Flight to Little Bear Lake

 Last Saturday I flew Anne and Brenda to Little Bear Lake for the day to visit my daughter and her son up there.  The weather was a challenge with confused slow moving cold fronts and a trough of warm air aloft near Saskatoon and widespread low visibility due to forest fire smoke.  The weather at the lake was nice but still with smoke.

We flew early in the day and the visibility was fine but it did get below six miles as we got near the lake.  Landing was uneventful and the smoke cleared up during the day.

For the trip home there was a large rainstorm between us and Saskatoon as well as pretty high (26 degrees) temperature at the lake.  That is a grass strip about 2,200 feet long and with 47 gallons of fuel remaining the Comanche was at a takeoff weight of 2,700 lbs.  Without a headwind at that temperature and on grass it calls for about 2,000 feet of takeoff distance.

I was not too terribly concerned but I did carefully check the weight, temperature, and condition of the runway before we departed.  The wind shifted around to the north-east during the day and picked up a bit so that helped.

A short field takeoff procedure with max power before releasing the brakes delivered a nice takeoff in less than about 1,600 feet.  Very reassuring.

We flew through some heavy rain between Candle Lake and just south west of Prince Albert.  Small leak in my new windshield that dripped down right in front of my face so that is a new issue to fix.  Very low visibility (sub six miles again) in Saskatoon but not a problem.  Nice flight and not too bumpy!