Carl Tyler's Blog

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A few weeks ago I mentioned I was keen to try my hand at landing at Alton Bay, which is a sea base (a lake really) during the summer and when it's cold enough in the winter it becomes an ice runway. The runway is now open and I have the plane booked for tomorrow. I didn't have much to do today, and as Alton Bay is only a 50 minute drive away I decided I go up there and check out the operations and the taxi ways from the ground.

Sometimes things just strike me as either cool or very very stupid, Alton Bay strikes me as both. It was totally cool (and it felt very stupid) to take my car down the boat slip and onto the lake for the drive across to the temporary airfield. I wasn't the first, there were already lots of other trucks out there and probably a 75 snowmobilers buzzing around. The ice looked like it was a good 12-15 inches thick. I parked up and took Jess out for a walk/slide across the lake. Walking across the lake isn't too bad when there's snow under foot, but when you hit the straight ice, it's really dangerous/fun. Here's a photo of my GPS showing me in the middle of the lake, and some other pictures of the lake parking lot and some planes.



I also took my camcorder me with just to catch a few shots, in the process I managed to catch a pretty amazing landing. Now pilots are often very proud of short landings, although I doubt this pilot will want to take this same approach again...(Mum don't watch this or you'll try and stop me flying)