Part 3 Some parts of my life experience ... by Canuck
An airport is a place where airplanes are stored, maintained and flown. It is also a place where men and women who love planes congregate.
Since my trailer manufacturing employer built his trailers in a hanger at the International Airport, I spent my working hours alongside its main runway. When it was warm and sunny our hanger door was opened and I could glance up from my work to see airliners taking off and landing. I had not known what was going on in the hangers that surround an airport runway and now learned that some were occupied by businesses maintaining aircraft, storing airfreight and one here even housed an aircraft museum.
Adjacent to our hanger was a company whose owner specialized in reconditioning old aircraft, rebuilding them to be certified airworthy and licensed to be flown
again after they had become worn out.
One famous Canadian airplane is known as the De Havilland Beaver. It was and still is one of the best bush planes in existence. A bush plane is one that best
services the remote areas of Canada, the far north, the Arctic, the mountainous
west coast. In summer it lands on wheels, in winter on snow skis, and before winter freeze-up and after spring thaw, on floats wherever water is found such as
rivers, lakes and even the ocean.
This neighboring company was rebuilding a Beaver aircraft and I was able to watch some of the work during lunch hour and after we closed for the day. It amazed
me how very simple were the internal workings of an aircraft like this. All hand and foot flight controls were operated mechanically by thin steel cables running over pulleys throughout the length of the plane. The engine powered the propeller and since it was directly in front of the pilot only simple control mechanisms were needed. Fuel tanks were in the wings and fuselage, wheels or pontoons on light supports beneath the plane, and instruments for notifying the pilot of engine, electrical systems and plane location details. Other than simple fuel pumps and electrical supply magneto/generator,that was all there was to this plane
. A pilot can both fly and service it and that was and still is its forte, its strongest feature for safe flying in remote places.
In the office of the owner of this aircraft-rebuilding company, on a wall, was the most amazing photo I have ever seen! It was taken from a boat on the water, of a two-engined military jet fighter, one of the powerful yet still simple appearing fighter jets as it flew very low over the flat calm water surface As it flew towards the camera, it began to angle slightly upwards so that its engine exhaust would strike the water surface. The photo was taken as the engines were powered up to full after-burner thrust. Each engine’s exhaust stuck the water surface leaving two great deep “gouges", trenches or valleys in the flat water surface and, further back, as the displaced water returned to refill these valleys
, two huge, double, high-peaked traveling waves followed the plane’s wake at 300kms per hour. I hope you can imagine this awesome display of power and physics
. I gazed at this photo for what seemed like hours, transfixed by its immense display of form and movement.
… to be continued
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