Canadian Military Flight

[aharon]

Shalom and greetings all my pals,

Here is cool Canadian military personnel flight from CYOD Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake located within the City of Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada to CYWG Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada bringing home the Canadian soldiers who are starting their vacation on leave.

Taxiing to short of runway 31R



Holding short of runway 31R waiting for bad weather to clear



Weather has cleared up meaning time to enter into runway for take off via ITPEL depature





Check out beauty of sunrise!!!!





Airborne on climb to FL350 showing amazing view of wet runways!!



Climbing through thick clouds



What a combo view of tail and sunrise plus colorful sky!!!



Making left 180 degree turn toward ITPEL



Still climbing to FL350



Check out sunrise





Nice wing view of Canadian winter landscape



Passing Frog Lake



Cruising at FL350





Intercepting ITPEL above North Saskatchewan River



Getting ready to turn left to head to YXE



Turning right to avoid incoming Canadian geese flying at high altitude





Now turning left with background view of the same river and Jackfish Lake to head to YXE





Intercepting YXE above city of Saskatoon and its CYXE Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport and heading to YQV



Cruising at FL350 along J515



Intercepting YQV above city of Yorkton and its CYQV Yorkton Municipal Airport located 2.8 nautical miles north of the city center.



Now at 10,000 ft above Lake Manitoba on way to the runway 18



Deploying landing gear in middle of nasty snowstorm



Seconds before touchdown



TOUCHDOWN



Engaging reverse thrusters on super icy snowy runway



Exiting from runway on way to passenger apron





Thank you for viewing and stay tuned for next exciting flight!!

Regards,

Aharon

[deltalima]

Made that trip "a time or two" during 1990s ... brings back memories. Having to wear uncomfortable DEUs (Service Dress) on military flights, no inflight entertainment, and food of questionable culinary excellence - man, to go back to those days ...

Nice shots - thanks,

dl

[chris_c]

Nice, brings back some memories. I got to fly as a pax in the CF Boeings on many occasions and in that particular livery. Last time was in August 1992, non-stop Winnipeg to CFB Lahr in route to a UN tour in Cyprus and given the hot day and the fact that every seat was occupied and we all carried our essential kit and weapons it took every metre of CYWG's longest runway to get off the ground. Next day and for whatever reason it took two tries to get into Larnica on a cloudless but very hot afternoon. Returned to Canada the following March on one of then brand new Airbus' CC-119 Polaris in the low visibility gray paint job. Boring.

Thanks for sharing.

Chris

[deltalima]

Hey Chris, great story. Kind of rare to find a fellow Canuck here, never mind a fellow former CF member.

Well, with Chris34's "Classic Canada" project underway, many exciting parts of our past can come back to life.

Good times.

cheers,

dl

[chris_c]

28-years in the Field Artillery for me. More trips on the Hercs than the Boeings but the latter were considerably more comfortable in spite of the bad food and one 4-oz McCain Junior Juice as a drink for a trans-Atlantic crossing. Looking forward to Classic Canada scenery, am old enough to recall Connies at Malton (barely) and my first commercial flight was an AC Viscount to NYC in 1969. Came home in a new DC-9 and the jet seemed so much cooler than the "old" turboprop. Ah, the profound ignorance of the pubescent male...

I only got a couple of trips on the Cosmopolitans but they always seemed to break down when I got stuck travelling on one. One time going to CFB Halifax from Gagetown as a sergeant, it took over 14-hours by Cosmo; you could drive it in under five. The route was Fredericton, Moncton, Summerside, Greenwood, Shearwater and there were tech issues with the plane at each stop. At Shearwater we did not even taxi in and had to wait for a tug to drag the plane to the AMU. Of course for the zoomies it was business as usual, the crew seemed nonplussed and appeared quite unmoved even when they shut down the engines while still on the runway. Clearing into transient quarters well after midnight I discovered that they had marked me a no-show and gave away my quarters so I spent the rest of the night in the TV room of the Fleet School junior ranks barracks. Pongos were none to popular with the base duty people at that time. I really hated the Cosmos but it might have been worse I suppose.

Chris

For those who might be unaware, Pongo was a derogatory term that Canadian sailors used to describe soldiers. Obviously Zoomies were Air Force and I suppose that to them we were just self-loading cargo.

[aharon]

Deltalima and Chris,

Thanks for your kind words and amazing explanations.

Regards,

Aharon