record scratch, frame freeze: Yep, that’s me. You might wonder how I got in the middle of a storm, a few meters above the waves of St. Lawrence River with a stuttering engine? Well, it all started on a stone cold, yet beautifully quiet morning on the apron of Schefferville:
I left this outpost of normal western life with the early dawn and headed for its contemporary replacement, Labrador City.
Navigation by lakes and rocks was quite a challenge again and the airport covered itself again in a snow shower, as it seems to be tradition in this part of the world.
I let the shower pass while refuelling and headed on to a waypoint, I was eager to see since the very beginning of the trip: The „Barage Daniel Johnson“ south of the Manicouagan reservoir, one of the largest barrages of the world, 214 m tall and more than 1,3 km wide.
I followed the ring-shaped crater lake southwards and was curious, how good the dam was modelled in MSFS. Let’s put it like this: The implementation is creative, in a way. Obviously, this landmark wasn’t part of the Canada world update.
I changed the course to the southeast to reach today’s destination: Mont Joli, just south of the St. Lawrence river. Either me or MSFS must have gotten the weather briefing wrong: A wall of clouds started to form on the horizon and wind picked up. Meanwhile, the ADF had locked in on the destinational NDB so I tried to go above the weather.
I had reached about 10.000 ft, when suddenly my engine died. Apparently, someone had forgotten to switch the fuel tanks regularly. I switched the tank, began the restart procedure and sank into the storm. Heavy gusts threw me around, while I was hastily trying to keep the plane upright and get the engine going again. When sinking below 2,000 ft, I hit Strg+E because nothing else worked. Now, the motor came back to life, but still threw dark clouds and sounded all but well. Storm-tossed waves rose below me, I must have reached St. Lawrence.
For the moment, the Wilga held itself in the air, but the engine stuttered and I had no control over pitch and mixture. Which added another problem: I had at least 30nm to go, with storm wind on the nose, my engine running full rich and the remaining tank emptying fast. In this moment, I was pretty convinced, that my journey would end here.
After what felt like an hour, the southern shore came into sight and I limped onto the airfield, shut down the engine and took a veery deep breath. Hopefully, the repair would not become too expensive.
After a coffee I scratched my head: The Airfield somehow didn’t match my preparation at all. A quick look at the map revealed: I inadvertently routed for Saint Anne des Monts instead of Mont Joli. Definitely too many Mont-airports at St- Lawrence!
Luckily, the mechanic convinced me that my engine was fine except for a few fowled spark plugs. So I set off to cross the US border on the same evening and went to Northern Aroostook Regional airport. A very nice rainbow welcomed me to the United States.
Aroostook Regional however welcomed me with the mandatory severe drop of visibility. Nothing that could have scared me after this long day.
