FUA as she was then.

In October of 1989 I was studying for my commercial pilot licence. At that time I had just under 200 hours. I needed more time and everyone knew I would always take an opportunity to fly, especially if the expense could be shared.

Another pilot happened to need to deliver a large box to Iroquois Falls, which is north of Sudbury. "This should be a very pleasant flight for a sunny autumn afternoon," I thought. "We should be back by about 11 p.m. So, you can fly there and get your hours, and I'll fly back, to practice my night rating", he said. That sounded very reasonable and I knew he was a reliable pilot with many hours and would get the weather as often as I required, being an extremely cautious person.

The box turned out to be a large hunting dog in a container. It was a beautiful creature, totally attuned to hunting. It sat still in its' box, pointing only at passing birds. I would have thought a dog would be going beserk in a plane, but my friend made sure his dogs would travel well by transporting them frequently from a very early age.

With the container properly loaded and fastened down, the weather checked and flight-plan reported opened, we set off for the north. My friend even had a special pack of survival gear, as required by the Transport Canada Information for Pilots book.

This was the longest flight I had made for some time. I always found it interesting to fly one of the rented planes, to practice VFR navigation using all the map references and radio cross-fixes. My friend was particularly enthusiastic about all the calculations and kept me continually occupied. In fact it was quite hard work, no time at all to enjoy the view.

We flew direct from Guelph to Wasaga Beach, hugging the shoreline or skipping along at a suitable altitude from which we could easily land in case of trouble. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon and although it was ten years' ago (this October 1999) I remember every bit of it as though it was yesterday. There are not many roads, but plenty of lakes, so I identified the shape of each lake as it came into the relief-map stretched before us.

From Parry Sound we began to go cross-country. The ground was rock, forest and scrub. In the forest there were many small encampments and frequent landing fields carved out among the trees.

After Sturgeon Falls / North Bay there was not another main road until we reached Kirkland Lake. The number 11 highway was on our right and in about 40 miles we reached Iroquois Falls.

The sun was just beginning to set and I had flown for 3.4 hrs. This was just about my limit and I was really tired of the engine noise. There was nothing to drink at the tiny airport. I was really thirsty and glad to have brought a couple of apples along. A word here about food and drink: It is very important to keep well hydrated at altitude. Pop bottles may do just that! i.e Explode. Very unnerving when one is trying to concentrate. Not only that, contrived drinks contain excess salt, which will make your dehydration even worse. All kinds of packaged snacks are usually in paper or plastic containers. These also tend to explode as one climbs to altitude. Anything containing alcohol .. wine, beer etc. is absolutely forbidden. .. even for passengers.

By the time the new owners came to claim their beautiful dog, the sun had set, we had re-fuelled and re-checked the plane and this time my friend took the pilot seat.

It was interesting to fly across the forest by night. The lakes seemed more inhabited now one could see the many camp fires and home lights. It was surprising that they were even more easily identified by their shapes outlined in sparkling golden light.

On one occasion my friend drew my attention to a large dark patch. I thought it was just an area of forest .. not so, he warned me. It was actually a mountain or big hill. Another trap for any pilot not flying at the specified altitude.

As we approached Sudbury, we again checked the weather. It was such a clear sparkling night, we did not anticipate anything out of the ordinary. Some autumn fog or mist had been forecast at dawn the next day. The only warning of trouble we had was the temperature and dewpoint. They were both 11 Degrees.

My late departed husband, in a fit of enthusiasm for my flying career had bought me the King Private Pilot Course Video. Mr. King had a very memorable way of striding back and forth and making certain points. One point he emphasized was: "AND when the temperature and the dewpoint are the same .. WHAT do you GET, SUPER PILOT? ... Why .. YOU .. GET .. FOG!. If the air is climbing a hillside it's called UPSLOPE FOG! If the air is coming onshore it's called ONSHORE FOG! But whatever it's called it sure is F O G and that means TROUBLE for you, SUPER PILOT!"

I could scarcely believe my ears when the Sudbury weather reported this horrible piece of information. There was no sign of fog whatsoever and they were still forecasting some mist at dawn.

Just the same, when my friend asked me for my opinion I said we should land at Sudbury as soon as possible.

Sudbury was a large airport. All around the runway were lights and guidance systems suitable for airliners. Lit in bright reds, white and greens it looked like a Christmas tree. My friend landed in stages, as after Guelph's and Iroquois Falls' narrower runways this vast expanse of runway and all the lights made the height of final touchdown difficult to judge. Of course, there was a lighting system too and another of Mr. King's reminders came in useful: "Red over Red, You're Dead, White over White, you're out of Sight, Red over White, you're Alright."

Once we had landed at the Sudbury Airport there was still no sign of the FOG. However, the weather people had gone for the night and we needed to call Guelph and our respective spouses to tell them what was going on. Our friends at Guelph all thought this was a heck of a laugh .. once they knew we were safe. We both felt as silly as though we had performed a spectacularly bad landing on 32 in front of the Office building. Flying is as competitive and macho as any other sport. We all hate to see each other do something stupid, but once safely on the ground there is no protection from the joshing. For two respectable, married, older people to get stuck in Sudbury for several days was food for humour at our expense for months to come.

Having called the folk back at the Office and closed our flight plan (all of which took about twenty minutes) there came down upon Sudbury and Southern Ontario a FOG the likes of which had not been in living memory. It made me almost gag to think that if we had not landed in Sudbury we would have been another statistic. We would have had literally seconds to live. (See 178 Seconds at end of this page) as neither of us had an instrument rating at that time and it wouldn't have made any difference since airliners were down and Sudbury was brimming with impatient stranded passengers.

Another lesson I learned on this flight: never travel without your credit cards and cash access. Also, always dress comfortably as you may need to sleep in your clothes for several days! (Fortunately I did that).

Sudbury is an interesting place, has a good downtown shopping area. There is also a famous natural history museum: Ontario North. The countryside around was badly spoilt by mining, slag-heaps etc.

We eventually found a place to stay, of course it had to be the most expensive hotel in Sudbury! I knew my husband would be having fits about the expense and about my not getting home in time to do the book-keeping for our business. We had thirty employees on payroll and no-one to make out the cheques. Oh well, such are the misfortunes of flying .. and if he would rather I had continued the journey home, then we would have crashed. "Get Home Itis" is a famous disease among pilots and the outcome is usually fatal. My friend kept asking me if I had "Get Home Itis" I replied that I had all the symptoms and was fighting them off.

If we hoped that the warm front which had crossed southern Ontario would pass in one day, we were sorely out of luck. Warm fronts commonly move quite slowly and usually a large one such as this would take at least two days to get out of our way. And so we were stuck. My friend was now also worrying about the expense of remaining at the hotel. Fortunately he had friends out at the lakes, who owned a magnificent hunting lodge.

So we rented a small car. Such was the plight of travellers at Sudbury we were very lucky to get the car. Every form of transportation was being booked, but the fog was now so thick even cars and busses were unable to take people from the airport.

We drove slowly and unsteadily into the foggy night, along narrow driveways and a maze of forest paths. Eventually, to my relief, my friend's sense of direction did not mislead him and we came to the hunting lodge. There are many such lodges around the lakes. Some of them do not have all conveniences, but this one had everything: heat, light, water. In the quiet and thick fog we walked down to the lake, where there was a Swedish sauna. The air was still and filled with the scent of cedar and pines. In the eves of the other lodges were flying squirrels, such pretty creatures with enormous eyes - I thought flying squirrels only lived in Africa or some-such.

We lit a fire in the woodstove and spent a peaceful night - I was a bit concerned about the wildlife in the forest. There are bears, moose etc., I believe - that was the requirement for the hunting dog. The toilet had not been installed in the lodge, so it was necessary to foot it up narrow forest paths in the dark. That really scared me. There was nothing around though except the cute squirrels.

Next morning I woke early to the sound of the loons on the lake. Still nothing could be seen in the thick fog. We cleaned up and locked the lodge and took our supper boxes out to a special dumpster so that animals would not be attracted to them.

Every opportunity we checked the weather again. A faster moving cold front would be clearing the area later that day. We joined the impatient milling crowds in the Sudbury Airport and lunched again in the restaurant there, which was running out of food and becoming very untidy and trodden.

Eventually, in the mid-afternoon, the front arrived. We had just checked the aircraft and my friend went into the weather station, while I waited outside. Suddently the front arrived with a roar. It was a terrific squall line. The rain absolutely poured down as the warm and the cold air jostled: the cold trying to force its way under the warm, the warm rising quickly and condensing. The thunder and lightening cracked and the wind threatened to pull the aircraft away from its' mooring as I stood beneath its' wing.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, it passed, leaving the afternoon in a pleasant golden haze.

We were both immensely relieved to be able to return home. We needed our caps pulled down and sunglasses, as my friend would be flying into the sun on this leg all the way back to Guelph.

As I had anticipated, I received a pilots' welcome home. Only a pilot who has been forced out of the air by bad weather will understand how it is with the earth-walkers. You just have to brace yourself. They are just impossible! It certainly isn't worth killing yourself with the dreaded Get Home Itis.

After this experience both I and my friend, as soon as possible, studied and earned our instrument ratings. On this occasion the rating would not have been any use though as the weather was way lower than minima. Actually I subsequently found that an instrument rating is not too much use without a suitable aircraft with instrumentation and de-icing equipment etc ..far more expensive than anything I could afford.

"178 Seconds to Live" What you can expect if you fly into fog without current instrument training. Nothing in this world rusts out faster than an instrument rating".

Visit a site for many photographs of North American Birds and animals.

Rhona Raskin Home Page at http://www.rhona.com.