PIREP - Pelee Island

Better late than never. We had great weather for Labour Day this year. Pelee Island airfield was having a fly-in breakfast and under the wing camping. My wife Carolyn loves camping and I was eager to try combine the experiences of flying and camping for a win-win event. Well organizing then family proved a bit difficult... and we got away to late for the breakfast. But we did get away & had great flight down in nice weather.

One of the great destinations for pilots in the South Western Ontario region is Pelee Island. Over 300km from CZBA, it will take the better parts of a day to drive there and take the ferry over to the island. But, for the pilot at 135 Nautical miles & in my case a Cardinal RG and we are looking at being there in a little over an hour from Brantford CYFD. There is about a 10nm over water portion so you will want to get to good altitude for glideability.

Pelee Island is the most southern part of Canada and home to the Pelee Island Winery. On arrival we taxied over to the grass, unloaded the plane and set up a camp. Several other pilots did the same. Rental bikes were delivered to the airport & we were set to tour the island.(Book the bike rentals at 519-724-2828)

First stop was the winery—where we had lunch and sampled some of the wine. This is not a great destination for day trips—overnighters are recommended so you can try the wine. The food at the winery is “do it yourself”, they have a pavilion where you can buy steaks and hamburgers, salads etc.. and about 20 barbeques for you to cook on you don't need to bring anything. This weekend they also featured live music.

The Island has many nice white sand beaches & Lake Erie is very warm, the kids loved swimming at the beach. There are also several nice nature hikes. There are a number of restaurants as well. If you are not a camper, I’d recommend trying one of the bed and breakfasts on the island. There are two campsites on the island - but neither of them looked all that great. They would have drinking water and showers (the airport doesn't). But not many other facilities - so the attraction over free at
the airfield wasn't all that great. You can comfortably ride a bike round the island in half day

We stayed two nights, and flew back on Monday morning. The kids were back at school the next day– so we needed to get organized. If you have never been to Pelee Island then you should put it on your list of flying destinations for next year, One word of warning, they often have boil water advisories due to the dry conditions and there are not many shops on the island so bring a few bottles of water. With a smidgen of planning - you can have a great long weekend in a very beautiful part of Ontario.

www.peleeisland.com

www.pelee.org

www.navcanada.ca/ContentDefinitionFiles/Publications/AeronauticalInfoProducts/CanadianAirportCharts/CanadianAirportCharts_current.pdf

PIREP - Sault Ste. Marie

Well summer is over and I am getting used to this whole blogging idea. I did get some of my list of trips completed. First the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Museum:

I was joined by my friend Charlie Luz flying to Sault St. Marie on June 23rd. The trip was made in Cessna Cardinal RG C-FAKQ and took about 2 hours 15 minutes.

The weather was great with unlimited ceilings, as we flew over Manitoulin Island and through some US airspace. Manitoulin Island looks like a great spot for a visit, I do hope to go to Gore Bay or Maniltoulin east in the future. The controller at the Sault was very friendly clearing us for a straight in landing when we were 30 miles out!

Renting a car for $35 for the afternoon was a cheaper option than taking the taxi. We went for lunch at Muio’s restaurant which is a Sault fixture. The Bushplane Museum is excellent. It has an great collection of Canadian Bushplanes. All the classics are there the Norseman, Beaver, Otter, and many rare plane from Canada’s aviation history. This museum is a must see for any aviation enthusiast. The airport is more like a "real" airport than a GA airport, though there are no landing fees. A longer stay would have been nice - you can take the train from the Sault to the Agawa Canyon - I'm sure this would be a cracker in the fall.

Spring is Coming!

It is time to start planning all those nice cross country flights that I would like to do! Here is my list of places to fly. I hope that it will be possible to make a dent in it this year. I'll file some Blogs as I get to any of them.

• Pelee Island, spend a long weekend there do some camping, biking, and taste the wine.
• Sioux Ste. Marie, to visit the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Museum http://www.bushplane.com/
• Kincardine, for a day at the beach and some great fish and chips
• Owen Sound, to visit the Billy Bishop Museum
• Killarney, for some more great fish and chips (usefull load check required at this point)
• Cleveland, fly to the waterfront airfield and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Rockliffe, to visit the National Aviation Museum
• Montreal, fly into St Hubert and visit the Jazz Festival
• Elmhirst, http://www.elmhirst.com/index.html for a great brunch

Any other good suggestions?

Steve

Check Out on Type

Saturday and the weather wasn't looking great, but I drove down to Brantford airfield in hope that it would clear. I took C-FAKQ out of the hangar for the first time. The plane started nicely and I taxied over to the Flying Club to wait for Mark, my instructor who was going to give me a check-out on the type.

It was a bit windy, but with CYFD having 3 runways, it's usually down one of them. Today it was almost right down 29. I was a bit anxious, because this was going to be my first flight in my plane. Was I going to like it, will it be as good as I hoped? Did we make a good choice in the type, is it going to be reliable? As I taxied out to do the run-up, the weather still looked a little dodgy, it could be a short flight.

I rolled down the runway and felt the back of the seat pushing me and the plane up. The 200HP fuel injected engine sure makes this plane want to fly. I've mostly flown the C-172 and more recently the Cutlass RG which is 180hp. I climbed out on this cold crisp morning at 1450fpm. We headed west and found the clouds to be scattered, "let's climb up above them," Mark said and the plane began to show it's pedigree. Shortly after we were at 5500' and had sunny blue skies above. We went through a series of air work to get familiar with the plane. There were two remarkable things that I noticed about the Cardinal RG. The first was how responsive it is to the aerolons and to pitch. Compared to a normal 172 you feel you have much quicker control of the aircraft. Secondly, the visibility of the type, no struts to get in the way, no wheels, even good upwards visibility for the pilot. The hour and half went by very quickly and I wrapped up after doing several touch and go landings. I still can't get the grin off my face. Here's hoping for blue skies aboe tomorrow.