Here comes the Cold!

The last week of November has brought (with much anticipation) the true Northern 'cool air' which this part of the world is best known for. Last weekend and the beginning of last week brought temperatures of 35 - 40 below without the wind. I thought it would be nothing, as I had already dealt with temperatures which were close to that, living in Montreal. The temperatures were pretty extreme, not to mention the wind and the blowing snow. It's business as usual here, regardless if it is 30C or -50C outside. The same duties must be completed both inside and outside regardless.

45 below at 5:30 AM on Monday Morning

My crew partner, Tom and I are pretty sure that in the past week, the two of have been spending more time outside than inside all day, and more so than usual. Maybe the other guys are smarter to get to the inside jobs first or what? ...regardless, the jobs must be completed.

As long as you have several layers, the cold doesn't reach the body so much, its more the outer extremities, like the fingers and toes. Even with a few pairs of fingered gloves on, they become almost useless up here, especially when fueling and holding the metallic nozzle: The cold finds its way through pretty quickly, which is why Mittens are essential. I bought the Rabbit Fur hat for fun on a field trip to Quebec City on a trip in Grade 8, but never thought I would really need. I have never appreciated a hat so much before; the fur does an amazing job at keeping everything warm.

Fueling well before the sun rises

By Thursday, the temperatures were in the high teens (-16ish) and it felt almost like spring. Comfortable (almost) sweater weather. This made a big difference for my truck: the beginning -of-the-week cold weather was so cold, it cracked my fuel filter, as I think some moisture may have froze in the lines. I was able to get some heaters in the engine, change the fuel filter and finally get it running by Friday! Hopefully I my car doesn't continuously give me little pain-in-the-ass problems like this anymore this winter!

I may have mentioned that the sun is sitting lower and lower in the sky a few weeks ago. Below is a fairly accurate representation at 12pm, noon right before lunch. It's directly south, however sitting just over the treeline. Days are getting much shorter and doesn't come up until about 9AM and it is now 3:45 and the sun has set already. On the bright side, less than a month until days start getting longer and longer!!


Below is a picture of me marshaling our Fort Smith - Edmonton Scheduled Daily flight. Communicating with the Captain that it is safe to start each engine, making sure there is nobody directly behind them, that there are no abnormal occurrences in the starting sequence and they they are cleared to move.

Dressing as warm as I can, in the blowing snow

Smokey and other Musings from this week

Smokey Hanging out atop one of the Light Fixtures in the Parts department at the top of Hanger 2

There has been a few who have asked about Smokey... so I figured I would do some more 'in depth' research on him. Smokey the hanger cat has been with Northwestern for about 8 years, and could be anywhere from 12-15 years old. He lives upstairs in the parts department, where it is pretty warm both in the summer AND winter (all the hanger's heat rises and makes it a sweatbox up there). He was picked up at the animal shelter to take care of their mouse problem, but when one of the ladies up there started bringing him canned salmon for breakfast most mornings, he has acquired a taste of the rich, and is leaving us to have to resort to mousetraps! (If someone brought ME Salmon every day, would be pretty happy too)

The ladies up there say he is deaf and that you have to tap on the floor to get his attention (funny he seems to hear me calling him). I think he may be outsmarting them and ignoring all the yapping that goes on up there!


This week has been averaging 30 below, with it being even colder before the crack of dawn! (It surely has made for some nice skies in the mornings and during the day!) We have also had a few visitors coming in and out. Wednesday brought in this 'sporty' helicopter which was in for fuel enroute from Yellowknife down to Saskatoon. I know very little about helicopters, but for some reason it doesn't seem practical to travel that way over such a large distance - He said it would take another 7 hours from his stop in Fort Smith.

The second visitor was the RCMP's aircraft which stopped in to do a prisoner transfer from one of the two jails in Fort Smith and bring him to Yellowknife. His hands were cuffed, then tied to his waist by a thick leather belt (I presume to stop him from getting anywhere if he tried to run). However, on a regular basis, RCMP officers escort people to go to court in Yellowknife on our AM scheduled run. This guy must have been too dangerous to to have to get his own aircraft sent for him.

Loading the Cessna 206 up to the brim for one of the many runs we do up to a small town in the Northwest Territories. Food and supplies, all the essentials

Irregular Operations

Well, the latter part of last week has been a bit of a different one.. (just like every other week, really). We had some very low level clouds and freezing fog which rolled through Fort Smith and hung around until mid-day on Friday.



All of the Jetstreams here at Northwestern are flown IFR (instrument flight rules), which allow the pilots to fly and navigate with their instruments only, without any visual reference to the ground. To transition from cruise to landing, they use instrument approaches, which uses various types of ground stations (depending on the type of approach) and sends signals to instruments to line the aircraft up with the runway and guide it with an appropriate rate of descent. Some Instrument Landing Systems are precise enough for some aircraft which have several auto-pilots to have the aircraft land itself on the runway. The approaches here, allow the pilots to be guided down to 350 feet off the ground, and at that point, if they do not have the runway insight, they have to execute a 'missed approach' - and go to their alternate airport until the weather clears.

All our flights left as planned on Thursday morning; however, when many of them tried to get back in that afternoon, many of them did not get visual contact with the runway and had to use their alternate, which was Yellowknife. Only one flight got lucky and most likely with a slight break in the clouds were able to get visual contact with the runway and proceed to land. This left us on the ground having to find other things to do, as the aircrafts weren't back to be cleaned or fueled.

The Friday morning our flight schedule was switched up completely, to fulfill all our daily scheduled flights using the 2 aircraft on the ground instead of the 5 we normally have flying. Aircrafts departing only need 1/2 mile of runway visibility to proceed with a takeoff, so the morning flights were able to leave, but the crews and aircrafts which overnighted in Yellowknife still had to rely on some luck that there would be a hole to breakthrough underneath the clouds to be able to actually make it in to land. After a few tries, fortunately all were able to make it in!

Two Scheduled flights, doing the abnormal routes to fulfill all our regular scheduled flights

This is the aircraft disappearing through the clouds less than 100ft above the runway

I spent most of Thursday afternoon, polishing engine spinners, to make them as shiny as a mirror

Below is a picture of one of the engineers replacing one of the landing lights in the wing of the Jetstream. Although it looks like an easy installation, every screw holding it in place must be measured exactly to a 10th of a millimeter, to ensure that it has the exact angle for the pilots to see in front of them at night.

Smokey the Hanger Cat causing trouble in the parts department

Pop, Pop, Pop Everywhere!

Last Thursday morning, all the guys working on the ramp, were properly trained on how to drive and maneuver the forklifts here at work. I thought I'd put up a picture or two from the end of my week (Friday), as it so coincidentally happened the day after everyone was trained to use them.

We received some cargo on Friday morning, destined for Fort Chipewyan in Northern Alberta. All of Fort Chip's food and supplies are flown in from either Fort McMurray or here. They are one of many isolated northern communities which is accessible by ice-road in the winter and air for the rest of the year. This makes things outrageously expensive as everything comes by 'air mail'.

Anyways, we had someone who does not work on the ramp, who decided to help unload the freight palate from the truck that Friday morning. Not being properly trained, as he took it off, the palate cracked in half and crashed to the ground! When I arrived to work that day, I spent 5 hours cleaning up after a 30 second mistake, which could have been avoided by waiting for someone who knew how to properly operate the lift! Luckily for me, it was about 10 degrees that day so it was nice to be outside and I didn't mind it! If it was colder it would have made for one large slushie!

Afternoon sun with the hanger doors open (probably was the last time for the next 7 months!)

A Typical Weekday Morning...

I've been working mornings for the past few weeks up here at Northwestern, and I've been asked a few times, and I figured I would give you the low-down on what exactly happens in the morning.

The Ramp guys are the first to show up in the morning 6 AM sharp: hours before the sun decides its time to get up! The first thing we have to do is get the aircrafts ready for the early morning schedules flights. Most mornings there are 3 flights, however it can range from 2-4 depending on the day of the week. After checking what has been cleaned and prepped from the night before, we set out pretty quickly to ensure that what wasn't done the night before gets finished before the pilots arrive. Making sure there is no snags (problems) with the aircrafts; that they are polished from nose to tail on the outside and vacuumed and disinfected with seat belts crossed on the inside.

The first crew shows up around 6:45 to do the preflight inspections; making sure the aircraft is airworthy. Once ready, its pushed outside to be fueled. In the mean time, the next crew arrives to check the next aircraft. We tow the first aircraft to the terminal to be loaded with bags, freight and cargo and is sent off. By that time the second aircraft is being fueled and the third crew arrives. The process goes pretty systematically and before you know it the last flight leaves around 8AM.

My partner cleaning the landing gear, while the First Officer is doing the preflight walk around

Aircraft being pushed out of the Hanger to be fueled

We head back down to the hanger to check the morning Charters, to see if there are any special flights, in which we would have to continue prepping other planes. If not, time for break! (Just kidding, there's never any time for breaks around here!) There are always random jobs to be done around the hanger, whether its testing the fuel in the Large fuel cells outside, sweeping or mopping the hanger or other general maintenance or chores.

Around 9:30, the first flight which we sent out to Yellowknife returns, in which we greet the aircraft, and unload its passengers, bags and cargo. Its fueled back up and cleaned inside very quickly before loading it back up to send off to Edmonton on the daily Sched.

After this flight leaves, there aren't any other flights departing or arriving Fort Smith until after 3, leaving plenty of time to do many of the odd jobs around the hangers or outside. This week, the company has just hired a new Captain, so we have spent a lot of time prepping and fueling aircrafts.

This morning we had some fog roll through, and although the aircraft fly on instruments, you need a certain minimum visibility for landing and taking off. The fog so thick that the distance you could see was less than 1/4 mile. Our Yellowknife return flight was delayed along with one of the several charters we do to the gold mines.

Maintenance had a chance to do some last minute work on the aircraft while we waited for the fog to lift

November Already?!

It's been a busy week, and time sure is flying by (It's the start of week 6 up here)! I shot few pictures of the sunrise this morning, which are below. I'm really curious about it, but I'm not sure whether its the dry prairie air or the lack of pollution which causes this outrageous sunrises and sunsets. Nowhere have I seen the sky such vibrant colours on a consistent basis (even on a cloudy day like today).
As you can see from the pictures, the white airplane in the foreground is off floats (oh yes, winter's coming!). It's now on wheels (looking a lot less intimidating without its large floats and will be put onto skis mid-December when there is about 6 inches of ice on the lakes and rivers for it to land on. Unfortunately since there is only a thin layer - too thick for floats, but too thin for skis, the smaller single engine aircraft's will be doing a lot of sitting around for the moment.

These single engine aircraft are also only certified to fly with passengers in the daylight hours under VFR Conditions (with visual reference to the ground), which means less flying in the winter as the short days are approaching rapidly. Its not before about 8:45 before the sun rises around here, and when it does, it sits fairly low in the sky. Its pretty hard to capture that on camera, but at mid-day you would think it was late-afternoon/ early evening by looking at how the sun is sitting next to the horizon. In another month, it will surely be even more pronounced!

This week, they are forecasting the weather to above freezing! I sure am looking forward to that as compared to the -10's we were getting last week! (This time last year, they had a foot of snow on the ground and it was 30 below for Halloween!!)
Above is a picture of me, fully decked out in my Highlighter orange jump suit, next to my new truck (I mentioned I bought truck right?!). Everybody has been giving me heat for wearing the winter coveralls, but I definitely prefer to be boiling hot than to be out freezing my buns off in the cold for 9 - 10 hours! This new beauty of a truck runs a little heavy on gas at times, but has been getting me to and from work without being chased by bears at 5AM!









Actually....

THIS is what the new truck looks like, sure saves a few bucks on gas (definitely not style though!)

Its a 1986 has only 175000kms and runs like a dream!

Last week, we had a few unfamiliar faces visit us here in Fort Smith, which I thought I'd share, as their journeys were rather odd. The first was Keewatin Air; a Beech 1900, which was chartered from Winnipeg to take two residents on a medevac flight up to Igloolik, Nunavut. Now for the most part, a 'Medevac' is usually an air lift from one place bringing them closer to civilization or a bigger city for medical attention (which you would imagine would be south-bound).

Anyways these two passengers and their medical supplies were loaded onto flight taking them 5 hours North of my position (which is much farther north than most of you!) a community of about 6-800 people.

This weekend, as I was glancing over the website www.avherald.com I recognized the registration (C-FJXO) which was the same registration that had earlier departed for Igloolik (http://avherald.com/h?article=432d1aff&opt=0). According to the report, on the way back to Rankin Inlet to reposition the aircraft. They encountered some serious crosswinds and were blown off the side of the runway!

The second unfamiliar face was that of Summit Air, another airline from Yellowknife, NWT. Now they don't normally fly into Fort Smith, but one of our Jetstreams had a mechanical (a minor problem with the aircraft, which must be fixed before it can fly again) in Yellowknife, after the early morning scheduled flight. Northwestern had to charter one of their aircrafts to bring back the passengers who were booked on our return flight from Yellowknife to Fort Smith, and subsequently fly our AME's (Aircraft Maintenance Engineers) up to fix the problem. Boy they must have been laughing!