salmon Arm was longer than expected since the coastal moisture that had been dumping rain all over the mountains from Vancouver to Kamloops decided to move east and sit right on top of us for the next day and a half. However, luckily Scott and I were greated by some of the most friendly and caring strangers I've ever met. So typical of the tight knit aviation community all over Canada, the flying club of Salmon Arm opened its doors to two scruffy young aviators with complete trust and generosity. Our experiences there will have to wait to be more fully documented once I have more time, but they will surely not be forgotten.

Preparations

I know, I'm really not on top of this blogging concept. Even though I've had an entire month at home in Ponoka, unemployed, with internet, no excuses whatsoever, I still haven't posted anything. I was busy though, really busy. Pretty well every day I was out at the airport working on the plane with my dad. Installing my in-flight entertainment system and yolk-mounted GPS, removing antennas, unservicable radios and instruments, making adjustments and aesthetic improvements like replacing faded decals and old wing walks. Each task ended up taking way longer than expected, and of course with each little job tackled several more jobs were added to the list. If it weren't for the generous help of my dad I think I'd still be in the hangar pulling wrenches or shaking a paint can. We made a really great team, and having the Coupe in the hangar with dad's Baron meant we never ran out of things to work on. There were always bugs to clean off the Baron's wings if Dad was waiting for me to finish something on the Coupe. More importantly, it was fun to share the time together while both doing what really makes us happy.

So, there are a lot of photos of the various stages of the modifications and improvements, which will eventually make it onto my smugmug site, but to give myself all the space possible on my camera, I emptied my memory card before leaving Ponoka. The last few days before departure were also quite rushed, especially due to a last minute weekend trip to Fort McMurray to clean out the house and get everything moved out. That was a huge job that I am soooo relieved to have behind us.

So, stay tuned for photos, and as usual feel free to pass along these stories to anyone interested.

Ben

What's in a Name?

Since the purchase of my Aircoupe I've been deliberating over what to name her, with such pressure, putting so much importance on finding a suitable, catchy, meaningful and symbolic name. Well, after much brainstorming and weeding through exhaustive lists of suggestions from friends, acronyms and witty puns, I finally realized that it would be impossible to think of one word or phrase that could really represent the entire purpose and meaning of this adventure. Sure, I could call her "Freedom" or "Carpe Diem" or some such similar name that you might see on a NASA space shuttle or on a sail boat in Florida, but those sorts of names aren't personal enough, too generic.

Eventually it came time that if I waited any longer to order my decals for the new name, they wouldn't arrive before my departure. So I made a bunch of cuts from the list of potentials and went with my favorite, a clever pun of course. The cozy 2 seat cockpit of the Aircoupe, along with its Hot Rod look and vintage era construction I think make the name suiting. So without further suspense, the new name is.................

Lil' Deuce Aircoupe



I know, it has nothing to do with Canadian culture, exploring, discovering the magic of small town private aviation, or any of the things that this trip is all about, but just like the plane, it's cute right? After all, that which we call a plane, by any other word would be as sweet.