Back In The Air, then Back to Banff

Saturday morning, I got up nice and early to make a cooked breakfast for everyone. In his spare time, Hutch makes his own English-style sausages for the soldiers on the camp, and I cooked those up for breakfast. Along with bacon, toast, beans, and scrambled egg which I over-did for once :( We received a phone call from Craig at about 9:00- unfortunately, it seems like his Cessna has been snowed in and he'll need to dig it out. He said he'd go down and take a look, and give me a call when he knows what the situation is.

Luckily, the weather is very warm and the sun out at last, so he called again about an hour later to say that it's been cleared and I should be down at the airport by 11:30. Hutch offered to drive me in with my bags (since Craig would drop me off at the Greyhound depot after our flight), and we spent half an hour in the library, since we were going to look at the museum but curiously, it was closed.

At 11:30 we met Craig at the airport, and he showed me to his plane. It is a Cessna 150 from 1967, blue in colour, but unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it... Craig's father had bought it shortly before he was born, and it's the only plane Craig has ever flown. He was in the unusually lucky position of being able to take his flight training in his own aircraft which made the whole procedure a lot cheaper. Also, since he's always been based at Medicine Hat, he knew the area intimately and a map was not necessary. We went over the pre-flight checks, pulled it out of the snow, then strapped ourselves in. Before long, we were back-tracking down the runway to take off into a blue sky with a light 10kt wind blowing straight down Runway 210. Power on, keep the nose on the centreline, and we were soon above 80 knots and Craig was gently raising the nose off the ground.



Medicine Hat airport

We climbed up to about 500' above the ground, then followed the road west out of Medicine Hat to Hutch's house, which I said we'd buzz so that I could take some photos for them. Craig was really throwing the plane around the sky, but I was impressed with it's responsiveness and Craig was obviously not without skill. We then climbed away to fly over the valley, and Craig gave me control of the plane and I started ridge-soaring the downwind end of the valley... He was very interested in gliding, and I showed him that, although the plane and engine were trimmed to fly level when the wind was still, as I flew in the turbulent air on the downwind side of the valley the vertical speed indicator was showing that the plane was ascending. He then asked me about thermals, so I showed him the type of turn we would perform if we were in a thermal. We left the valley, but still we were meeting thermals so I showed him that the bumps we were feeling raise one of our wings would give us a bit of a lift if we turned towards them. Most of the time, a powered pilot would just automatically correct these 'upsets', whereas a glider pilot will try and exploit them to gain energy. But it's not like we could thermal in a Cessna doing 80kts...



The Hutchinsons' not-so-little house on the prairie

The little plane, due to it's short wingspan, required very little rudder in the turn and Craig told me that while in gentle turns the rudder was often not necessary. It was a lot harder to sense what the plane was doing, with the vibration and noise of the engine masking the subtle nudges and sounds that we look out for when we fly gliders. But it was easy to fly and forgiving to someone who'd not done much powered flying.

After I flew us as close as possible to Suffield where Hutch worked (the only restricted airspace before Calgary), Craig took over again and spotted a freight train leaving towards Calgary. So he flew lower, and faster, until we were pretty much flying alongside it. We soon overtook it and got a wave from the guards- something that you definately couldn't do in England! After overtaking that train, Craig pulled up and pointed us towards Medicine Hat, and I took over and climbed as we approached the city. Although we were flying over wilderness for most of the flight, there was still lots of evidence of human activity. Even in the middle of nowhere, people have put up fences, planted crops and installed oil and gas pumps. It was reassuring to see that it wasn't so bare as I thought it was, since there was a bit of a clearance around Highway 1, which the Greyhound had driven in on.



Racing the train!

As we approached the city, I showed Craig how to spot an inversion, marked on these blue days by being the top of the haze. Since this is the height that the thermals stopped, I also showed him that the air got a lot smoother as we climbed above it. We reached Medicine Hat when we were more than 3000' above the ground (5500' above sea level), and Craig took over to give me a tour of the city as we descended and positioned ourselves for approach and landing. With the Cessna, as the speed is reduced and the engine idling, there's a lot of drag so no flaps or airbrakes are needed on the approach. Craig greased the landing, then taxied us back to his spot. He shut the plane down, we pushed it back off the taxi-way, and tied it down again. He drove me back to the the city and to the bus terminal, and dropped me off. I thanked him and even offered to pay for some of the fuel, but he declined. I think he was pleased to have had an excuse to fly instead of help Cheryl re-decorate their kitchen!



Medicine Hat Mall, spiritual home of the city's youth...

While waiting for my bus, I grabbed a Taco Salad (a delicious invention I have discovered out here) then boarded the bus. Finished the food, music on, lights off, and doze for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I felt very glad that I'd made sandwich from the left over bread and sausage at breakfast! A swap at Calgary onto the Vancouver bus to take me to Banff, as I read my Stephen King book, and shortly after 8:00 I was back in Banff. Sunshine Village's gondola was long closed, so after a bit of shopping I crashed on my favourite couch in town.