421dog wrote: ↑Wed Jul 10, 2019 7:06 pm
Shamattawa, MB.
Truly the worst place in the world.
Spent 36 hrs waiting for parts sitting on a chair next to my plane on the Hayes river with more flies than I have ever experienced, so that the fetal alcohol syndrome urchins didn’t punch holes in my wings to huff my 100LL...
Did said urchins steal the rubber balls out of the float pump-out wells?
Late in the fall of 1968 I was sent on a gamma ray scintillometer survey with a 185 on floats. The company leasing the airplane supplied a navigator!! and a technician to operate the instrument that was located in the baggage compartment behind the seats. A nav because the lines had to be flown very precisely, a quarter mile apart and I seem to remember the lateral tolerance was only a couple hundred feet. He'd call out corrections in two or three degree increments. The flying was what passed as nap of the earth for a 185, not below 400 and not above 500 feet. The terrain was lumpy - on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence - and some lines couldn't be flown their full length because the airplane couldn't outclimb the hills. In that case we'd break off the line and come down the hill from the other end. I'd stayed in the village were we were based - a place called La Tabatiere - before, but at the guest house at the local fish plant. This time there was no space available, so our agent found us a place to stay at some guy's house that had rooms to rent. He had fashioned a little hand written sign outside that said Bording House. There was no running water or anything but a dunny out back. Drinking water was brought in buckets from a local well. The place was clean and the guy's wife was an excellent cook, so we ate like kings, if you liked fish and wild game. One morning I went to get some water from the bucket to brush my teeth, and there were little fish swimming around in it. Made a beer drinker out of me, it did.