Cross country to Canada

I can't help you with terrain but

When the local FSS were closed NavCan recognized that the briefers in the
centers may lack the local knowledge that the local FSS had provided. A
project to gather this local knowledge for briefer training lead to the
production of weather manuals for each of the weather regions. These
manuals are available on their website. The general weather chapter seems
to be common to each manual.

for weather manuals

http://www.navcanada.ca
click english
under flight operations
click local weather manuals

for aviation weather

http://www.navcanada.ca
click english
under flight operations
click aviation weather web site
click route data tab(my favorite) or local data tab

Blue skies to all

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

"Icebound" wrote in message
...

....
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.

....
The trip was planned by other people many months ago. .......
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.

You might want to take the survival-equipment regulations seriously:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/Re...602.htm#602_61

especially for the 80 nautical miles north of Kenora to Red Lake.

It is *only* 80 miles but you will have to be prepared to be intimidated (on
wheels) if you haven't flown over
sparsely-settled-continuous-forest-and-water areas before. Even so,
although surface settlements are sparse, there ought to be quite a bit of
traffic (float traffic) along that route, especially in the immediate
vicinity of Kenora and Red Lake.

And the YRL VOR and RL ndb should help you find the place, if you are so
equipped :-)

You mentioned that you have the "charts". Do you also have the Aerodrome
Facilities information (Canadian Flight Supplement)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q1312341B
You would want the pages for Red Lake, of course, and probably Kenora.
Maybe a few others "near" the route, Ear Lake, Vermillion Bay, etc.

Don't forget that in Canada you *must* file a flight plan with FSS (or a
flight itinerary with a responsible person who will contact FSS), even for
Day VFR.

What a completely useless response to a good question. There are great many
things in Texas, but beer and fishing are not one of them.

Flying into Canada is quite easy. Canada Customs runs a very efficient
system for general aviation. There is a 1-800 number you call prior to
departure, and after landing. Chances are you will never see a customs
officer. The return back into the US is where you have to plan carefully.
You have to get the number for the port of entry you plan to use (numbers
are not published, use AOPA directory), find out their hours of operation,
and give them an accurate ETA.



"Grumman-581" wrote in
news:uerhe.78802$NU4.52597@attbi_s22:

"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...

"Icebound" wrote in message
...
I will personally guarantee that you will like the beer. It will forever
spoil you for that glorified US soda pop.

That depends on the audience. For some reason, there are people in the US
who actually *prefer* "beers" like Miller, Budweiser, etc.

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

You get what you pay for.

Pete

"JJS" wrote in message ...
I'm from Oklahoma.

OK, that explains why you want to go *somewhere*... grin

Seriously, I want to go catch some big fish.

Have you tried offshore fishing? The Gulf is closer than Canada and as a
plus, you don't have to leave your guns at the border...

More important than that, I want to get far, far
away from a very stressful, intense job for several days.

And you've always had this secret desire to freeze your 'nads off, right?
grin

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.

That's not the reason to buy Lone Star... You buy it because it is the
NATIONAL beer of Texas... Yeah, it probably tastes like Longhorn ****, but
Budweiser is Clydesdale **** -- so what?

I took the no-archive out of my sig line. Sorry it offended you so.

The people who use Google Groups for reading USENET thank you...

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
...
What a completely useless response to a good question. There are great
many
things in Texas, but beer and fishing are not one of them.

Not being from Texas, ya' just wouldn't understand...

Grumman-581 wrote:

Have you tried offshore fishing? The Gulf is closer than Canada and as a
plus, you don't have to leave your guns at the border...

Do you really use your guns for getting fish?

(You also don't have to leave them at the Canadian border, except for
prohibited models, if you do your homework and get a license and
necessary registrations ahead of time. You can also get a "borrow"
permit to use Canadian guns.)

And you've always had this secret desire to freeze your 'nads off, right?
grin

Should be reasonably warm by the end of June. Anyone going needs to
remember to bring lots of insect repellent. The black flies in Northern
Ontario can be really annoying. "Deep Woods" Off! is particularly
recommended. Lots of DEET.

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

"Icebound" wrote in message
...

....snip...

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. ...snip...

Thanks for the weather info, Icebound.

While on the weather topic....

Before your final legs, try to get to an internet machine and look up:

http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/canada_e.html
especially the radar link at
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=XDR

This is the weather-radar near Dryden, and covers the final leg of your
route.

From the left margin of those pages is the link to "aviation weather" which
will give you free on-line access to the usual gamut of
aviation-weather-briefing materials TAFs, METARs, analysis charts, upper
winds, etc., etc..... which you might want to peruse in addition to your FSS
briefing...

And you've always had this secret desire to freeze your 'nads off,
right? grin

There's a popular TV show here in Canada that gets a lot of laughs
about the ignorance of Americans. I'm sure thay have to talk to a LOT
of Americans to find the material they need to get the laughs, but
there are some hilarious stories about the misconceptions many have
about Canada, Canadians and Canadian weather and topography.
Cold is one of those. In the North the days are very long in
the summer, with the result that there can be vast numbers of huge
insects, hot weather, and people who can grow huge vegetables in their
gardens. So much daylight, see. In the winter it can often be colder
here in southern Alberta (near Montana) than it is 1000 miles north of
here. In the winter in Vancouver and Victoria people are often golfing,
on green grass. Toronto can have wicked winter weather but it's about
as far south as southern Oregon. I grew up In Kamloops, BC, which is
the northern tip of the Sonora Desert, with cactus and sagebrush and
Ponderosa Pine trees and everything. Latitude often has nothing to do
with weather; it's the presence of mountains and water that affects it.
It's very sparsely settled. 80% of Canadians live within 180
miles of the Canada/US border. You want to be prepaped for an
uncomfortable campout if you are forced down. Make sure that ELT is
certified and you have plenty of the right stuff on board, like decent
clothing, food and insect repellent. Bugs can drive people crazy in
short order.
Dan

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Do you really use your guns for getting fish?

Well, ya' see, they're kinda needed for TEXAS fish... Maybe ya' don't need
'em for those wimpy little Canuck fish since they're half froze to death
anyway...