Third times the charm

[octagon]

A few months ago, Rob Pike passed on to me sites that he had explored for float flying. The first site was the old quarry up on McCowan Road just south of Bloomington. While initially it looked promising, in the end it came to naught because Dufferin, who own the pit, have decided that whether the pit is active or not, they will not allow anyone to use the property. The second place was a lake just south of the Vivian Road on Kennedy. I talked to the grand daughter of the lady that owns it. While I have yet to hear back, I don't hold out much hope, as the lady lives on the lake and is somewhat reclusive from what I could glean from the conversation with her grand daughter. About 3 weeks ago, I approached Bruce Blacktop who owns a peat mining, fish farming facility just North of Zephyr. He was kind of neutral on letting us use it, kind of on the fence. I asked him if a couple of us could come up and let him see what we do. He agreed to that, and so Rob and I had arranged to go up last Saturday..........the day it snowed. We postponed our little demonstration until this morning. We met there at 9am and the lake was like a mirror. Because I am new to float flying we decided that Rob should be the demonstrator. Rob flew his Beaver and his Water Bomber (I can never remember its official name). Although Bruce was not there yet, 2 of the supervisors that look after the fish were there. Rob had to be in Port Perry for noon and so we had packed up by the time that Bruce arrived. However...........he said it would be fine for us to fly off his lake and that he would like to see what they looked like. He directed us to an area that we had at first thought would be perfect, but, we did not know there was a road up to it and to walk it would have been much too far. As I said, Rob had to leave but I drove down the road and checked it out. I think it will be a very good option. Parking might be a bit of a thing, but there may be a solution that I will further work on. The area is fully grassed and is kept cut short. There are little in the way of trees (although Simon could probably find one) and the water is clear and just teaming with fish. The area does face west, so it would probably be suited to morning flying rather than evening. We could start there in the morning and then down to Rogo for the afternoon. We thought we might organize something for a couple of weeks after Beaton, but I need to find out about the parking. It is a bit long winded to get into it at this point, but at worst, we would park one behind the other.  So there we go, we officially have another float flying site. 

[eric]

I went to Google Earth and found the only bit of water north of Zephyr (I think) and used the Street View to have a ground level peak at the site. Wow, if that's the spot, its fantastic! I live less than 10 minutes away and had no idea that was even there.

Thanks for the hard work in looking for and finding it.

Eric

[octagon]

I do think that is the spot Eric. It should be fun flying there.

[piker]

Thanks to Rob for making this opportunity happen for us!   

It is a very nice spot, and although it's tighter than say, Frenchman's Bay, the conditions would be more predictable.  It felt comfortable flying my water bomber (Canadair CL-215) there, which is one of the larger planes we typically fly.

We'll have to see how it turns out.

[Skyking]

Well done Rob!
I've yet to hear back from the club that I have approached several times.
It may not work for them?

I hope your daughter's wedding is everything that she would want it to be.

Ken

[octagon]

Thanks Ken. We are really looking forward to the wedding, even though I will miss Beaton. Rob, it was fun flying last night. I think you may have created a monster in me wanting to float fly. I saw the kit for the plane Glenn was flying last night today at A nd J. It is an old timer from Hacker. I have my finger on the button to buy it.