|
The
Squamidian Report – Nov.23 / 24
Online
Versions
Of This And Past Issues Issue
#1174 The Ontarion Russ Nova Scotia Sus Doug
****
From Greg – The Ontarion
Hello everyone: With these few sunny days we have left of reasonable weather it time to finish all the outdoors readiness for winter! As much as I hate the thought of it, it’s coming soon! Adam cut the grass for the last time this morning and did the fertilizing of the lawn for the winter season too! Once the garden hoses are drained so as not to freeze, there’s just the packing of summer stuff in the shed and we’ll be all set for the cold ahead! Then, it’s just a matter of touching out the winter ahead! We’re used to being house bound so I’m sure we will handle the cold to come! The winters and other seasons are changing climate so, maybe this coming winter won’t be as severe as in the past! It would be nice to have a mild one for a change! If I was half the age I am, it wouldn’t bother me as much! However, old age seems to affect how one feels with the change of seasons. At least on warm sunny days I can get out for a walk and not have to worry about walking on icy walkways! However I do have my treadmill for winter use so I can still get the exercise I need! With Christmas around the corner, there’s lots of decorating to do and Carole likes to do so just after Remembrance Day so, we won’t be idle this coming weekend with all that to do! There is always a different project to work on! With what seems to be a monthly occasion change there’s always something to look forward to do and most times enjoy! We’ve got many such occasions to celebrate over the winter so hopefully they’ll make the winter pass quickly! In years gone by by, we had the snow sledding activities with Adam as a young lad to enjoy! Even as adults we liked to ride downhill like we were one of the youngsters! I’m afraid those days are now in the past but generate good memories though! Those memories keep one’s mind active and in doing so serve an important purpose! They say “youth is wasted on the young” and that becomes more apparent as we age! However, keeping the mind active as we age keeps one young at heart so that’s one way to maintain our youth! With that said, I’ll sign off for this week and wish you all good health and good cheer! Take care and write in to the squamidian if you have a good story to contribute! Bye for this week……all the best…. Greg. ****
From Russ
Not to worry..... As I slowly peddle along the mostly gravel roads here in Point Clark, I can't help but wonder what is happening to our white cedar trees? Is it a 'blight' of some kind threatening to send the cedars the way of the ash trees? The Point has lost so many ash trees to the emerald ash borer that the cedars catch one's eyes more readily. I have before me two colored pictures; one from The Kincardine News, the other in my sharp, old, mind - I wish I could send you a picture so you could understand our concerns about the condition of our friendly white cedars. "When is an evergreen not an evergreen?" Let's be honest, evergreens are not forever green, which is why we should call them conifers. Whether we like it or not, as a normal part of a conifer's growth cycle, evergreens will experience a certain amount of needle drop. Not to worry. The amount of needle drop varies from species to species, and weather conditions are also a factor. Our local cedars are 'conifers', but they don't have needles to shed. What then, do they shed? They shed branchlets rather than needles. Early in the fall the branchlets turn bright orange, slowly fading to dull yellow and brown as winter threatens. The stubborn little pelters hang on to their branchlets until winter wind, in this land of the "horizontal snow" knocks them to the ground. In spring, you will notice 'new growth' filling the spots where dead brachletes were kicked-off by Old Man Winter. Environmental factors are to blame if needle drop is heavier than usual. So "don't worry - be happy" In nature, Mother N. lets nothing go to waste - dropped needles improve tree health - serving as "mulch", becoming "plant food" for the trees above. Russ PS Credit the Kincardine News for reference. Addendum to "Don't worry" What follows is an 'after-thought' to my article on the poor condition of our white cedar trees. In giving us said trees Mother Nature has thought of everything! First of all they are beautiful year-round - with Christmas coming, and our annual wish for a 'white Christmas', when fresh, clean, white snow covers the cedars and other conifers - no man can copy the breath-taking beauty we behold! "Only God can make a tree and endow it with millions of snowflakes where no two flakes are identical!!!" Along with their beauty, the cedars provide shelter for animals and birds when "wind-chills" are fierce. And when food is scarce, the cedars provide seeds that can be found under the snow beneath the trees. Rabbits, deer, and birds are nourished for "free". Mother Nature, or is it God who has "thought of everything"?
Russ ****
From Nova Scotia Sus
Every fall we travel around the towns near us to collect bags of leaves for our composting. The towns have special days where the trucks go around and pick up leaves from properties. Where we live our trees are mostly Spruce or fir and only a few maples that don't add up to collecting. One of our stops in town is a friend of mine who has the largest maple trees I have ever seen. She has at least 3 truck loads for us every year. She does all the work of raking and bagging and then stores them in her garage until we can pick them up. She saves us lots of time and we really appreciate her effort and she thanks us so much for taking her leaves. We have 2 large bins for composting and we add leaves to the bin so there is no smell that would attract raccoons or bears. Even with all that effort the bins do get knocked over by animals occasionally. We also use leaves to cover our gardens and in the chickens outside pen. So leaves are very important to us. November has been a very wet month with almost no sunshine. Our summer was beautiful but now we need the rain to fill up the wells before winter hits.
Sus ****
From Doug
Hi…. I guess its an ‘age’ thing but I tend to wake up way too early each morning, often around 4am. Sometimes I manage to drift back to sleep until 5. Not much I can do about that. Its a hold over from a decade and a half ago when I still had to get up early each day for work. Anyway, as I lay there around 4am on Tuesday morning, the sound of some stupid and annoying loud vehicle crept into my consciousness. It sounded almost like a snow plow going up the street. How silly. Then, about 5, I gave up pretending to be asleep and looked out the window. Well, hokey toot, it had been a snow plow and the street had been plowed. It had snowed during the night. Only an inch or so but enough to make things slippery if it got driven on. Its very hilly here so slippery is not a good thing. So, after breakfast I shoveled my driveway for the first time this season. Snow at this elevation and this early in the season won’t last long but it spurred me into finding the snow shovels and firing up the snow blower which spends the summer under the back deck. So, the shovels are out, the blower is checked over and sitting in the garage. May not see snow again for another month or may get dumped on any day but now we are ready. By the way, there is lots of new snow up in the mountains. * Every once in a while I catch one of the TV re-runs of that ‘Ice Road Pilots’ program, the one where that rather miserable company to work for called Buffalo Airways flys those old D3’s etc out of Yellowknife NWT. In this episode of the program a crew had to fly one of their planes up to Sachs Harbour on Banks Island in the Canadian high arctic to pick up a load of frozen Musk Ox meat. Cool. I figured it might be interesting to fly around in that area in my computer simulator. So, I did. I repositioned my simulated Cessna to that airstrip, CYCS. Its an MOT gravel strip arctic airport with night capability which is a good thing because at this time of year it doesn’t get any lighter out than it would be here at a late dusk or twilight time of day. As for it being gravel, all airport runways up there are gravel, there would be no way of paving them and if they could, the pavement would not withstand the winter conditions. As well, it’s good thing that I can simply ‘re-position’ my location within the simulator because it would take hours in real time for a small Cessna to fly to there from anywhere else, making it out of range in real life. So, with the sim program started and the location set at CYCS, I got ready to fly. Had to turn on my taxi and landing lights as it was almost dark as stated earlier. This location is on an Arctic Island and right near the shore of the Arctic ocean. As I took off and climbed up to circuit hight I noticed some ship’s lights way out on the water and flew over to check them out. It was a simulated carrier fleet. The sim has those because several of the available planes are military aircraft that could and would land on an aircraft carrier. Again, cool. I’ve done that 3 times before in the sim. Its very difficult and tricky to pull off. I’ll explain that shortly. As I few closer to the carrier I could see its direction of travel and adjusted my heading to parallel it, then flew on ahead and turned 180 degrees to put myself on the equivalent of a down wind circuit leg. I then came around and got lined up for the landing deck. Now, keep in mind its almost dark so its hard to see, and, landing on the carrier is going to be very tricky. Here’s why. Aside from being both very short and very narrow, the landing deck is on an angle in relationship to the rest of the ship, you can see that in the screen shot below. The ship is cruising fairly fast and so the landing ‘strip’ is actually moving sideways as the ship moves away from the viewer, from left to right. Approach speed therefore must be higher than when landing on a solid ground runway, and the sideways movement is very tricky to accounted for. Its similar but not the same as a stiff cross wind. In this screen shot I have a heading of 150 degrees, almost south toward where the sun still shines on the world. The carrier is right ahead of me but moving to my right. You can see its wake which gives a good clue as to its direction and highlights the difference in ship direction and landing deck direction. My airspeed is 70 knots (probably should have been about 80 knots) and I’m holding 500 feet of altitude as I try to catch up with the ship and struggle to stay in line at the same time. My closing speed was probably around 50 knots (my airspeed minus the ships forward speed). A higher closing speed would have helped reduce the effects of the sideways movement.
I’ve just pulled off my best carrier landing yet (my 4th in the sim in a plane that would never be permitted any where near an aircraft carrier) and have turned around on the deck and taxied back to the rear of the landing deck. Simulated taxiing on a simulated carrier deck feels weird. I’m showing an HUD screen shot in order to make it easier to see the ship’s deck which is a lot shorter than a normal runway. The only way my sim Cessna can pull off a take off from one of these decks is to use ‘short field’ takeoff procedures and to take advantage of the ships movement which creates a good head wind although you still have that cross wind component. That same head wind is what makes it possible for the Cessna to land on that deck. My simulated Cessna can not take advantage of the arrester cables that a military jet would use to get stopped, and can’t use the takeoff catapults that launch the jets into the air. With some flaps set and full throttle, the brakes are released. It took the full length of the deck to reach the required 60 knot airspeed in order to get airborne but it worked quite nicely. Ground speed (in this case deck speed) would have been well below takeoff airspeed but its only airspeed that maters when taking off. Incidentally, if you noticed my altitude in this shot (green numbers on the right) while I’m on the deck, its about 100 ft ASL meaning the carrier deck is a hundred feet above the water. Wow.
After the exciting and successful takeoff I climbed to 750 ft and headed back for CYSY which was by this point north of my location. I’m probably about 5 miles out from the field but you can see the airport lights in the distance. Again, this is mid day, local time, but because of the latitude and time of year, there is not much daylight but that's ok because I really enjoy night or near night flying. More fun and more challenging that daylight VFR. And yes, in case you are wondering, I landed quite nicely back on the gravel strip.
Doug ****
Have
a
Good One ****
|
