By John Wyman, EAA 462533; EAA Chapter 266 Montreal
This past spring I traveled to Saskatoon for the second time in 15 years (literally, to the same week) to get a vintage two-seat training glider and bring it back to Montreal, by highway! You might first ask, why? Well, this trip came about both out of necessity to obtain a spare (serviceable) wing for my current Ka-7 glider, and it also happened to be a “project” aircraft that had the potential to be restored. The trip was inspired, in part, from my first glider I purchased in 2007 from the same club, Prince Albert Gliding, and also from listening to a podcast about Wally Soplata’s life, which aired on EAA’s The Green Dot podcast in the doldrums of winter.
The interview is officially about a book that his son, Wally, published about his dad, Walter, on his life of saving numerous precious World War II aircraft destined for the scrap heap. Little did I know then that I’d have a need for a wing that was hopefully interchangeable with the one that was soon damaged when transporting it to a new home in April. If it sounds convoluted and was destined to come about, it was. My reasoning was if he could save numerous World War II airplanes, then I could maybe do something similar (again) with another old glider and give it a new life. (Note: I don’t equate any of my gallivanting around looking for airplanes to that of Walter’s, but listening to that interview was in the back of my head when the phone later rang). The glider looked in bad shape from a distance, but with lots of TLC and some luck, it seemed like there was (is) a chance for it to fly again. As a bonus, this time around, I’d have some help and company with my daughter joining me for the adventure! I thought too, that this would be an opportune moment to reconnect with her since she had left the nest and started her own life in Ottawa several years ago.
Genesis
The trip all kind of came together in just under a week. Ulli Werneburg (MZ Supplies), a renowned competition glider pilot and Schleicher dealer in Canada, told me that the Prince Albert Club had a Ka-7 that was in need of repairs to its right wing, but that its left wing was still in good shape. This prompted me to call their club at precisely the same time that they were calling me in search of a serviceable wing for their glider! I called them the night after they left a message inquiring about my glider they had sold me 15 years prior. After some further calls, they were open to selling their aircraft with the goal of obtaining another serviceable Ka-6 glider (the single-seat version) for their expanding student population. They are expecting upwards of 30 new students for the summer season — quite the boost to a roster for a club that had just been through a slow spell. It seemed to all of us that the timing was right for me to start working on restoring their glider (soon to be mine) and for them to start shopping for another glider out east.
A Plan Comes Together
I next texted my daughter, Emily, excited at the prospect of heading out west to get the glider, asking if her schedule at work would allow for the week off to go get it. Remarkably, at the last minute, she was able to get the time off and was really looking forward to the ad hoc, last-minute prospect of a cross-Canada road trip at the tail end of winter. I made it clear to her that this was a “mission” and that it’d be wise to expect the unexpected, so that if she did have to be back at work at a specific date and time, it was best to have enough of a window to make it happen.
From the start, she understood where I was going, as she had seen how my “missions” could either run smoothly or quickly spiral into chaos if everything didn’t come together as planned. All I needed next was a car with a hitch in good enough running form to make the trip. As luck would have it, my best friend Jean would have the solution! It turned out that he had just the right car for the job. In September 2022, he had moved back out west (Edmonton, Alberta) with his Volvo, but was now contemplating scrapping the car as it had issues passing licensing in Alberta (its dash had a nice collection of Christmas lights happening). Fortunately though, it was still licensed in Quebec, and he was in the process of buying another car to replace it. If I was quick enough, we could do the transfer through the mail and I could leave with it from Edmonton, pick up the glider and trailer in Saskatoon, and continue on to Montreal. Like the first trip in 2007, this one was coming together with both a car out west with a hitch and a trailer to tow the glider back. The idea of driving across the country there and back (with another trailer) seemed impossibly hard, versus just starting with something there. I had, after all, done the trip once before, and knew that the hours behind the wheel take a toll on you, doubling your total trip time and that the cost alone in fuel is prohibitively expensive. Other than the multiple instrument dash warnings, a broken driver side’s window and a muffler system that left a lot to be desired, the car was in “decent” shape, having originally been from out west where there’s little salt used on the roads.
Emily and I set out for Edmonton in early March for the trip. 4,000-plus kilometers from Edmonton to Montreal lay ahead. I had packed a minimum array of tools for the repairs to the car and had made the first hotel reservation for our arrival in Leduc, Alberta. The rest of the trip was unplanned, based roughly on how the car would perform and the forecasted weather. We’d fly one-way with Flair Airlines. A day before the flight, Jean broke the news that thieves had stolen the catalytic converter from the car. They used a battery-operated grinder to cut it out. It’s become the norm that these expensive anti-pollution devices are high on their list for the precious metals that they contain, which scrap yards recycle. Fortunately, for me, they did a neat job of removing the old one, and it wasn’t too difficult to straight pipe the installation with some standard automotive exhaust pipe. I had ordered a new one anyway from RockAuto to be there on my arrival in Leduc. Little did I know that new replacement catalytic converters are also sought out by the same thieves, straight from the warehouses, as the one I ordered from Rock Auto was also “lost to theft” before it was loaded on the airplane in Texas!
With no real time to spare to wait for a parcel that wasn’t going to show up, I set out in the early morning to get the pipe fixed at a local muffler shop. By noon we were on our way to Birch Hills, Saskatchewan, to appraise the condition of the glider and prepare to load it for travel the next day. This is where things started to get “adventurous.” The window on the driver’s side of the car had slipped from its rails and allowed a fair amount of snow to accumulate on the floor over the past months. I had tried to get rid of most of it, but it was now soaking wet. This would later be a source of a few problems on the road. We started out smoothly on the two-lane highway where, soon enough, I’d say to Emily, pointing to another warning that appeared on the system display, “I don’t want to be an alarmist here, but what do you think of this?” To her (and my) consternation, the message displayed, while hauling down the highway at 120 km per hour was “Total Brake Failure”, in RED! I called out “E-CAM actions!” (Pronounced “Eeeee Cam”, this is your standard response to a problem in the Airbus). This didn’t represent much of a problem as the pedal wasn’t going to the floor, but it was a cause for concern and that further investigation at a rest stop would be wise.
A little bit of troubleshooting would reveal that all was okay (there were no fluid leaks) and that the only reason the warning appeared was because humidity was known to be a problem with the ECM (electronic control module) if the floors got wet on the driver’s side in these cars — info quickly deciphered from the internet forums on Volvos. Emily did a great job here as I was just busy enough on the lookout for braking traffic and the next warning(s) that would appear. We solved the brake warning by driving to Birch Hills with the heater full on HOT (we needed it anyway with the temperature outside still hovering around -10 degrees Celsius), and this eventually dried out the carpet and removed the humidity that was causing the computer to lose its head! A side precaution was to leave the car running from then on, even at gas stops, to make sure we didn’t have any ignition issues with the main computer. The forums also said that it was wise to keep it running — with some other people unfortunate enough to report that their cars wouldn’t even start when the floor was wet! This was a great source of info that I didn’t have 15 years earlier when trying to adjust the fuel air-mixture on the Dodge Ram’s carburetor that I used for towing the first glider. Modern, on-the-fly wireless internet access on a phone saves you a lot of time these days, especially if someone else can do the searching while you look for a place to pull over.
I’ll continue next month with Part 2 and the relative speed at which we crossed the country.
Stay tuned…
John Wyman, EAA 462533, EAA Chapter 266 Montreal, is a passionate aviator. When he isn’t in the saddle at the airline, he can be found out at the airfield doing any number of things. He likes to fly gliders, practice aerobatics, work on airplanes, and fix stuff.