The Race

The Back Drop to a Good Day


The weather radar isn't showing much return on the screen as we continue our descent through the clumps of clouds that where forcast as thunderstorms. The end of the day is getting nearer as we are heading back from Mclean Lake Mine where we sat all day after flying up there at 0800. With Prince Albert only ten miles ahead of us and company traffic hot on our tail, we're looking through the light showers that are glistening in the low evening sunshine, a beuatiful picture. But not much time to enjoy it as we decide to chop the power and slow down to 160knots to let our company Beech 1900 speed by to get to the airport first as it was gaining on us considerably. PA radio crackles over the headset to tell us that it has started to rain at the airfield. A glance at the field makes me smile, there's one cloud sitting over only half the feild and showers are falling out of it, it's neat to see the shower from this percpective. By the time we land the rain has stopped, you can see a distinct wet to dry line about half way down the runway, that's a quick shower.
After dropping one passenger off in PA we quickly fire the still steaming engines, run through the check list and start taxing for runway 08. The company 1900 has just fired up also after dropping a few passegners off, the race continues. We pick up our clearance from Radio and take off 08, the 1900 has to wait for us to clear the zone (5miles to the south)before they get there clearance to depart. We climb out of Prince Albert with the sky full of dissapateing TCs and a sun slowly getting lower in the western sky. It's a beautiful and quick 20 minute hop to Saskatoon. With the 1900 catching up with us again Terminal tells us to keep our speed up as we're gonna be number one for RWY27 at Saskatoon, we've got the needle hugging the barber poll at 208 Indicated airspeed, the GPS is telling us we're doing 245knots over the ground. The company 1900 gets there speed cut to 190knots, and told there're number 3 for the feild behind a 737 that we're gonna be cutting in front for a tight turn to final.
We round out the turn from base to final and chop the throttles, throw in approach flap at 180knots, then drop our gear at 156knots. The approach rounds out nicely and after putting in the rest of the flaps on short final we land and exit easily at Bravo taxiway. With a gorgeous sun setting we taxi back to the apron and escort the last 3 passanger to the hanger, I'm just walking back to the plane to tie it up for the night when I see the 1900 land on 27. Guess your first sometimes and last other times.
The sunset is a beautiful back drop for a great end to a long day.