AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020 - 64

My French language skills aren't poor-they're nonexistent. But the Priems and their largely bilingual staff make
communication easy and fun. And where words fail, hand
gestures and pantomime fill in remarkably well.
For the next two days, Alain plans to lead us to large
and small lodges on remote lakes and rivers, and he offers
to take us whale watching where the Saint Lawrence River
meets the Atlantic Ocean.
"There are so many interesting places to fly here, I
never tire of it."

Low clouds and rain keep our airplanes tied to the dock the
next morning, but an afternoon break in the clouds allows
us to fly north to some of the remote lakes and rivers so easily accessible by seaplane.
As you fly north, roads and trails become progressively
fewer until there are none at all.
"In the way north, you feel very small and very
exposed," Alain said. "The trees get smaller and then they
completely disappear. There's nothing but rock and ice as
far as you can see in any direction."

An approaching cold front with forecasts calling for a couple days of adverse weather convince us to return to the
United States early-and this time there's a wrinkle in my
border crossing.
The eAPIS filing went fine, and so did the telephone
notification of our arrival at Jackman, Maine (59B). But flying along in clear air at 7,500 feet, I heard the electric pump
that raises and lowers the Super Cub's electro-hydraulic
landing gear running continuously(and saw an annunciator
light). That was a problem, most likely a hydraulic leak that
was preventing the closed system from building enough
pressure to automatically shut off the pump.
I put the landing gear handle in the down position, but
the wheels stayed up, mostly.
"Your right main landing gear is down," Robidoux told
me by radio. "But the left side is still up."
64 | AOPA PILOT April 2020

I tried manually pumping the landing gear down
without success. Then I manually raised them with a
hand pump, and I was relieved to see the blue lights
on the instrument panel confirm the wheels were up
and locked. That's where they'd stay-for the rest of
the flight. I pulled the circuit breaker to stop the electric motor and knew that my next landing had to be in
a lake. Fortunately, we were headed to one of the few
U.S. border crossing stations that could accommodate
seaplanes making water landings. Jackman has a customs dock at Moose Lake (60B) for airplanes that can't
use the hard-surface runway.
As soon as I was in radio range, I called the unicom
frequency at Jackman to let them know I was headed to
the water, but no one answered. Finally, I overflew the
runway at Jackman, circled the dock a short distance
away, then splashed down and water taxied to the dock.
The water taxi and docking turned out to be particularly treacherous because of extremely shallow water,
a narrow river, and a tailwind. But I was thankful and
relieved to clear customs without causing an international incident.
I had taken pains to get my paperwork in order-
including an obscure, expensive, and probably
needless FCC radio license, but neither the Canadians
nor Americans were even slightly interested in it. The
U.S. inspector focused on the border crossing sticker
and passport. Robidoux and Willard landed on the
hard-surface runway and they cleared customs without incident.
For the next couple of days, as we flew around central Maine, we'd commonly hear pilots speaking French
on unicom frequencies at airports in nearby Quebec.
"There are so many fun places to fly in Maine that
I seldom think about what's just across the border in
Canada," Robidoux said. "Quebec is so close and yet the
French language and geography make it feel exotic. I'm
definitely going back."
AOPA
EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org

AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020

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