Lachute for Lunch
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Terry and I flew to Lachute, QC (CSE4) today, to visit RV–4 builder Scott B.
Scott is just about done the structural aspects of his RV–4 project.
Scott was an avid RC aircraft enthusiast, and has this gorgeous Sabre in Golden Hawks colours, powered by an electric ducted fan. He made it from scratch, and then sold a few dozen kits.
Scott is an extremely talented metal basher. He has an English Wheel, a power planishing hammer, and a bead roller, all hand made by Scott.
His talents can be seen in the alumnum nose bowl he made.
After we finished talking at the airport, Scott took us to a very tasty lunch at Café L’Infusion in the town of Lachute. Thanks Scott!
Return Flight from Yarmouth
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I had a great visit time in Yarmouth for four days, but Thursday the weather picture suggested that this was the right day to head home. I usually try to fly non-stop from Yarmouth to Smiths Falls, but that becomes less enticing if the headwinds are too strong, or the weather in the Ottawa area a bit dodgy, as it is good to arrive with a fair bit of fuel if the weather is not so good.
On Thursday, the predicted headwinds would drive the non-stop flight duration up to about 3:20, and there was an approaching frontal system which could have meant a need for an instrument approach after arrival. Thursday morning, I pondered the large coffee I had just consumed, then decided to break the trip in two pieces, with a stop in Sherbrooke, QC, about 2:00 into the trip.
Here we see Moosehead Lake, the largest lake in Maine.
That coffee was beginning to talk to me by the time I got to Sherbrooke, so I was glad that I had decided to stop. After refueling, I had a great omelette in the airport restaurant, then did the last 1:20 flight to Smiths Falls.
After getting home, the first task was to clean off the bugs from the trip. They come off fairly easily, if you don’t let them sit for too many days.
After dealing with the bugs, I decided to play around a bit with the camera.
Flight to Yarmouth
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I knew that my work schedule for this summer and fall would be very unpredictable, due to the constant adjustments to the CSeries flight test schedule. It would be pretty much impossible to know which weeks I could take off, without impacting CSeries flight testing. So, when this week’s schedule suddenly opened up, I slammed a week of vacation into it before anyone could attempt to schedule me for anything else.
Sunday morning I jumped in the RV–8 and headed east in the clear skies, on my way to Yarmouth, NS to visit my parents and sister for a few days. The tailwind wasn’t quite as nice as predicted - the winds were strong, but they were out of the NNW, so it was mostly a crosswind, with only about a 10 kt tailwind component. I have almost 50 kt tailwind when I turned SSE to head over the Bay of Fundy. But, I’ll take any tailwind over a headwind, so I’m not complaining.
It took 2:44 to fly from Smiths Falls to Yarmouth, at 9,000 ft (except for a bit higher over the Bay of Fundy).
The scenery was spectacular over Vermont and New Hampshire. This view is looking south over northern New Hampshire.
Here we seen Grand Manan Island, off the coast of New Brunswick, at the western end of the Bay of Fundy. I climbed to 13,000 ft to cross the Bay of Fundy, to ensure I would be within gliding range of land the whole way across.
While I was running lean of peak EGT at 9,000 ft, getting 161 kt TAS on 7.65 gallons per hour, I ran rich of peak EGT at 13,000 ft, getting 165 kt TAS from 9.1 gallons per hour.
Still at 13,000 ft, we see Digby Neck off to the left and the Nova Scotia mainland.
I was a bit late starting down from 13,000 ft, so I had to do two 360° turns to lose altitude before arriving at Yarmouth.
Yarmouth County has hundreds of lakes of various sizes - it is paradise if you have a float plane. The big lake in the middle of picture is Lake George, 7 miles long, which provides the drinking water for the town of Yarmouth. I grew up on a farm a bit to the right of Lake George in the picture, roughly under the right edge of that large fluffy cloud on the right side of the picture. My parents live on the lake just to the left of that cloud.
Canadian Aviation and Space Museum Reserve Hangar Tour
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I was on Ebola standby today (yes, Transport Canada still has aircraft crews in Ottawa and Winnipeg on standby, every day, to fly trained medical specialists to assist local staff if a confirmed Ebola case is found). That meant that I had to stay reasonably close to the main airport at Ottawa, so I could be airborne within two hours if needed. So, no RV–8 flying today :(.
Instead, I did a tour of the Reserve Hangar at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. The Reserve Hangar is used to store aircraft that are not currently on display. As such, it is jammed full of many interesting aircraft. The tour was part of the Ottawa Doors Open weekend, when over 120 buildings that are normally closed to public are available for public tours.
I was surprised to see this wooden mockup of the forward fuselage of the Bombardier CSeries. I didn’t think that anyone was making wooden mockups in this modern age, but apparently even fly-by-wire aircraft are designed using some ancient methods.
The outer wings of Avro Arrow RL203 are stored against the back wall.
The remains of the University of Toronto ornithopter, which actually flew in 2006. The main flapping wings are not installed now.
CSeries Flight Testing, and Lachute Lunch
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My trip to Wichita for the next phase of CSeries flight testing finally took place over last weekend. I flew down on Thursday, then drove up to Salina where the test aircraft had deployed (Salina is an old USAF Strategic Air Command base, with a long runway, so it is perfect for runway performance testing). We reviewed test results from the Bombardier testing on Friday morning. The winds in the afternoon were much lower than forecast - almost calm instead of the expected 10 kt, so we took advantage of the surprise opportunity to get our testing done. The winds stayed calm, so we were done by the end of the afternoon. We reviewed the data from our tests on Saturday morning to confirm that we hit the test conditions, and that the results were acceptable. Sunday we flew home. I had expected it would take a week or more, as it is very difficult to find light winds in Kansas in the spring.
The weather today was excellent, and I hadn’t gotten a day off last weekend, so I didn’t feel at all guilty about taking today to go flying. I zipped over to Lachute, Quebec (CSE4) to check out the small restaurant on the airfield, to see if it would be a good place to bring Terry for lunch someday. The food was perfectly adequate - I’ll let her make her own decision on the menu.
Casse Croute Des’Airs menu page 1
Vintage Wings Fly-In Breakfast
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I was supposed to be heading to Wichita on Friday, but that blew up at 5:00 when I checked my phone for messages that had arrived overnight. It turned out that they had discovered a snag with the test aircraft, and it would take a couple of days to set things right, and the weather forecast suggested that the short-lived good weather window would be gone by the time they were ready to go again. The type of testing we are doing requires quite low winds, so it can take quite a bit of waiting to finally get the right conditions.
I took advantage of my unexpected weekend in Ottawa by flying to the Vintage Wings Fly-In Breakfast this morning. The weather was pretty much perfect, except a bit cool. It was smooth as silk for the flight over, and Ottawa Tower was happy to have me fly right over the airport at 2500 ft, as I zipped towards Gatineau.
The Spitfire XVI and Harvard IV were looking good in the sun.