Saturday seemed a good day for flying and Mike Sweere had to go to Red Deer to pick up some stuff for his plane. Glenn Bishell decided that it would be a good day to tag along and as his annual trek south is fast approaching, there might not be many days left to be airborne. Stu Simpson was also looking for a weekend ride and so it was decided that Glenn and Mike would fly to Kirkby’s to join up with Stu for the flight to Red Deer. Because of the blazing speed of the Buzzard, I would take off a little later and go straight to Red Deer.

I use an Android phone when I go flying because the Android has a great tracking program. This is the track as it shows:

http://www.greenalp.com/RealtimeTracker/index.php? viewuser=normrdt

If I was mountain flying, I would probably use spot but for me in the flatland, this seems to work well. You can put your cursor over the track and see height, speed, position and a bunch of info. It works really well. If you look at the map you can see I flew almost to Red Deer but noted a wall of fog approaching from the north. I listened to ATIS and it said little about fog but did say dew point and temp were within a degree. I called and asked for a report and was told it was clear over CYQF and someone had just landed. As I got over the northwest corner of Innisfail, I could see fog south of Red Deer on the west side of the river and fog south of Red Deer on the east. Red Deer was still clear, but it seemed surrounded by the fog. I called Red Deer radio and told them I would see them next weekend instead. It did not seem smart to carry on into the middle of the fog. As I turned it felt like the fog was chasing me and I wasn’t sure the Buzzard was fast enough to outrun it. (Ed. Note: I think Stephen King wrote a short story about this… did you see any dinosaurs?). After a few minutes I was clear and feeling much better. When I got back to Carstairs I heard Brian Byl on the Radio, and he was going to take the Cessna 195 for a ride. I landed, stuffed my plane back into my hanger and hopped in with Brian for a quick ride.

It was a pretty good ride in the Buzzard with only one good bumpy spot (right around the Bowden area). It was odd how it bumped pretty good in the one spot. I checked the GPS airspeed groundspeed, but it did not seem like a wind shear. Just odd and it only lasted a second or two.

When I landed back at Carstairs it was uneventful, as I touched down on 16. Brian attempted to put back on the ground a few minutes behind me and said the turbulence as he broke through 1000 ft was pretty strong. The wind had shifted, and Brian did an overshoot and came back to land 34 instead. The wind had shifted in a matter of minutes. What a great and interesting day.

Check the loop to the west and you can see my ground speed is a little quick for a little Buzzard. When I told Brian about the FOG, he decided we should take a look to the north on our way to Sundre. We had heard Mike, Glen, and Stu land there as a destination. The fog was still rolling south quickly so we phoned Mike on the ground using Brian’s Garmin communication system with Bluetooth, (WOW, what a system that is) and told them it might be a good idea to head for home. They took off and we followed. We got some good Videos and here is a link to one.

We were not on the ground long and enjoying some hanger flying when Mike’s wife texted him to say it was good he was home as the fog had just rolled into Carstairs.

It was a great day flying in beautiful sunny skies and we managed to stay ahead of the fog all day.