Oh wait THAT is why I do this again...

[200hr Wonder]

It was a Saturday morning in the wonderful city of Calgary. The easter long weekend was upon us, I had give up a ruckus Friday night to go and watch movies with a friend. I had to be at the airport early on the Saturday of a long weekend. Driving down the freeway to Springbank I can see that even at 9:30 on Saturday morning the circuit is beginning to look like a three ring circus already. Great I am going to be stuck in it for close to three hours as my first student has a double booking and is in the circuit. Well at least I am flying right?

Throughly in a foul mood I pull into the parking lot at the flight school preparing my self to be professional and do a good job despite wanting to be just about anywhere but there. I greet my student, he has done the preflight, got 40gals of fuel on board and 4 hours of circuits ahead. Then I have a moment of clarity and say HECK NO. We are not going to go out into the circuit at YBW and fly wired strange shaped circuits because our down wind takes 8 miles out, our crosswind is thee miles to accommodate for traffic. We are taking our fuel, our plane and going somewhere else. So I pull out my hand chart, take a look and randomly choose High River for circuits. Being new to the area it would be my first flight out to High River. Following a quick briefing with my student about my plan to head to Hight River, our routing, uncontrolled airports and a few other things, we climb into the plane and blast the heck out of Springbank. We make the quick 20min or so flight over, join the circuit and get some good quality circuits with just a few other planes coming and going. I also notice on down wind that there is a small group of people on the apron just hanging out. So after an hour and a half of flying we call a full stop and land. We spend 20min stretching our legs and checkout the planes on the ramp at High River. There where Cessnas and Pipers of course, but also a couple of RVs, a Stamp biplane, and a few other home builts I did not recognize. My student's wife had came out and we chatted, got to chat to some of the planes owners as well. After our little rest break we once again headed into the circuit for another 45min of circuits followed by returning to the zoo. That put a nice smile on my face. Then my friends from out of town came in and we went for a tour of the foot hills, up to Banff and back down again. A little flying for the sake of enjoyment.

What a refreshing day! NOW I remember why I fly!

[unknowingly upsidedown]

i was out and about Saturday morning and I remember thinking to myself "self, sure looks like a nice day to go flying." Guess I was right. Way to improve the situation and maximize your students learning experience.

[Apache64_]

That's a great day flying. Good job on maximizing your student's time.

My Saturday consisted of departing YWG to YSK. Knew the weather wasn't great, but when we checked it was above minima, approach ban, and we had a good alternate, so off to the wild blue yonder. Half an hour out talking to the CARS operator he informed us the airport was closed as they were unable to maintain the runway anymore. Off to Moosonee we go. Fuel up and back to the peg. Great day for flying, and I managed to check out Moosonee. The cafeteria there smells great, too bad it was closed.


Cheers


Apache

[Rudy]

Sanikiluaq?

[Siddley Hawker]

Sanikiluaq?

Good place to be from.

[Ref Plus 10]

good ol YSK. I was there on Wednesday. Great carvings, like no other rock you'll find in the North. Woulda been great if we could have seen the place without a white out

Man I love my job

[TG]

ahhh, those carvings.
I know a place where whatever the size of it it's "150$"
"150$ !?"
"Yes, 150$"
"And this small one ?"
"150"
"Really !?"
"Yes, 150$"

Until we figured out that 150$ was the local price of beer (24 pack)

Man, I love my job

[skycoupe]

My morning consisted of last minute studying, then off to the sim to have the sadistic examiner see if us 2 monkeys up front were still qualified to pilot this chunk of aluminum around the skies.
V1 cuts, pre-V1 cuts, hydraulic failures, bleed leaks, flap jams .. oh what fun we had.
Every approach (precision, and of course non-precision) down to minimums, just to have another moose walk out onto the runway (didnt know there were that many moose in YYZ ) and have to do a low energy-overshoot with a mandatory engine fail.

Circuits in the foot hills sounds like a much nicer way to spend the morning.

Happy Easter