The Squamidian Report – Sept. 12 / 09
Issue #381
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Last week’s long weekend was a total washout out here on the coast and guess what… no one complained at all. We had needed rain so badly and for so long that when it finally got here everyone was relieved and thankful. All of a sudden everything is back to its usual lush green instead of being a crispy brown colour. It meant that we didn’t get out and do any motorcycling but we did do a few things around the house that were long over due and we did do a whole lot of nothing that was long over due. It was a tad on the cooler side as well but that was kind of nice after such a long hot summer. And true to how the labour day long weekend always ends, the sun came out about 3 on the Monday afternoon. Oh, by the way, that weekend rain left fresh snow on top of Mt Garibaldi.
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I posed the question last week as to whether anyone knew what I was up to 36 years ago early September. Well, I received a resounding ‘no interest’ at all to the question so I’m going to answer it anyway.
In early September 1973 (which makes it 36 years ago by my calculations) I endured and passed my flight test for a private pilot license out at WW airport. Only reason I even remembered the endeavor is that we have a neighbor who just passed his flight test.
It had taken me several years to get to the point of testing because I kept running out of money. Flying lessons tend to be rather expensive when measures in any years dollars. But by late summer of ’73 I was ready to take the test. I had already taken and passed the written test. The flight test was done in a little 2-seat Cessna 150 sporting the call letters CDZS on it’s tail, and took about an hour and a quarter to do. During the test the examiner had me do the obvious taxi out and take-off, followed by a short flight out to the north of KW where we ran through all the emergency maneuvers. That meant doing the stalls and spin and necessary recoveries as well as engine failures and radio failures, steep turns, climbs, dives, everything a pilot must be proficient at doing.
After what would prove to be the last spin I was informed to ‘divert’ to the Stratford air field and once on a heading for said field I was expected to give the examiner an ETA as well as any other pertinent information that would have been useful. Problem I had was that after several spins and forced landing (where you just come down to above tree-top level), I had no idea as to where I was. I was lost! What I did know was that Stratford was roughly west of where we probably were and I turned the nose of the airplane toward the afternoon sun as I climbed back up to a flight level. This gave me time to frantically search the ground for any familiar landmarks. What I did spot was an ‘S’ turn in a paved road that looked very much like one on the aeronautical chart that was spread across my lap. I made the snap decision that this turn in a road was where I was and set my course from there. Turned out I was right and once on course for the destination field I was told to head back to our home airport. WW had been a controlled field for a couple of years by then so getting back into the circuit (landing pattern) was just a matter of some radio work and following air traffic control instructions. Once landed and taxied back to the club hanger, the examiner shook my hand and congratulated me. My guess had paid off, had I admitted that I was lost or had I not been able to spot something that corresponded to a location on my chart, I would not have passed. But I did make it work and that’s how I got my pilot’s license.
I went on and got a night rating as well as getting checked out in the 4-seat 172’s. Used to have what I called ‘millionaire’ days where I would get 3 other guys to split the cost of the plane with and rent a plane for a half day or whatever and we would fly all over southern Ontario. Also got checked out at the small dirt field near Midland on Georgian Bay and had some good times flying out of there. The plane I spent the most time in after I was licensed was CDHS, a nice white and brown 172. Had a lot of good flying in her. Unfortunately, a few years after I was no longer flying, she went down in fog an a dark night when her pilot at the time was trying to get back to the airport in conditions he was not trained for. Flying is not a sport where you take chances or push beyond your abilities or training.
I got into flying both for the challenge and because face it, airplanes are pretty cool machines. If I ever win the lottery I’d probably get back into it, just for that challenge.
Oh, the answer I figured some of you might have come up with but was the WRONG answer to my question is that September 1973 is also when I got married. Everything just seemed to happen right at the same time. Still have the same wife but haven’t flown in about 20 years. Both proved to be expensive so I gave up flying. J
doug
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Hello
everyone!
Well,
it’s time for another kite adventure or two!
Carole
and I spent the past three days at her cousin’s cottage on the north shore of
Lake Erie on Long Point Beach. We always get invited by her cousin and her husband
to join them for a few days when they are at their cottage for holidays. The
place is rented out a lot during the summer so Perry and Heather only have it
for a couple of weeks each summer. That’s when they invite us down to socialize
and have a few laughs. I remember telling you all about flying my kites on the
beach last summer and when they reached a significant enough altitude I cut
them loose to be carried with the wind to ….. wherever! Well, it’s been a year
now since I let the two go last year and they both had my e-mail address
attached to them in a water proof plastic baggie. I guess that nobody has ever
found either of them because I have never received an e-mail from a stranger
claiming to have found my kites. I guess they just landed in some rural area
where nobody has come across them as of yet. I’m still hoping that someone will
find them in the near future and contact me. It’ll be cool to hear the story of
their discovery, if and when!
We were
down to the cottage a few weeks back and the weather wasn’t windy enough to fly
my kites so I waited until we were down again this week. The wind wasn’t as
strong as I might have liked but it finally did pick up enough to take my kites
aloft! The first kite I sent up this week was simply a delta wing kite with the
picture of Spiderman on it. It was one of those kid’s kites that cost about $2
or $3 dollars. I took a magic marker and put my e-mail address on the wing and
sent her skyward. This time instead or blowing out of the southwest as it
usually does, the wind was out of the east/southeast and allowed me to let the
kite rise on a parallel with the shoreline and miss getting caught up in the
80’ high trees that line the beach of Long Point. I took my Spiderman kite and
let out a few hundred feet of line that came with the kite. That was all I had
tied to it during the first flight. After watching it flutter in the sky for
about a half hour, I asked the four other people on the shore with me (Carole,
Heather, her husband Perry and their friend Norm) if I should just let go of
the handle and see where the kite went and they all agreed that that would be a
fun thing to do so… I let it go! The wind carried Spiderman about a ¼ mile down
the beach and then it seemed to be caught up on something as it didn’t move any
further away for about the next half hour. Norm and I decided to take the Jeep
and head down the shoreline to see where the line was tangled up. We drove west
until we spotted the kite flying just west of the public beach area. I parked
the Jeep and we hoofed it down the beach. There was a couple sitting on a bench
in the sun and they said they’d been watching the kite for about a half hour.
When Norm
and I found the anchor spot for the kite line, it was stuck in a mound of wet
sand on the beach. I said to Norm that there was no way it could have stuck
itself there so I asked the couple on the bench. She said that a big man had
caught it as it went past him and had stuck it in the sand and walked away. I
guess he figured some kid has lost his kite and would come looking for it
sooner or later. He was RIGHT! The kid that owned the kite did come and find
it. LOL! Norm volunteered to walk back up the shoreline with the kite and meet
me back at the cottage. I drove the Jeep and he headed off toward the cottage.
I arrived at the beach about two minutes earlier than Norm. There he was
trotting along like a kid pulling a kite and we all had a really good laugh
about the adventure. After a few minutes and a drink to settle my nerves, I
decided to hook the kite to my reel with the 3+ miles of line on it and see how
high I could get it to rise. The Spiderman kite managed to take about 3,000 ft
of line off my big reel before it could no longer haul the weight of the line
up. It would only drag it through the water as I let more out. So, I decided to
reel a bit of it back in until it was rising on approximately a 30 degree angle
to the water level. Once I got to that point, I took out my snips and cut the
line for what I thought would be “goodbye” to Spiderman!
Well, we
all watched once again as the wind took the kite aloft and westward one more
time. The shoreline road on the other side of the public beach where the kite
had first “re anchored” continues for about two kilometers to a dead end. After
that, there is nothing but huge marsh for about another two miles, then once
again the mainland! The kite managed once again to catch the line on something
on the shoreline, probably wrapped itself around a tree branch or whatever. We
watched as the kite flew effortlessly in the wind at about a 3,000 ft
elevation. It was only about 1pm so I decided to try to get my “bi-plane” with
the 5’ wingspan up since the breeze now seemed to be a tad stronger than
earlier in the day. Perry brought it down from the cottage and we tied it to
the main line on my reel once again. We pulled out about a hundred feet of line
and let ‘er go! Up she went but was rocking back and forth a little too much. I
hauled it back down and added a little more tail in the form of strips of
plastic garbage bags. Once again we set her off in the breeze and I managed to
work it until it was a couple of hundred feet up where the wind was a little
stronger. She sailed quite well after that point and I walked about 150 feet
out into the water, up to my thighs so I could change the angle to the wind a
little. This seemed to help a bit too! I worked the bi-plane until I had about
3000 feet out on it and decided to cut it loose as well. It started to spin to
my right and I figured if I didn’t cut it loose it would hit the ground anyway.
So, I snipped the line and watched helplessly as she spiraled downward toward
the marsh about two kilometers to the west.
The
Spiderman kite was still holding steady at about 3000 feet in the air above
where the bi-plane bit the dust! We lounged around the beach for another couple
of hours and marveled at the fact that Spiderman was still flying high! As it
neared 5pm, we decided to head into the cottage for supper. Perry commented
that as long as the wind held and the line stayed caught on that tree or
whatever, the kite should still be there after supper. The wind along the
shoreline usually goes dead calm for a couple of hours after supper so we
figured the kite would die at that point. We headed in to the cottage and had a
fantastic BBQ supper and more laughs and conversation. It was nearing 7pm and
we were finished eating so Norm and I headed back down to the beach to see if
the kite was still aloft. To my dismay, Spiderman had either broken loose and
headed of into the wild blue yonder or the wind had died down enough that he
had fallen back to earth! Either way, he had earned his freedom as far as I was
concerned and I can only hope that someone will find him and the bi-plane and
contact me sometime with the details of the find.
That all
took place on Wednesday and Carole and I arrived home this afternoon (Thursday)
so it’ll probably not happen right away that someone will come across the
kites. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that it’ll happen before
winter and be a better outcome than the flights of last summer!
That
makes an unusual set of flying craft that I’ve cut loose and I’ll be very
disappointed if someone doesn’t find at least one of them. Last year I sent a
large Pirate Ship Kite up along with a Spiderman delta wing and this year it
was a 5’ wingspan “bi-plane” and a Spiderman delta wing so the should be easy
to spot if they landed anywhere near civilization!
Wish me luck!
That’s it
for this week folks!
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now…….Greg.
PS:
Something To Think About>
If you’re
in the area of the north shore of Lake Erie anytime soon, keep your eye’s
pealed for flying objects in the fields and surrounding areas!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
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