We spent the previous evening with Pete's sister Valerie and her husband John. So this was my subset of family reunion for the trip. We did Friday's trip planning and got everything planned out to depart Regina and then Pete flew from Regina direct to Southport Field at Portage La Prairie via Brandon Manitoba. We landed at Southport after being in the air for just under three hours. You don't really get an idea of how flat the prairies are until you see them from about 4000 above the ground for over three hundred miles. We had a few small bands of cumulous cloud above us and a bit of haze, but other than that it was just lots and lots of prairie. The Ground Controller directed us to park next to a bunch of Military training aircraft to get some fuel and have a bio-break. Apparently this was a no-no on the part of the controller, but we followed his instructions. Apparently we were supposed to be directed to the "civilian" portion of the airport. I sure all of the Armed Forces Trainees were suitably impressed at the sight of the mighty Cessna 172 with its massive engine developing raw gut wrenching 160 Horse Power.
The next leg was from Southport, directly over Winnipeg International, direct to Kenora Ontario, then on to Dryden Ontario which Bob flew. Again, more and more very flat prairies. Once were past Winnipeg, we started to see less and less civilization. We used a combination of GPS, VOR, NDB, and old school map methods (which work extremely well). On the way to Kenora, we didn't have any cloud, but we did have some mist/haze along the way, but otherwise it was great. Once we got near Kenora, we decided it might be an idea to take a break for the day rather than proceed on to Dryden. It was now about 4 PM Ontario time and we were pretty tired after all the planning, preflight, fueling, flying, navigating. We're putting in over five hours a day of flying and probably about the same amount of time doing the other non flying stuff.
We're here on Friday and we're in Kenora, Ontario. Neither Bob nor I have any relatives or friends here, so we had to grab a Motel for the night. When we landed at Kenora, we started phoning around for places to stay. After we found found the first six places totally booked for the weekend, we started lowering our acceptance criteria. We finally found one that had some rooms, so we reserved them and got a cab into town. When we told the cabbie where we were going, she kind of shivered a bit and then drove us to the Motel. This was a bad sign. We went and checked in at the desk, and while this was going on a Hells Angels dude walked into the bar in full colours. Another bad sign. Then we went a checked our rooms. All I can say is that we have reset our Motel meter to zero again. At least they fixed the doors that people have kicked in over the years.
Tomorrow, we're thinking of Thunder Bay and beyond.
The photos above are from the Regina to Southport and then to Kenora. The first one shows us flying IFR (I Follow Roads/Railways//Rivers, bu actually it was VFR). It was really easy to check our desired tracks using the raods, railways, rivers, lakes, towns, etc. The VFR Navigation charts were suprisingly good. This photo is also pretty much like we saw most of the way.
The second phot shows me turning from base onto final at Southport just outside of Portage La Prairie. This is proimariliy used for military traing activities, but there is some itinerant traffic as well.
The tird photo Bon took of a Golf Course way out in the middle of nowhere. I guess there really isnt an issue with a shortage of land on the prairies, so why not build a Golf Course.
The aircraft is working reall well, but we have discovered a few little idiosynchracies. The heading indicator tends to drift more than usual, so our course tends to deviate a bit from desired heading at times. Also, the 8-track tape player isnt providing the kind of fidelity we expected from the Willie Neslon cassettes.
More to come tomorrow.
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