Almost made it…
So today I got to go for a helicopter ride with OSOK- the goal was to get to a particular mountaintop repeater site and replace the batteries. After picking me up just down the road from my home, the pilot headed northward at a good clip. The ceiling was pretty high, and it looked promising- until we got to within a few kilometres of the site. Localised weather had slapped a nice cap cloud on top our target, making it inaccessible by helicopter. And it started to snow. So we parked in a clearcut hat was only 1200 metres from our target for a while to see if the site would clear at all, but it didn’t. I took a picture:
and then we took off and headed for home.
We were low on fuel, so the pilot decided to stop at Nass Camp where we’d have lunch and gas up, but it turned out we didn’t have a refueling kit, so that was out. We had lunch and got back in the chopper- the pilot figured he’d try it and see how far we got on what we had left. I’m like, “Okaaay…sure.”
So we were getting ready to take off, and the pilot put his feet on the rudder pedals, and they broke off! Snapped right off. So needless to say, we didn’t go anywhere…fortunately, just then another commercial helicopter (an A-Star, if you care) landed at the camp, and its pilot agreed to give OSOK and our pilot a lift back to Terrace. I called up one of my coworkers who zipped up and gave me a ride home, and that was the end of that! It’s just really fortunate that the pedal assembly broke BEFORE we took off…and yes, I do still intend to get my rotary license some day!
Here’s a shot of the Nass Valley looking NNW. You can just see part of Aiyansh on the right.
