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 So, here’s an ‘excerpt’ from ‘Arctic Chapter’ of Greg’s ‘Antarctica Files’, as it written by Greg himself. See also a previous post with some sort of ‘preface’ to it.

I went through my log books to get more detail on where those photos were taken,  but I didn’t keep much detailed information, I don’t know exactly where all the photos were taken for example, but made a pretty good guess.

  Photo 1. Taken in the central Arctic on a  flight from Resolute Bay to Inuvik. I surprised at this polar bear..

…that had just killed a seal and was dragging it onto the shore. It ran away from the seal when I circled to take the photo. It was quite defiant and returned to the seal when I flew away, I did not circle too much as the bear can get stressed, so I was no lower than 100 ft AGL and only made one pass. I wish I had a good camera with telephoto like my friend Sergey, but unfortunately I had just a simple camera with some small amount of telephoto built in.

Photo 2. Kenn Borek’s Twin Otter GKBE, it was not painted in Borek colors yet, newly acquired from I forget where. Photo taken in Central Arctic, Pelly Bay. Pelly Bay now known Kugarukk. (Many arctic towns had British names now changed to Inuit names) The Twin Otter is operated on three sizes of tires. Standard (small), intermediate, Tundra. The photo is of intermediate size tires. They are OK for beaches, frozen lakes, but for softer surfaces you need tundra tires, and even then you can get badly stuck in the mud (to the point where you might need help flown in to get you out). Sometime the tundra appears dry, but it can be a thin dry layer over a melted tundra swamp. Kenn Borek had some especially developed low profile tundra tires. Earlier tundra tires were huge, I think they were DC3 tires.

All in all the Twin Otter goes on 7 different landing configurations (in addition to the 3 sizes of tires, “straight” skis, lighter and stronger than wheel skis, then wheel skis which move up and down over fixed the gear, floats, and amphibs) It is the 4 wheel drive of Canada (’Northern Sky’ - Cl.).

Photo 3.  Same Aircraft GKBE, photo taken near Pond Inlet, (now known as Mittimatalik),on Baffin island, eastern arctic in early August. In mid to late August  the snow starts in the arctic depending where.  This was not the main airport but a small bush camp strip, maybe 600 ft long.  The technique to take off a short strip like this is to flaps 40 (sometimes less flap, it depends, normally flap 10 is used for longer runways) and control column all the way back as far as it goes, get airborne and ease forward on the control column so not to stall.

Photo 4. I took this photo near Coppermine (central Arctic), now known as Kugluktuk. I didn’t realize until after getting the film developed that the rotor wash was visible on the lake.

Hope this helps. I feel famous,, commenting on these photos

Thank you, Greg, - you are!

Great remarks, invaluable for those who want to know more about bush flying in Arctic. I believe, immense experience (’operational’, - to mention first) has been accumulated by generations of bush pilots, and it should be shared!

Those details describing types of landing gear used on Twin Otters are very interesting. In my  future ‘Comparative analysis of bush flight operation in Canada and Russia’

(some drafts for which I began posting on this blog) I’ll certainly use those details.

Thank you very much, Greg!

C