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!