I learned a few new things about “preparedness”, for things that can wrong, on this flying trip to Hudson Island, BC. This post has some video of take-offs, features dead batteries, getting stuck in the mud, diverting to alternate airports due to low-lying fog, etc.
On the westbound first leg of the trip, while half-way over BC, we saw from the sky, this fog in all the valleys. It was also like this at the BC coast, covering the ocean completely.
So I couldn’t land initially at Hudson Island. In fact, I couldn’t land at Nanaimo either, and had to divert to land in Duncan BC. AND, although I was telling Victoria tower and Nanaimo Radio about my intention to change my flight-plan destination to Duncan, I didn’t remember to tell Pacific Radio. So I was a half-hour late closing my flight-plan, and I got a little lecture from them when I did.
Anyway, some interesting photos from this trip. Near Revelstoke, some Heli-Skiing tracks on a mountainside. The helicopter was just landing at the summit. First shown is the whole mountain, then a close-up of the tracks.
Duncan airport was tricky. I had to overshoot and go-around, to land on my second attempt. ( Here’s a video of someone else landing at Duncan, he was too low, whereas I was too high on my first attempt.)
We stayed overnight in a hotel, then…
Trying to start my plane in the morning, a misty day at 2 degrees C, I had trouble starting my plane. I think I flooded it, by using a “cold start” method that works great on the prairies, ( mixture set for normal flying, throttle minimum, gradually advancing throttle in ). I drained my battery, and needed to get a 24Volt boost, from some of the local Duncan pilots. THANK-YOU GUYS !! And this represents several of my “lessons learned”. I need to buy my own Cessna-compatible jump-start plugin device to carry on-board.
And, I need to use the “hot start” method more routinely, ( mixture set ultra-lean, gradually advancing mixture inward, while throttle is steady at slightly above idle setting).
Once the plane was boosted to life, I took off and landed on Hudson Island.
While taxiing on the ground to try to park the plane in a nook beside the grass runway, my nosewheel dug into some mud and became stuck.
Luckily some of islands other residents (also pilots) were there, and helped with shovels, and a “come-along”. I learned, that I NEED one of those at the Island, in case this happens again.
So finally, before you see the videos (below) of the take-off, I’ll mention that I had refuelled in Salmon Arm yesterday, and I was carrying some extra gas in the back seat. So we added that into the plane’s tanks, and flew all the way back to Camrose, Alberta. It was a 3hr 30 minute continuous flight to get home, with the help of some tailwinds 15-20 Knots most of the way.
Here’s a very grainy video of my plane becoming unstuck from the mud.
After becoming unstuck, here’s a video of my takeoff to leave Hudson Island.
And the same takeoff, from inside the airplane cockpit.
Oh, before I forget, we always seem to fly over Whistler ski resort. Here are a few pictures of that.
And here’s a short youtube video showing a beautiful panoramic view of the snow-covered mountains over BC. Aren’t the views out of the windows, spectacular?