Cross country to Canada

Ladies and gentlemen,

I've been invited on a Canadian fishing trip and would like to fly
myself and one passenger to Red Lake, Ontario. We leave June 16th. I
am in the process of preliminary flight planning. I've browsed the
AOPA website for info and called Canadian customs. This will be my
first border crossing and would appreciate any help from you guys.

Back ground info: I am a VFR pilot only. I have around 800 hours and
I have 3 or 4 cross country trips of similar length under my belt. I
am more comfortable with non-towered airports but have flown under the
Dallas - Fort Worth Class B area some and have no real fear of towered
airports. I've flown into Oshkosh twice. I just trained and am more
familiar with non-towered fields and seem to meet nice people at
smaller fields. To be brutally honest, my radio skills are adequate
but probably not much better, (in spite of reading Bob Gardners book).
Mainly just from lack of practice. There are few towered fields near
my home base. I have an autogas STC for my Cherokee 140 and will use
it if available, but it is not a show stopper at all if I have to buy
100LL. The Cherokee will be loaded to within 100 pounds of gross, so
adequate runways are a must, say 2500 feet minimum. A leg length of
about 300 NM is preferred due to fuel & bladder management issues.

1. I would appreciate any advice on airports and small airplane
friendly FBO's along the 900 + nautical mile route from Woodward,
Ok.(KWWR) - Grand Island, Ne. (KGRI) - Sioux Falls, SD (KFSD) -
Baudette, Mn (KBDE) - Red Lake, Ontario (CYRL).

2. Due to the trip length we will probably overnight in Baudette or
somewhere near and I would appreciate recommendations concerning
hotel, rental or courtesy car, and eatery accommodations in that area.
AirNav.com's fuel price data is pitifully ancient on many airports
along this route.

3. If anyone has used Baudette customs coming back into the states, I
would like to hear of your experiences there.

4. Looking over the charts I ordered, the area between Baudette and
Red Lake appears to be full of swamp, lakes and forest with very, very
few emergency landing sites. Safer route suggestions along this leg
would be greatly appreciated, especially from anyone familiar with the
area and its terrain. A detour, even of a hundred miles or more in
the interest of safety will be carefully considered.

5. For those of you with meteorological crystal balls... What can I
expect for weather conditions in the vicinity of Red Lake and North of
the border in mid - June. I am familiar with the thunderstorms
marching across the plains this time of year but not so familiar with
weather systems that seem to park themselves for days at a time over
one area. Is there much chance of getting weathered in for more than
a day or two?

--
Joe Schneider
8437R
(Remove No Spam to Reply)
X-No-archive: yes



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"JJS" wrote in message ...
I am more comfortable with non-towered airports but have flown
under the Dallas - Fort Worth Class B area some

If you're from (or can go to) Texas, why in the world would you want to go
to Canada????

You'll be hard pressed to find any Lone Star beer up there, only that
caribou **** that they call beer...

You want an answer from the group and you use x-no-archive? Must not really
want an answer, I guess...

"JJS" jschneider@remove socks cebridge.net wrote in message
...
Ladies and gentlemen,

I've been invited on a Canadian fishing trip and would like to fly myself
and one passenger to Red Lake, Ontario.

If this is "just" a fishing trip, have you considered going into, say,
Kenora CYQK, or Thunder Bay CYQT, and having a local operator fly you out to
your destination??? I have no idea of the relative costs, but it would give
you a view of the area and help you make up your mind whether you want to
fly this area (North of Baudette, and especially north of Kenora) without
some bush-flight training.

....snip...

4. Looking over the charts I ordered, the area between Baudette and Red
Lake appears to be full of swamp, lakes and forest with very, very few
emergency landing sites.

A lot of the small commercial operations and most of the private operation
in the area is probably done on floats. This is not just an area of "very
few emergency landing sites", it is also "very few settlements or
habitation", especially north of Kenora.


....snip...
5. For those of you with meteorological crystal balls... What can I
expect for weather conditions in the vicinity of Red Lake and North of the
border in mid - June. I am familiar with the thunderstorms marching
across the plains this time of year but not so familiar with weather
systems that seem to park themselves for days at a time over one area. Is
there much chance of getting weathered in for more than a day or two?

There is *always* a chance of getting weathered in for more than a day or
two (VFR), as there is *always* a chance of getting perfectly flyable
weather for a week or two. I don't have records of ceilings and visibility,
but I do have rainfall. At Red Lake in 1999, for example, there was about
2/10 inch of rain total, for the whole period June 10 to 21, with 5
consecutive no-rain days. In the same period in 2000, the amount of rain
was over 6 inches, and it did NOT rain on only three days in that period.
Now, I suspect a good deal of that was from thunder-showers... but some of
it may have come from low-ceiling drizzle....I have no way of knowing.

In short, it is too early to tell what you will get, with any degree of
certainty.

On Sat, 14 May 2005 18:14:50 GMT, Grumman-581 wrote:

You want an answer from the group and you use x-no-archive? Must not really
want an answer, I guess...

what has the extra header to do with wanting an answer or not? good
archives honor the wish of the poster and don't archive the posting.

if it is easily achievable that respectful archives honor my wish then I
will request this wish.

#m

f-up2poster (this means: email replies preferred; for me: EOD, OT)

--
http://www.hotze.priv.at/album/aviation/caution.jpg

"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
what has the extra header to do with wanting an answer or not? good
archives honor the wish of the poster and don't archive the posting.

if it is easily achievable that respectful archives honor my wish then I
will request this wish.

What it means is that the message might not stay around long enough for
*some* people to actually read it... Personally, I believe that if it's
worth posting once, you shouldn't try to hide it later... The USENET
archives are great search tools and the x-archive crap attempts to defeat
that...

On Sat, 14 May 2005 21:22:39 GMT, Grumman-581 wrote:

what has the extra header to do with wanting an answer or not? good
archives honor the wish of the poster and don't archive the posting.

if it is easily achievable that respectful archives honor my wish then I
will request this wish.

What it means is that the message might not stay around long enough for
*some* people to actually read it...

it (the posting) might be worthless in a wekk or so. Typically a newsserver
holds articles for 1 or 2 months, depending on what the newsadmin has set.

Personally, I believe that if it's
worth posting once, you shouldn't try to hide it later...

I don't like profiling.
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?&as_uauthors=grumman%23%23%23%40gmail.com

The USENET
archives are great search tools and the x-archive crap attempts to defeat
that...

but it it up to the poster if he want's his postings to be part of the
archive.

"gun control will help the government to fight terrorism." (but you'll
never agree, you're also willingly and knowingly breaking gun control laws,
as you posted on March 23rd)

but just as you wrote on March 23rd: "In the end, Darwin always wins... "

#m
--
http://www.hotze.priv.at/album/aviation/caution.jpg

"Icebound" wrote in message
...

If this is "just" a fishing trip, have you considered going into,
say, Kenora CYQK, or Thunder Bay CYQT, and having a local operator
fly you out to your destination??? I have no idea of the relative
costs, but it would give you a view of the area and help you make up
your mind whether you want to fly this area (North of Baudette, and
especially north of Kenora) without some bush-flight training.

A lot of the small commercial operations and most of the private
operation in the area is probably done on floats. This is not just
an area of "very few emergency landing sites", it is also "very few
settlements or habitation", especially north of Kenora.

There is *always* a chance of getting weathered in for more than a
day or two (VFR), as there is *always* a chance of getting perfectly
flyable weather for a week or two. I don't have records of ceilings
and visibility, but I do have rainfall. At Red Lake in 1999, for
example, there was about 2/10 inch of rain total, for the whole
period June 10 to 21, with 5 consecutive no-rain days. In the same
period in 2000, the amount of rain was over 6 inches, and it did NOT
rain on only three days in that period. Now, I suspect a good deal
of that was from thunder-showers... but some of it may have come
from low-ceiling drizzle....I have no way of knowing.

In short, it is too early to tell what you will get, with any degree
of certainty.

Thanks for the weather info, Icebound. I knew it was a stretch
asking, but was hoping someone was familiar with the area and could
generalize. Your post was helpful.

The trip was planned by other people many months ago. The main guy
that set it up has gone about 10 or 11 years in a row. They were
going to drive up to Red Lake from various parts of the country. A
co-worker invited me to go with them. Rather than drive the 1381
miles which I've been told takes about 24 hours, I'd much prefer to
fly for 10 or 12, and think it would be quite an adventure. We are to
be picked up by float plane at Red Lake and taken into the bush.

I called the float plane company today but the man I was referred to
wasn't there. He is supposed to try and call me back tomorrow. I
fully intend to ask him about preferred routes, but wanted as much
info as possible. Bush pilot training is going to be hard to get in
N.W. Oklahoma.



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If you're from (or can go to) Texas, why in the world would you want
to go
to Canada????

I'm from Oklahoma. (My mother is from Winnipeg. So I'm drawn to the
North by my Canuck blood line, I guess). Seriously, I want to go
catch some big fish. More important than that, I want to get far, far
away from a very stressful, intense job for several days.

You'll be hard pressed to find any Lone Star beer up there, only
that
caribou **** that they call beer...

Lone Star reminds me of that Scotch Buy brand beer that Ideal Food
Stores or Safeway used to sell here locally. My Dad used to buy it
because it was all he could afford. I promise to sample some Canadian
beer and tell you which I liked best. (BTW we will be very near
Woodland Caribou Prov. Park, so you may have a point about their
beer... but I hope you are wrong).

You want an answer from the group and you use x-no-archive? Must
not really
want an answer, I guess...

I took the no-archive out of my sig line. Sorry it offended you so.
I do wish to gather the groups collective wisdom so that I can make
this a safe adventure. Upon reflection, you are correct and others
may learn from this trip. If others have a desire, I will send a
report on how it went when I get back.



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Reposted without the no-archive sig line per Mr./Mrs./Ms.Grumman-581's
wishes.


I've been invited on a Canadian fishing trip and would like to fly
myself and one passenger to Red Lake, Ontario. We leave June 16th.
I am in the process of preliminary flight planning. I've browsed
the AOPA website for info and called Canadian customs. This will be
my first border crossing and would appreciate any help from you
guys.

Back ground info: I am a VFR pilot only. I have around 800 hours
and I have 3 or 4 cross country trips of similar length under my
belt. I am more comfortable with non-towered airports but have
flown under the Dallas - Fort Worth Class B area some and have no
real fear of towered airports. I've flown into Oshkosh twice. I
just trained and am more familiar with non-towered fields and seem
to meet nice people at smaller fields. To be brutally honest, my
radio skills are adequate but probably not much better, (in spite of
reading Bob Gardners book). Mainly just from lack of practice.
There are few towered fields near my home base. I have an autogas
STC for my Cherokee 140 and will use it if available, but it is not
a show stopper at all if I have to buy 100LL. The Cherokee will be
loaded to within 100 pounds of gross, so adequate runways are a
must, say 2500 feet minimum. A leg length of about 300 NM is
preferred due to fuel & bladder management issues.

1. I would appreciate any advice on airports and small airplane
friendly FBO's along the 900 + nautical mile route from Woodward,
Ok.(KWWR) - Grand Island, Ne. (KGRI) - Sioux Falls, SD (KFSD) -
Baudette, Mn (KBDE) - Red Lake, Ontario (CYRL).

2. Due to the trip length we will probably overnight in Baudette or
somewhere near and I would appreciate recommendations concerning
hotel, rental or courtesy car, and eatery accommodations in that
area. AirNav.com's fuel price data is pitifully ancient on many
airports along this route.

3. If anyone has used Baudette customs coming back into the states,
I would like to hear of your experiences there.

4. Looking over the charts I ordered, the area between Baudette and
Red Lake appears to be full of swamp, lakes and forest with very,
very few emergency landing sites. Safer route suggestions along
this leg would be greatly appreciated, especially from anyone
familiar with the area and its terrain. A detour, even of a hundred
miles or more in the interest of safety will be carefully
considered.

5. For those of you with meteorological crystal balls... What can I
expect for weather conditions in the vicinity of Red Lake and North
of the border in mid - June. I am familiar with the thunderstorms
marching across the plains this time of year but not so familiar
with weather systems that seem to park themselves for days at a time
over one area. Is there much chance of getting weathered in for
more than a day or two?

--
Joe Schneider
8437R
(Remove No Spam to Reply)




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"JJS" jschneider@remove socks cebridge.net wrote in message
...


You'll be hard pressed to find any Lone Star beer up there, only that
caribou **** that they call beer...

Lone Star reminds me of that Scotch Buy brand beer that Ideal Food Stores
or Safeway used to sell here locally. My Dad used to buy it because it
was all he could afford. I promise to sample some Canadian beer and tell
you which I liked best.

I will personally guarantee that you will like the beer. It will forever
spoil you for that glorified US soda pop.

You will *not* like the price, even in spite of the favourable dollar
exchange.