Summer Trip to the US - Part 1 - Oxford to Iqualuit

Summer trip – Part 1 Oxford to Iqualuit

Our trip to the US was a long one this summer and so for the convenience of readers and the writer, I have broken it up into five parts.

This edition is to cover the first Atlantic crossing leaving my home base of Oxford to Iqualuit in Canada.

After a busy weekend before the trip started, a friend of mine who also owns a PA-46 joined me bright and early at Oxford on the Monday morning and 0805 we left for Wick in Scotland. Wick is a remote and quite desolate place which always either seems to have fog or low ceilings and a gusting wind.

The trip was uneventful and after 1.9 hours we arrived there on a cool day without any rain ie pretty good for northern Scotland. The whirlwind that is Andrew Bruce at Far North Aviation sorted out some survival gear for me and after fuelling we were on our way to Iceland.

The trip to Iceland was also simple. Other than some CBs on approach into Reykjavik, there was little to report. 2.7 hours in the sun on top.

Reykjavik is a nice city but always feels pretty cold and windswept.

A poor shot of the aircraft from the hotel:

Panorama of the city.

In Reykjavik, we had to confront some planning issues. There were two problems. There was a solid headwind for the leg to Greenland. We had planned Reykjavik to Narsarsuaq to be followed by Goose Bay which is the shortest route. But Goose Bay was shrouded in very bad weather as was most of the East coast down to Boston.

The leg to Narsarsuaq was 738nm (a 3.5 hour trip with the winds and right on our limits at a normal cruise power setting). But there was no point going there and waiting while the bad weather in Canada looked to be stable. Narsarsuaq is not the place you want to spend a few days (IMHO).

So we planned instead to fly to Sondre Stromfjord (BGSF). But the problem with this was that it was about the same distance but the winds were slightly worse due to the track flown. There was one other complication frequently found in flying around this area – alternates. Essentially, once you get to your destination in a Meridian, you don’t have fuel to get anywhere else. So you need to be very disciplined on weather and points of no return. Normally on the northern route Kulusuk (at point DA on the photo below) would be available as an alternate if the winds on the way were much worse than planned. It is gravel but quite landable and you can refuel and continue. However Kulusuk had two problems. It was low IFR and its Jet-A1 truck was broken so it had no ability to give us fuel other than Avgas.

So we pulled out the flight manual and explored the so called economy power settings for the plane. It looked like we could get about 230knots true at a fuel burn of 200lbs/hr. This would be enough if the winds were on plan. Normal cruise is 1lb/hr per knot. However we had to treat overhead Kulusuk as the PNR and if we were not happy with how the trip had gone at that point, we would have to return to Reykjavik.

So we left and watched via the ADL120 the updated winds as we travelled West. Broadly speaking by the time we reached our PNR we decided we were good to continue. This was a hard decision however as we knew that the winds were going to worsen before improving again on the far side of the ice sheet. I have never watched the Fuel Over Destination display quite so avidly! As it happens we landed with 320lbs which was right on plan. 3.7 hours of flight time.

First sight of Greenland

Lakes in ice sheet on western edge of Greenland (they look better in real life)

Edge of the ice sheet

On the ground in Sondre Stromfjord

After fuelling we left for Iqualuit on Baffin Island. But not before grabbing a quiet bite to eat in the presumably deserted cafeteria at the airport. Boy were we wrong. It was packed. We had to wait for a table and discovered that Sondre Stromfjord is very popular with cruise ships taking people to the Iceberg Nursery just a little bit north. There were 150 people in this cafeteria.

First sight of Canada – sea ice off Baffin Island

More of the rugged island

Iqualuit was….basic but OK. The cost to rent a GPU for 20 minutes at the airport was not good however. While AVGAS was essentially not available, Jet-A1 was easy to get and we filled up and readied the plane for our departure the next day. The flight to Canada took 2.2 hours so overall we spent 9.9 hours getting from Oxford to Canada.

The hotel itself was actually quite nice as it had been recently furnished. It would be a tough place to live however….

[edited on request]