Over the Rainbow to Civilization

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Long flights today, reaching from the arctic circle down to mid latitudes, where its dark at night, trees are growing and ground is covered with roads, houses and even a railroad.

In Iqaluit I learned quickly how to file flight plans in Canada (its very easy), how to apply for the customs officers in the US (rather complicated internet form sheets, with a response time of minutes), but once that was all completed I got going to the second next airport Kuujjuaq to refuel. After 2:40 hrs over wilderness and a lot of water I arrived there, and the tower controller sends me to the gas station to refuel. This is on an apron full of airliner (Dash 8, Twin Otters and a Boeing 737), and I park under the wing of one of them - imagine that in Europe...

But although there is Avgas written on the fuel outlet, they actually have only barrels of fuel and no means to fill it into my tanks ('We tried to scratch off the Avgas sign for three years now...'😉.

Fortunately, on the other side of the airport was a group with some avgas-fed airplanes in the process of refueling them from barrels - so I taxi there for help, but their first reaction was rather negative, like 'go away, we keep our fuel for ourselves'. After some talking though one of them agreed to lend me their fuel pump, if I could organize my own fuel. Now it became easy: back to the fuel station, rolling one of the two barrels to the plane, waiting for the other guy with the fuel pump to arrive and filling the 205 l into DDN (thanks to the ferry tank, I can actually use it all - this tank proves very essential here in Canada). And then waiting again for the fuel guy to finish refueling the 737 (his fuel truck ran out of fuel and he had to get more in the village of Kuujjuaq).

But a long hour later its all done and even paid, and the trip can continue 3 airports further South, to Sept-Iles. Now its up to 10000 ft altitude to follow the airways, and I fly a bit around some isolated thunderstorms. But the heavy rain below the thunderstorms makes brilliant rainbows - a beautiful sight!

Near the next airport (Schefferfield, finally a pronounceable name again), there appears a long straight line through the wilderness - a road! And another hour on, near Wabush, even some vacation houses - civilization is back. And here is Sept-Iles is even a railroad and a freeway. But I'm now at 50 deg latitude, that is well South of Amsterdam.

It was good to fly over the wilderness of Canada - 7 hours flying time with only very few signs of civilization is a long time. Now its time to get into the more familiar regions again.

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Photos

through Canada
long flying day - Canada is so large...

wilderness
still snow in the Northern regions of Canada

Kuujjuak airport
the first trees on the ground

refueling in Kuujjuak
my helper is under a mosquito cover, for a good reason

over the rainbow
heavy rain under a thunderstorm