Another trip to the Untied Skates of Amurica

Here we are..........the DeHavilland Dash 8-100. Apparently, all of the interiors are being re-fitted with leather seats and new carpets. Personally, I think they are trying to make a 25 year old aircraft look new again. I guess it is worth a try.



This is a shot of the Detroit Metro Airport from about 8000 feet. I was actually a bit nervous going in here for the first time because it has 6 runways and is quite busy.


During the flight from Toronto to Detroit, I took some time to get acquainted with the airport through the diagram I have in my "special pilot book." You think it's confusing from the view from the airplane? I thought so too. Until I looked at my map....


Runways are black, taxiways and parking areas are grey and terminals are in the middle. Piece of cake!? How about this........As some of you may know, airport taxiways are given a letter of the alphabet. At an airport like this, when you get off the runway and call the ground controller he will say something along the lines of, "Dash 8 on Kilo......Taxi Foxtrot, Golf, Sierra, Mike, cross runways 32 and 15, taxi Whiskey to Apron 2 and call ramp control on 121.65." That, my friends, is why we have maps. However, we were in and out of there without any problems whatsoever and so far, I haven't been back.

I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Pittsburgh last summer. I had been twice before, but never in good weather. I got a beautiful view of the Appalachian Mountain ranges. Of course, the mountains were nothing compared to those out in BC, but these were different and neat to see.


The mountain ranges ran as far as the eye could see, each one being only a few thousand feet high and between each range were fertile farmlands scattered with little towns and villages. The mountains and valleys looked like ripples on the Earth.

Very cool.
What would a trip to the US be without seeing something nuclear? I know Canada has nuclear power plants but I saw many more on my way to Pittsburgh than I have ever seen in Canada.


Pittsburgh airport off in the distance below...


Final Approach into Pittsburgh. What a beautiful summer day in Pennsylvania.


The next picture is of Baltimore, Maryland. This is a busy airport but I have only ever used a very small part of it. My company almost always lands on the same runway, taxis to a gate close by and then taxis out to take off on the same runway we just landed on. Sometimes, I wish all airports were this easy.


This photo was taken last Spring on my way home from a trip to Baltimore. Almost all of the ice is melted on Lake Erie in the background and the wind has blown it all to the eastern shore where Buffalo can be seen. The river that trails off to the right is............

The Niagara river........leading toooo?


...Beautiful Niagara falls. I have now seen these falls from above and while standing right beside them. I must say they are far more magnificent from ground level. I have also seen the falls at night, while flying above them and the green lights that shine on the falls makes the mist glow green.



I have such a great view from my office window. Can you say the same?

So much time.........and nothing to do. However am I going to make the day pass?

I try to make the best of my lonely life of an airline pilot traveling to new places every once in a while. I was fortunate enough to have an especially long layover during my first visit to Halifax. Bremner told me that if I was ever in Halifax, I should go for a tour of the Alexander Keith's Brewery. The taxi driver, on the way into town, said it was a long way from my hotel so I decided against going for a visit. Apparently it wasn't that far as I came across this sign in my travels.


They make a point of telling every one during the tour that the worn cement block at the bottom right of the arch was caused by wagons, years ago, transporting beer out of the brewery. The tour was interesting. It was a theatrical tour taking us back to the 1800's and describing how Alexander Keith got the whole thing started. Each sailor in Halifax harbour was rationed 4 gallons of beer a day. That is a ration? 45 cans of beer a day is just a ration? I would say there was a pretty good market for beer in Halifax. The whole theatrical tour was great with all of the costumes, decor and script, but the 52" Plasma TV's were a bit out of place.

This is a picture of the gift shop with the brewery tanks overhead. They sell beer in the gift store!! How fun is that?


Apparently this is the Keith's slogan. I drink more Keith's living out here than I ever did in BC. Pil still rules the world out in BC I guess...

Down in the basement is Alexander Keith's office. Pretty fancy!


There is a little restored pub and lounge area where sailors would play games with dice and cards and gamble their fortunes away............or beer....???

Luckily, the tour included a wench to serve us beer. Whew!!! I would have felt ripped off otherwise.


Two complimentary glasses of beer were included in the tour. I had one glass of Keith's India Pale Ale and one of their new brand, Keith's Red. Both were yummy, naturally. We're talking about beer here.

Cheers!!!.......and a few Maritime pub/sailor songs and we....................

...were led out through an old tunnel to the exit......which of course is the gift shop. One of my biggest pet peeves.


I ended up working with a guy who makes all of his own wine and beer. As I am into wine making it was an interesting couple of days getting pointers from this guy. He knew of a Micro-brasserie in Iles de la Madeline. We figured we should go since we were staying there. It was very small but they did have tours......only in French. I passed on the tour.

Here is a look at a display of the ingredients used in their beer making.


This picture below was a first for me. I have never seen a set of beer taps over a bathtub like sink. Very unique. The taps weren't your typical draft taps either.


They looked like they were made from household plumbing supplies that you could pick up at Home Hardware.


Lots of different beer bottles. They were almost all French brands that I have never heard of. I guess I have some catching up to do!


There were more beer bottles on display up in the pub. The pub itself was quite small, seating less than 40 people. There were about 10 different types of beer made at this particular micro-brasserie. Some were your typical ales and some were very unique blends. One was jet black and 11% alcohol. Not for the likes of me.

And that, my friends, is how I pass some of my down time, away from the airplane and the airports. I'm such a lucky beer lover.

Stimulator

Here is where it all takes place. This is a level D simulator. The software used makes things pretty real. When I look out the windows, I can see that the aircraft is parked at gate 23 in Montreal. It is as good as the actual airplane would be to train on. I did all of my training in this Sim and my first actual flight with passengers was my first time flying the actual airplane. Pretty scary, isn't it?


The view looking out the left side of the cockpit is more of Montreals' airport.


When we get out of our seats and look in, it looks identical to flight deck of the airplane.


As we step further back we can see the simulator instructors seat. He has two touch screen displays that he can manipulate the simulator with. He can place us at any spot in any airport, that is in the simulator database, in a matter of seconds. Any fault or emergency can be set and reset and any type of weather can be activated. The instructor also plays the roles of Flight Attendant and Air Traffic Controller. Our route is also plotted out on one of his screens so he can choose how and where to send us in order to follow the training syllabus.

Last time, my training was done during a flight from Montreal to Ottawa with a system failure en route requiring an emergency return to Montreal. Next week, I do a flight from Victoria to Vancouver, but we are unable to land, so we head to our alternate airport which is Kelowna. There we end up with a gear malfunction and have to sort out that emergency while the plane ends up very low on fuel. Sounds like fun, no?.


Another computer generated view of Montreals' Gate 23 from the simulator cockpit.



It's pretty incredible how realistic it all is.

Happy Valley Goose Bay

I was fortunate enough to do a few charters trips last summer giving me a break from the exciting world of scheduled flying. We had to pick up Air Cadets from a few cities in the east and bring them to 14 Wing Military base in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. My first flight left at dawn and it was beautiful flight up from Halifax. We flew across Cape Breton Island, across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the rocky, fjord-ridden, western coast of Newfoundland to St. Anthony. I don't have too much else to say because there was only an airport.........on a rock......with some little lakes nearby.



Here is the magnificent landscape of northern Newfoundand, near St. Anthony. Absolutely nothin!


Oh......I do see a hill. That's it! We loaded up our Cadets and we were off.

Then we arrived in Goose Bay......Happy Valley Goose Bay, that is. For those of you that know anything about it, I am sorry to be so surprised as to what is here...

This airplane is truly a thing of beauty. Le Dash-Huit, as we call it here in Quebec. This is the Dash 8 100 model and I actually fly a 300 model as well, which is longer and holds a few more passengers.


Looking eastward, this is the mouth of the Churchill River that flows into Lake Melville which in turn flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

Looking to the West, the Churchill River meanders through the rocky landscape of Labrador to the coast.


Well, finally the goods about this place. Goose Bay was a very important military airport during the Cold War. Many countries used it as a staging area for whatever their needs may have been. This photo is of a retired Avro Vulcan. It was a subsonic nuclear bomber used by the RAF from 1953 to 1984 when it was retired from service. Only 136 were built and only one operates to this day. Maybe this one was was tired after all of it's work and decided to skip the trip home and stay here......forever.



There are acres and acres of paved parking for airplanes. I was absolutely amazed that an airport of this size was here. The terminal is tiny but that is not what the airport was built to serve.


There are massive hangars all over the base. Until only a few years ago, many countries would bring their military planes here and practice, high speed, low level flying. It was quite a busy military airport for many years after the Cold War.


This is a DC-3 and is somewhat of a common sight to see the further north a person travels, but not this particular one. Instead of radial engines, this one has gone through a turbine conversion. Kind-of a rare sight and actually quite exciting for us pilots.


Finally we arrived at 14 Wing Greenwood. There were half a dozen P-3 Auroras parked on the ramp. The last time I saw a P-3 was back out on the west coast in Comox, BC.

And so we come to the conclusion of my trip to Happy Valley, Goose Bay.

things seen from above

Loring Air Force Base in Northern Maine. This was a SAC base back in the day. Bomb storage bunkers can be seen to the left of the runway. I don't believe it is an active base anymore and I have never seen any aircraft there.

The picture doesn't really do it much justice but this is a huge hole in the middle of Quebec City. I often fly over this hole on the appraoch to runway 24. It may have something to do with the Canadian Shield but cities out here have huge mines in the centre of town. If it was BC they would be filling them with garbage no doubt.



Montreal hosted the Rogers Cup for tennis this summer. I remembered that Pauline was glued to the TV for this week and thought I should snap a picture for her. I was watching it too Pauline, but I only got about a 20 second view each time and the players were soooo small.


Something none of us see very often anymore is a drive-in movie theatre. Well, in Montreal they have 5 or 6 screen one. I couldn't figure out what this was for the longest time. I had never noticed it before, but since there was a runway closure in Montreal for a few months we departed a different way and this allowed me to see this ancient wonder.








On a late summer afternoon in Ottawa there was a bunch of hot air baloons scattering the sky. I have always wanted to do a flyby to one of these but I think that may be frowned upon by my employer,