Lost in Space
I had the pleasure of sharing a flight with Mark on the "Diesel" 3 for many a pleasant flight but the one that stands out if a flight from Kuujjuaq on Ungava Bay to Val D'or on 27 November 1985.
We were returning empty after delivering a huge satellite dish and it had already been a long day. As many of you will know, navigation aids are few and far between in this part of the world and we were navigating from weak NDB to NBD. Mark was flying back and the long leg to the first NDB had worked out pretty well, so I was feeling more comfortable. Naturally, this seemed like a good time to catch up on my sleep! So I drifted off in never-never land for a while. When I woke up something didn't seem right. According to the time of night and the position of the moon in the windshield, we seemed to be heading in the wrong direction! No worries, it was a bright moonlit night and we should be able to easily find our position. Since we were in uncontrolled airspace anyways, I suggested we descend below the thin cloud layer and start looking for lakes. Well, if you have ever flown in Northern Quebec you will know that there are a million lakes and they all look the same, so this didn't work at all! My next bright idea was to climb as high as possible and try to contact Montreal Centre. This finally worked and we were able to get a vector for Val D'Or. They must of asked us ten times if we had enough fuel to make Val D'Or since we were so far off course. Finally, I asked the controller how far we were off course when we were first radar identified and he said we were 113 miles south of the course! I said this must be a new record and he said sadly, no, not by a long shot!
We laughed many times over the years about this most memorable flight. I will really miss Mark as I'm sure you all will too...
Posted by Bruce
Wednesday October 10, 2012 at 7:49 pm