| We checked the route to hoverport
already at afternoon of 29th just to see that there is actually ice that
we can walk over to the other side of river safely next morning. There
was plenty of ice to walk on and 15cm (6") of snow that had appeared in
the morning of 27th had soaked through and formed solid ice on river.
Weather in the morning was quite nice, not superb but not terrible either. Pictures below show what we had to do first. It took about half an hour to remove snow and small amount of ice before starting engine. While finally turning the ignition key there was no sound from the aft at all. Solenoid had again frozen as it had last time. Luckily heat gun and electricity was there and just a little bit of heat was needed to release the solenoid. Engine started pretty well and i let it run awhile before taking a lift off. |
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| There were three of us onboard while we slowly started to glide towards river. And no matter how carefully i try to take the first bend it always tends to be too fast and opposite bank closes fast. Well we live and learn don't we, maybe one of these days... | |||
| There was still some on on ice when we got on our way and we noticed that it damps most of the noise of the Explorer as we travel on snow rather than on bare ice. We noticed few fishermen and some of paid attention to us, but most of them didn't. We got to place where we visited couple of days ago and noticed that unfrozen areas had spread a little due to warm weather we had between 27th and 29th. But if there was ice there was enough ice to walk on it. We headed through passage between couple of smaller islands to bigger bay and situation there was the same: open areas had grown since last visit. As this is not a problem for hovercraft merely more fun i'd say. We naturally tested crossing these "ponds" and had a great time. We didn't see any fisherman around this bay. It's more open to winds and ice is not strong enough to come here by foot. | |||
| We didn't spent much time hovering this time as there were other things to do also. We headed back and had yet another "that was close" situation at the narrow channel with tight curve. I was speeding, but was just too late with turning the craft and had to reset the situation by doing sort of a emergency stop. I wasn't too scared, but one of the passengers thought this is it. There was thick growth of alder and some large boulders but we had only 12km/h (7,5mph) speed so there was nothing to it even if we had hit those. | |||
| Anyway we got back to hoverport and for the first time in history of this craft i managed to land perfectly after doing a nice 180 to have the craft ready for next operation. See the picture below. You can see where it was before (no snow) and where i landed it. | |||
| Yes, we left it somewhere here, just keep looking ! | |||
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