Flying over the North Pole
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Drain Bamaged
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Eureka is the next one down (south) from Alert. You will need prior authorization to go there, Alert and Eureka I believe. South from there are Inuits villages, you will be better to have prior arrangements for fuel and accommodation and even then, you might get some surprises.
JD
JD
When I was stationed in northern Greenland we had a little Cessna to fly around in for fun.
The magnetic northpole was only about 100 miles away.
All the dry compass theory from groundschool became quite visible and easier to understand:
Variation was about 80 degrees. You'd be flying north (geo north) and the compass would be pointing to mag north way over there off the wingtip.
Inclination or dip: A little abstract in theory but quite obvious up there. The compass, aligning itself with the magnetic force field, would be visibly pointing down toward the mag pole at an angle of 10 degrees or more. It was quite easy to visualize the magnetic pole as an actual point on the ground. Because of the steep inclination, turning errors were crazily amplified and the compass was basically useless for anything other than entertainment and geomagnetic science illustration.
The magnetic northpole was only about 100 miles away.
All the dry compass theory from groundschool became quite visible and easier to understand:
Variation was about 80 degrees. You'd be flying north (geo north) and the compass would be pointing to mag north way over there off the wingtip.
Inclination or dip: A little abstract in theory but quite obvious up there. The compass, aligning itself with the magnetic force field, would be visibly pointing down toward the mag pole at an angle of 10 degrees or more. It was quite easy to visualize the magnetic pole as an actual point on the ground. Because of the steep inclination, turning errors were crazily amplified and the compass was basically useless for anything other than entertainment and geomagnetic science illustration.
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Surprise, Surprise,have a look on "the light side" (the "other" Forum calls this the Dark side!)
A fellow got a lot of stick, proposing to fly over the NP....
Much Umble Pie was eaten ,when he posted photos and a video ofhis amazingexploit in a 172. IIRC he removed the back seatsand fitted a ferry-tank sourcedfrom Australia!
Take the mickey at your peril, there are some people out there with balls of steel.
A fellow got a lot of stick, proposing to fly over the NP....
Much Umble Pie was eaten ,when he posted photos and a video ofhis amazingexploit in a 172. IIRC he removed the back seatsand fitted a ferry-tank sourcedfrom Australia!
Take the mickey at your peril, there are some people out there with balls of steel.
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you will be better to have prior arrangements for fuel and accommodation and even then, you might get some surprises.
The Canadian arctic is magnificently beautiful, but wow, is it big! It's a long way to the far north just to see a whole bunch of white, and say you've been there.
In that part of the world, a small technical problem becomes very serious right away. I carried 50 pounds of tools and "support" for my plane, and that still was not enough for the engine problem I had. Fortunately, I had the problem in southern Quebec, where additional support was close at hand. If the same snag had occurred in the far north, it would have been tens of thousands of dollars cost to get going again. The only reason I ventured as far as I did, was that I went with friend in six other aircraft, so we had lots of crossover support and safety. We each carried pre agreed elements of what it would take to get any one aircraft going again.
With the immense unsupported distances between facilities, it is necessary for every leg of the flight to have a back up plan as to what to do, and where to go, if making it to the destination becomes impossible. Flying an amphibian is very reassuring in those cases. Not only is there a chance for a safe water landing in calm waters, but a slid on crash landing on very rough ground has abetter chance of success.
I would only consider a GA aircraft trip to that part of Canada as a part of a team of people and planes which I really trusted.....
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I got to the North Pole once and that was in the Twin Otter. It was a single family of Americans that wanted to go see it. The father said to me, I am Mr. Nord and we want to go to the North Pole.
Because of the long distances involved, we spent several days establishing a fuel cache on the ice at approximately 88°N, flying back and forth from Eureka to this location with 6 fuel drums at a time. It would become a fueling location for many future flights up in this area during the spring. In fact, the fuel cache was really being set up for many flights in the area over the coming few weeks.
Once we had found a suitable area to be a landing strip for the fuel cache and landed there, I filled a bunch of black garbage bags with snow loaded them in the back of the DHC-6 and sat in the back as it was taxied along the landing area. It would stop every few hundred feet and I would place a couple of bags as appropriate and eventually we had a marked strip with threshold and end of strip marked by garbage bags that would not blow away.
The snow is very hard packed from the wind in this part of the world at this time of year. In fact a significant or wrongly shaped snow drift can damage a wheel-ski. One has to be cautious up there as help is far away.
Because the ice moves continuously, a homing device which can provide a signal to be displayed in the aircraft is left behind along with a device to provide GPS coordinates via satellite.
Because of the difficulty in finding a decent spot to land, it is rare that an aircraft actually touches the earth's surface at the North Pole. We were able to find a spot about 1 mile away on the mostly rugged ocean ice. However, we did fly directly over the pole. No grid nav necessary, just a GPS. I had it set to lat-long display with a camera in hand as we approached the pole as I wanted to take a snapshot of it showing 90.00.00N but that never got displayed. Perhaps 89, 59.50 or so. Then we did a 2 minute turn through 360 degree passing through 24 time zones in that time period.
I was hoping that we would chance on a Russian sub but there was no one around. Natives and Polar Bears are a long way to the south.
It was April with 24 hour sunlight but still near -30. As usual out on the ocean ice, we left one engine running as a precaution. We were only there for 15-20 minutes. Long enough for the family to play some football and have some champagn which turned to slush in their glasses.
Then we flew back to base with most of our load being fuel drums in the back of the aircraft for further refuelling. Cruise altitude was 13000 feet. Initial track toward home was near 270 degrees soon changing to 180 degrees. Back-up nav was the sun. Cloudy days are not good for ice work.
Because of the long distances involved, we spent several days establishing a fuel cache on the ice at approximately 88°N, flying back and forth from Eureka to this location with 6 fuel drums at a time. It would become a fueling location for many future flights up in this area during the spring. In fact, the fuel cache was really being set up for many flights in the area over the coming few weeks.
Once we had found a suitable area to be a landing strip for the fuel cache and landed there, I filled a bunch of black garbage bags with snow loaded them in the back of the DHC-6 and sat in the back as it was taxied along the landing area. It would stop every few hundred feet and I would place a couple of bags as appropriate and eventually we had a marked strip with threshold and end of strip marked by garbage bags that would not blow away.
The snow is very hard packed from the wind in this part of the world at this time of year. In fact a significant or wrongly shaped snow drift can damage a wheel-ski. One has to be cautious up there as help is far away.
Because the ice moves continuously, a homing device which can provide a signal to be displayed in the aircraft is left behind along with a device to provide GPS coordinates via satellite.
Because of the difficulty in finding a decent spot to land, it is rare that an aircraft actually touches the earth's surface at the North Pole. We were able to find a spot about 1 mile away on the mostly rugged ocean ice. However, we did fly directly over the pole. No grid nav necessary, just a GPS. I had it set to lat-long display with a camera in hand as we approached the pole as I wanted to take a snapshot of it showing 90.00.00N but that never got displayed. Perhaps 89, 59.50 or so. Then we did a 2 minute turn through 360 degree passing through 24 time zones in that time period.
I was hoping that we would chance on a Russian sub but there was no one around. Natives and Polar Bears are a long way to the south.
It was April with 24 hour sunlight but still near -30. As usual out on the ocean ice, we left one engine running as a precaution. We were only there for 15-20 minutes. Long enough for the family to play some football and have some champagn which turned to slush in their glasses.
Then we flew back to base with most of our load being fuel drums in the back of the aircraft for further refuelling. Cruise altitude was 13000 feet. Initial track toward home was near 270 degrees soon changing to 180 degrees. Back-up nav was the sun. Cloudy days are not good for ice work.
Last edited by JammedStab; 24th Oct 2014 at 23:29.
