Satisfaction is a good buzz job and other shenanigans

[Liquid_Charlie]

The setting is 04:30 and getting my trusty whoredyne ready to pick up kids from a camp 12 miles down Red Lake, yup they could go by boat but it was part of the "northern experience" plus the camp owner made a shit load of money off what he charged for the airplane ride. It's rumoured that several fishing camps fell into this group.
The mission was to move about 80 kids out early AM and then move a group back in later in the day. He tried to double up but that just turned into a shit show and they might still be looking for a cpl of missing kids - lol

Back to 04:30 - here I am standing on the outside float pumping away when a drunk local yokel decides that soaking a pilot with boat spray is very entertaining. He managed to get my feet wet but he didn't realise "the games a foot" and he didn't have enough sense to go home (evil grin)

Back in the day I always thought if I had to be up working that early the rest of Red Lake should join me - the norseman alarm clock --

Well, wouldn't you know it, as I was coming out of the bottom of the bay( I was MT bye the way) there is buddy sort of passed out and floating around so I decided we should get up close and personal. Haha nothing like the snarl of a long 2 blader. It felt so good and when I looked back he was busy trying to get the motor started so by the time I turned around and got him in the peep sites he was under way, the chase is on and I think he might have been having flash backs because he was trying desperately to allude me but I was persistent, just too much fun, the grand finally, he was wrenching on that motor so hard it flipped off the back of his boat in about 50 feet of water and loon shit bottom. I was pissing myself with glee.

A few days later I met his old man downtown and he was pissed, not at me but at his kid-lol. Never did find that outboard.

Back to moving these kids, we hated the bullshit trips and the camp was located in an asshole bay that was too small to get out with a load so step turns through a narrow channel to the big lake. Been a cpl aborted T/O runs due to meeting someone coming the other way, but just part of your day.

We got great pleasure blowing kids off the dock, rudders up, open the tap just as they let go of the aircraft -- that just never got old.

The owner, a high school principal from Wisconsin I think made the mistake of leaving his parrot at the water base and asked us to look after it. Too funny, someone worked for hours getting it to say "fuck you" never thought it worked until sometime later he came storming into the base. I guess the bird thought a family bfast was the time to exercise his expanded vocabulary.

Red Lake in the late 60's and early 70's was indeed the wild west. The Dubin Inquiry Report was a hot thing and basically condemned all bush flying. We giggled and thought it was the norm. The regulations slowly moved into that world but back in the day the free wheeling was a lot of fun. You learned by listening, getting your ass kicked when a mentor saw stupid and then the final test, learn by actually doing.

The good old days were certainly exactly that. I had more fun in my first 5 years of flying than in the 45 years to follow.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Back in the day I always thought if I had to be up working that early the rest of Red Lake should join me - the norseman alarm clock --

My first memories of what a real airplane sounds like was in 1946 in Macdermot Ont. watching the Norsemans take off in the morning...the noise was awesome.

I also had my first airplane ride in a Sea Bee in Orient Bay that same summer.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Back in the day I always thought if I had to be up working that early the rest of Red Lake should join me - the norseman alarm clock --

My first memories of what a real airplane sounds like was in 1946 in Macdirmid Ont. watching the Norseman's take off in the morning...the noise was awesome.

I also had my first airplane ride in a Sea Bee in Orient Bay that same summer.

[Nark]

I’m not sure I can remember what the first Radial engine I heard was, where or when.

I do remember my first F4 takeoff, 15’ away from the afterburners on a runway in Japan.
Now that, was an engine that could wake the dead!

I think they retired the last of the F4’s last year.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I remember once at spring training I was a brand new FO on the six and we were waiting on the ramp for the DC 6 to taxi up after a maintenance test flight. As it rumbled by the Captain turned to me and said, you would have to be at a Hell’s Angle funeral procession to hear a better sound track

LC

Those were the days when you had to fill up the experience bucket before you emptied the luck bucket. Good times

[CaptNerdly]

For a while we were getting our maintenance done by Gerry Cranston at Reddit. There was a strip alongside the CN tracks and a small creek you could taxi up on floats. I used to like to buzz down the tracks between the hills to the east in the old Noorduyn like I was driving a train all the while pretending to pull the whistle going "whoo, whoo" with a big smile on my face. I vaguely remember passing over one of those little CN motor carts and seeing 2 sets of big white eyeballs staring up at me.
Later at lunch time at the Hideaway where Gerry and crew would go for a "2 beer lunch" before finishing the inspection we got talking to a couple of CN guys at the next table. Turns out they thought a train was coming and were getting ready to bail when I passed over them. Called me a few choice names.
Oh the good old days!

[Liquid_Charlie]

Reddit - I know it well, got to know all the haunts in my OCA days