North to South and back again – Bangladesh to Australia

After the typical flurry of getting ready to go – we are off – luckily not in the flurries that happened earlier this week in Winnipeg – we left with a blue sky

First leg – flying west to Calgary – tomorrow the compass will point north and up over northern Alberta, B.C. and into Alaska.

The flight across the Canadian prairies at 12 000 feet without incident.

There was one interesting thing that happened, or could have been interesting, had we not been aware of flying a Kodiak.

While flying a annunciator light and alarm went off – indicating fuel flow interruption to fuel reservoir – warning that we have approximately 3 minutes before the fuel runs dry. Over the bald prairies of Saskatchewan that is one thing – with numerous locations to do an emergency landing – but the time where we became aware of this Kodiak false alarm – it wasn’t such an easy place to land.

A number of years ago – while delivering a Kodiak to Asia – we went the route from California to Hawaii. If you were to look at the map -you would notice there are no islands between California and Hawaii – about 2000 nautical miles – approximately 14 hours flight time. So when we do this route – before 7 hours in – just before half way – as pilots – we need to make a final decision (point of no return) if the weather and winds and such are good enough to make Hawaii – or we turn back. Anyways – it was right around the 8 hour mark that the fuel annunciator went off – saying that we had 3 minutes fuel left!

Needless to say – we didn’t end up in the brink. We discovered after about 10 minutes emergency procedures – including filling the dry bag and zipping up our dry suits (which we wear flying across the water)- and looking into the QRH that if the fuel flow interruption to fuel reservoir comes on to “attempt a nose low steady heading forward slip for 10 seconds and to the left and then to the right to clear the vent lines of fuel” (essentially burp the plane:) We found out later that this can be an occasional occurance when flying a Kodiak – especially at gross weight on a hot day.

So flying over Saskatchewan – we burped the plane and remembered other times in the Kodiak.