I’m fortunate enough to live on the glide path to Hay River airport. Buffalo has one of their bases here. They are one of the last commercial operators of piston engine aircraft. All year long we hear, a few times a day, every day, DC-3 and other WWII vintage aircraft come and go. One of the planes was part of D day. In the summer, right up until very recently they used PBY/Canso water bombers and during forest fire season they can operate right around the clock. A personal highlight of my life was the day we were sitting on the shore of Great Slave lake. It was a beautiful bright summer day. Four, yes FOUR of the water bombers flew over us in a low pass. The sound was breathtaking.
Until a few years ago they offered daily passenger flights to Yellowknife. It was a normal part of our lives to get on one of those beautiful DC-3 aircraft and take a trip the way southerners would board the bus. They still run daily mail and freight runs every day.
A friend of mine works at their base in Yellowknife. I was in their maintenance shop on Thursday, visiting. It is like time travel. Old radial piston engines everywhere, a early WWII biplane hanging from the ceiling, parts and pieces that you occasionally recognize and realize that they are 70 plus years old. The characters from the series Ice Pilots literally beside you, doing their jobs.
But I digress. I was fortunate enough several years ago to purchase, at auction, several pallets of electronic scrap. One of the items was the original airport shortwave receiver, an RCA AR-88D. It’s from the war years, when the U.S. flew thousands of planes up through this area to Alaska then Russia. When the Canol pipeline was being built to supply oil for the war effort. If only it could talk.
