Alert!

[BillD22]

Here are some shots of a flight from Thule AB in Greenland up to Canadian Forces Station Alert on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island not too far from the North Pole. Alert is a weather and signals intelligence station and is the northernmost continuously inhabited spot in the world.

 

This is a recreation of a RW mission I flew on "back in the day" to deliver an air drop of mail to the crew at Alert. The 5000 foot gravel runway was too rough and too short for us to safely land and be able to takeoff + there was the potential high risk of FOD to the props and engines. Airplanes do land there - just not us.

 

Here's the big geo picture. The flight was VFR direct to and from. Not much other traffic up here.

 

Off Thule's snow covered runway and climbing out past Greenland's rugged and snow covered NW coast

 

 

About 100 miles out. Alert is straight ahead and in these clear VFR conditions we've got northern Geenland below us and the rugged mountains of Ellesmere Island visible off to the left across the frozen northern arm of Baffin Bay are there to guide us pretty much straight to Alert. Nav is a piece of cake.

 

Letting down over the frozen Arctic Ocean for our approach. Alert is in sight straight off the left wing.

 

The low altitude low speed drop pass over the runway. Drop consisted of mail and the most current copies of Playboy and Hustler magazines for the station crew's reading pleasure (which may serve to date the "back in the day" timeframe of this adventure ;)). I think the rotating ground crews at the station have long since included female staff so probably not part of today's deliveries. ;);)

 

FS2020 scenery of polar regions isn't the best. This shows gray snow covered trees around the runway. The RW terrain is ice covered rocks and snow.

 

 

Climbing out for the return to Thule. With the North Pole a mere 500 miles away it was tempting to think about a quick dash to the pole to be able to say we'd been there but cooler heads prevailed. This was pre GPS days, magnetic compasses are completely unreliable in these high latitudes, flight would be over white, featureless frozen water with no visual references, and would have required tricky and, to us Florida based aviators, unfamiliar polar grid navigation. At the North Pole all directions are south - so without instruments aligned to a grid reference which south heading do you pick to get home? So - no North Pole!:(

Edited July 28, 2022 by BillD22

[NMLW]

Great flight to the cold ultra north in your P3 Orion Bill. Some fine shots of it and a nice narrative as well. :cool: :D I assume Alert was a Dewline station?

[darrenvox]

sweet shots bill!!