Dear Club Members,
There’s an idea that’s been haunting me for while, and I’d like to share it with you.. maybe, in doing so I’ll finally get some weight off my shoulders 
So, how about a trip to Russia?
Just a quick notice that should be put in with regard to Black Sea and what’s going on down there: a Black Sea resort town of Gelendjik is hosting an airshow which is known as ‘Gelendjik Hydro Aviation Salon‘.
They run in once in every two years, in the early days of September, and the next one is going to be in 2008.
‘Hey! Look at that!’, I exclaimed in a surprise when we noticed this aircraft at Oshkosh Seaplane Base. A few days ago we saw it having just come from Yellowknife, NWT, to Red Lake, Ontario.
We saw Beech-18 on floats in four places during our trip to Red Lake-Oshkosh.
Of course, an encounter with the first one was very exciting. We met it in Red Lake, and it belonged to Chimo Air, a local charter company. I took a nice opportunity to walk ‘half-around’ this antique bird, C-FHZA, - sure, that’s the way - you can only do half around it, - unless you have a boat, or just jump into the water to finish full ‘half-walk-half-swim around’ the docked floatplane
This trip across two countries was also a revelation of how many ‘antique planes on floats’ are still in commercial service doing charters across Ontario and Minnesota hauling loads of fishermen and their gear to the remote lodges across the vast ‘Water World’ in the Lake of the Woods area. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, yes, - for myself, as a potential ‘leisure floatplane flier’, a torturous period of ‘daydreaming and seeing myself soaring over the beautiful back country’ began! But a good ‘kick on the head to awaken the lost’ for ‘reality check’ surely wouldn’t harm.
‘Just look into your logbook!’, one may scream, and this one would be right. Thousands hours of multi-engine jet time, and the only experience I had on a single-engine piston powered plane was a time when I flew the Yak-18T in the Aqtobe Civil Aviation Flight College ’some twenty and plus’ years ago.
Yeah, it’s fair enough to ask - why?
Because we live in Canada.
Look at that. This is a typical landscape all across the Canadian Shield area - it is just one incredible compound of rock, water, and wood.
I should tell you, we were still under influence of the Norseman Festival in Red Lake - this probably explains a great deal of ’sensitivity’ that would inevitably
make us deviate from the route we were going to whatever spot any airplane looking capable to take off from the water was parked at.
So, the seaplanes were in another area of particular interest to explore, moreover, - all of a sudden, one specific reason for this popped up at some moment.
We’ve just stopped by for overnight in Duluth, Minnesota, on our way to Oshkosh, and it appears to be the first place where I could get an access to the Internet. We’ve driven already some 2500 km on the roads across the half of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, a bit of Ontario, - to Red Lake, a small town where the Highway 105 ends, and the most reliable transport to get you further North is the aviation.
Which means presumably ‘planes on floats’. Some of these planes have been around here for more than 60 years, and they are still in very good shape. And the truth of this we have just checked out as we visited the ‘Norseman Festival’, a local Red Lake airshow featuring unique planes ‘built to last’.
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