”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.
The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.
NO FLIGHTS OF FANCY THESE – PART 2
“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible”
Simon Newcomb (1835 – 1909)
The de Havilland Beaver has long worn the title of the “king” of bush planes, an honour not completely underserved in view of its still vibrant life and usefulness today in the 21st century, long after the first planes came off the production line and underwent initial flight in 1947. With its thick wing and 450 horsepower radial engine, wheeled versions could take off and clear a 50 foot obstacle in not much more than 300 metres while carrying a load of nearly a tonne and flying as slow as 60 miles per hour. The Beaver’s principal fame however, came when configured with floats or skis, and later wheel/floats or wheel/skis. With this versatility and its short takeoff and landing capabilities the Beaver became the principal lifeline in supplying the survey, mining and forestry crews of northern Canada. Endurance, dependability and ruggedness were the hallmarks of the Beaver. Over the years 1,962 Beavers were built and exported to 62 countries. Some 900 of these were purchased by the U.S. military. Many of those were used in Korea during the Korean War. The last few Beavers were built as Turbo Beavers, a turbo-engine aircraft with a slightly larger fuselage and improved load capacity and performance. Many older Beavers have also since undergone the conversion to turbo engines.
In spite of the Beaver’s deservedly widespread fame, I view its cousin, the de Havilland Otter as the greatest bush plane ever built. First flown in 1951, only 466 were built from then until 1967, with the U.S. military once again attracted to its capabilities in purchasing a third of the total production. The Otter was everything the Beaver was, and a lot more. With its 600 horsepower Wasp radial engine, it could carry nearly twice the load of a Beaver while having essentially the same short takeoff and landing performance. With its double slotted flaps, the Otter actually had a slightly lower stall speed than the Beaver. Like the Beaver it could be equipped with wheels, floats or skis and was bigger and slightly faster. This allowed it more versatility, be it as a bush plane, remote community passenger plane or air ambulance. In similar fashion to the Beaver, many Otters have undergone a conversion to the turboprop engine, giving the plane a sleek, shark-nosed profile that belies its underlying age. Harbour Air of Vancouver, if not the largest operator of converted Otters in the world, must be right up there in that category.
Unfortunately, in the process of this engine conversion, the Otter lost one of its most enduring, and for me appealing aspects, that being the sound of that original Wasp radial engine. Over the years there have been certain sounds that have provided me a singular definition of an environment., For example, if I close my eyes and hear the particular sound of a diesel motor, I immediately think I am in Britain or continental Europe where diesel trucks predominate and create their particular cacophony of sound in the streets of the cities. Similarly, every time I hear the sound of an Otter’s original radial engine, I am inexorably drawn back to the memory of my early years in the bush, where after six month or so of isolation and hard work, I would sit on the shores of a lake, surrounded by the remnants of a bush camp, and along with my companions, anxiously await the arrival of a bush plane to take us back to civilization. All ears were strained to first hear the sounds of that plane long before it hove into sight. In the case of the Otter, its engine had a unique, unforgettable knocking sound, a “toka-toka-toka” that identified it to every member of the field party awaiting transport back to the familiarity of their normal lifestyle. It is a sound I have never forgotten, and one that perhaps has never been personally exceeded in the thrill of anticipation it brought to a very “bushed” geologist.
All in all, the end result of both their attributes and drawbacks is that bush planes were built to safely transport significant loads of people and supplies into a wide variety of remote locations and under equally variable and usually complicated conditions. In this they have admirably fulfilled their promise.
Getting Up and Down
Question: What goes up a drainpipe down and down a drainpipe up?
Out in the boonies away from airport control towers, meteorological offices, weight scales, emergency standby vehicles, flight plan filings, and other paraphernalia, processes and people so recognizable at your local airport, getting up and down in a float or ski plane can be an experience ranging from fun to fearful. Perhaps this is what attracts bush pilots: the variety of challenges and circumstances under which they must get from point A to point B in one piece.
There are a number of factors that must be considered when preparing a bush plane for takeoff no matter what configuration of landing gear it might have on at the time. The weather of course is number one. On more than one occasion have I been part of a go, or no go decision based on everyone peering intently in the intended direction of flight to see what conditions looked like and whether the cloud ceiling seemed high enough to permit the flight to be made. Also, on more than one occasion, and including my own experiences as a pilot, has a sudden turn in the weather, be it a sudden squall of some sort or icing of the wings, necessitated a quick retreat back down onto the nearest lake or piece of flat ground to await the return of flyable weather. It has been my experience that winter flying has often been preferable to that in summer. When nice large cold fronts settle into an area, the air is dense and stable, providing a solid, smooth ride. This compares to the summer over the lake rich terrain of northern Canada in particular, where sudden squalls and the thermal drafts arising from the difference in heat absorption between water and land can produce bouncing and sometimes even violent gyrations of the aircraft in the sky.
The relative density of warm summer air versus the denser winter variety has a direct impact on the take-off performance of a bush plane, and thus the adjustments that must be made in loads that can be carried. All things considered equal the thin summer air can require an appreciably longer take-off run than does its denser winter counterpart. That’s fine if the lake from which you intend to depart is sufficiently long to handle both environments. If that is not the case however, then for a summer departure some adjustments will have to be made that will allow a successful take-off. Something has to give and that something is the load. Now the load in a bush plane, or any plane for that matter consists of some basic items. First, there is the plane itself, including its instrument load and whatever type of landing gear is attached. Then there is the fuel it carries to power its engine, and how much of that fuel remains in the plane’s tanks at the time of the particular take-off. Finally there is that part of the load for which the plane is there in the first place and that is you and your baggage. This is where the experience, skill and diplomacy of the pilot come in, although the degree to which the latter trait is applicable ranges from miniscule to absent. Here’s the scenario. You have a lake that is “x” long but with a full load the plane needs a length of “x y” to get airborne and clear the trees that surround the lake. What to do? There but remains the necessity to reduce the load to a degree that will enable a successful shorter take-off run. That of course is where the fun starts. Leaving the pilot behind is normally not considered to be a viable option. Choosing which of the passengers who won’t make this particular flight runs the risk of leading to fist fights, especially at the end of a long and socially dry exploration season when everybody is a bit squirrelly and the thought of even a delayed departure never mind a missed departure can leave one susceptible to emotions ranging from tears to insanity.
But wait! We forgot something. Pump out the floats! We might gain some extra load weight as a result. Pump out the floats? What do you mean? I thought floats were supposed to float? Well they do, but they leak too in spite of their tightly riveted and sealed aluminum construction. Every float plane comes equipped with a special hydraulic hand pump that fits into appropriate hatches on the floats, the latter, like the hulls of ocean liners, made up of separate compartments such that in the event one is punctured, the float will still retain sufficient buoyancy to keep the plane afloat. Nowadays, some modern floats even have small baggage compartments in them. During my early bush days however, the only thing that was in the floats was what you did not want and that was water. The flushing of floats was therefore part of the normal process of useful load assessment in preparation for take-off.
Assuming that the United Nations had successfully resolved any disputes regarding who and/or what must remain behind for a later flight in order that the present one might get into the air from our “x” long lake, the question might be asked about how to determine what was the maximum load that could be taken to get out of our mythical lake under prevailing conditions. Bush parties not normally possessing baggage scales as part of their camp equipment, other methods to determine a maximum allowable load have to be employed. First and foremost of course, was the knowledge and experience of the pilot about his plane and its performance capabilities under the prevailing conditions. Next was his ability to judge when a load had reached its safe weight limit. Apart from an experienced eye, there was another aid in making that judgment when it came to float planes, and that was to observe the position of the floats in the water. One might describe a float as having the basic shape of an elongated tear drop placed on its side, the narrow end toward the rear. The rule of thumb was that if the top part of the rear half of the float was still above water, the situation was a definite go. Should that part of the floats be only slightly submerged at the back end, the status changed to a definite probable maybe let’s try it. Any further submergence of that part of the airplane was deemed to be past putting to a vote and required calling in the United Nations once more.
There have been times in my experience, where submerged floats or not, a decision to try and make a successful take-off was made in spite of the fact that every apparent calculation suggested the impossibility of such. Now why would anybody be stupid enough to try something like that? Any number of reasons as it turns out. Most of them boil down to the desire not to have to make a return flight to pick up that which would be left behind. Impending darkness, deteriorating weather, another schedule to meet somewhere else, money lost in returning to pick up a small, uneconomical load. You name it. Reasons could be manufactured. How then was a float plane needing an “x y” take-off run to make it out of a “x” length lake? One simple answer was to keep trying, hoping for a breath or so of head wind to catch the wings and provide enough lift for you to stagger into the air with still enough room to clear the trees at the end of the lake without cutting to much of their tops off………..or worse! Alternatively, parts of the load must keep getting removed until someone gets it right and a successful take-off can be had.
Other procedures I have participated in were perhaps not quite as dramatic but nonetheless had aspects distinctive enough to worth mentioning here. One such involved the beginning of the take-off where the pilot steered the float plane on the water in circles at ever increasing speeds so that when straightened, the aircraft already had some initial velocity rather than beginning from a standing start. This tactic in effect served to lengthen the length of the lake. The maneuver had its risks if there was any wind in effect however since together, the high speed circling and wind could lead to capsizing the plane.
Another procedure that I have directly been a party to involved tying the tail of the float plane to a tree at the edge of the lake. Some readers may have experienced similar situations at regional airports having relative small runways for commercial jets. There, the pilot stands on the brakes and applies full power. The brakes are then released and the jet lurches forward at a more accelerated pace than would have been the case from a standing start, allowing the aircraft to more quickly gain take-off speed over a shorter distance along the runway. The Edmonton municipal airport in the middle of that city was famous for that take-off procedure. Back in the bush and in the example of which I speak, the principle was the same, but with a small variation. Float planes don’t have brakes! Hence the rope secured to the plane’s tail and tied to a stout tree. The basic idea was for the pilot to point his aircraft down the lake in the direction of take-off and then apply full take-off power. Releasing the “brakes” therefore involved cutting the rope once full power had been applied. Someone of course had to cut the rope with an axe. That person had to be someone who had the status of an indentured slave but who if something went wrong could be blamed and sacrificed without involving labour unions, mediation boards or transportation safety organizations. Who but to best qualify was, you guessed it, a junior geologist?
Anybody who has been close to one of those massive exposed, radial engines that powered the Beavers, Otters and Norsemans of the day, will know the ear-splitting noise they emit at full power. Similarly, anyone having watched a float plane take-off on water knows the prodigious amount of water and spray that emanates from behind the plane, especially at the beginning of take-off when plane is low in the water with its nose pointing high, all the spray being directed down to ground level behind it. The imagination does not have to be vivid therefore to picture the poor slob, in this case junior geologist, who must stand directly behind and only feet from the float plane’s tail as the pilot revs the engine to full power. Not being an instantaneous process, it seems like forever that this luckless fellow must try to keep from being blown over by the powerful propeller wash while awaiting the signal to cut the rope with the brandished axe. In the meantime he is becoming increasingly deaf from the noise and blind from the spray, and can only hope that he has enough left in him to slash at the rope without missing it or getting caught in the whiplash when it parts.
Then there is the story of the ultimate take-off, probably apocryphal but quite possibly not. It involved two radically different bush aircraft in a common environment and both with ski landing gear. The setting was the high Arctic with its frigid, dense air and incessant but valuable winds that could assist in take-off. The site is on a large, long lake frozen over with wind blown, hard packed snow having the consistency of a paved runway. The aircraft involved are a single engine Otter and a Douglas DC-3, the famous twin engine Dakota. First flown in 1935, the Dakota became the most versatile and widely-used transport aircraft of the twentieth century. Under its military designation of C-47, the Dakota played a crucial role in World War II that included cargo and personnel delivery, glider towing and paratroop drops. Douglas built more than 10,000 "Gooney Birds," as the Dakotas are affectionately known. More than 60 years after the first DC-3s took to the air, an estimated 3,000 of them were still in service around the world. But the Douglas DC-3 was, after all, the most successful air transport of all time. During my time in the Ungava region of northern Quebec, our operation during the winter was serviced by a Dakota on skis.
The story is told that several loads had been placed on this far north frozen lake, one load for a single engine Otter and the other for a DC-3. Whether each load was of a weight that reflected the full carrying capacity of each aircraft is not known. They could both have been partial loads or almost by inference, a full Otter load and a substantially heavier but still less than capacity DC-3 load. The load capacity of the latter was about 7,000 pounds while that of the Otter some 3,000 pounds. Under the frigid, windy conditions earlier described, you could probably stuff up to another 1,000 pounds into the Otter without initiating a take-off disaster, particularly if the aircraft was not carrying a full fuel load. The story goes that the Otter was the first to arrive and that inadvertently was loaded with the cargo meant for the DC-3. Albeit with some drama attached, the Otter still managed to stagger off the lake and into the air, successfully ferrying the wrong cargo to the wrong destination!
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright © 2009 Ian de W. Semple
