On innovation and irritation

This post is predated as I wrote after the following post.

On my first full day in Ottawa, I went to the Aviation Museum. Even though I don't enjoy traveling by plane, I love aircraft. (So, I am complicated, live with it.) I went full geek and booked a tour of the Reserve Hangar as well as the regular visit. The regular visit was much as I expected it. There were some "old friends" in the form of some working models of retractable landing gear that I know had once been in the Science and Technology Museum. There were some new bits, mostly in the shape of an adjunct of a Space Travel section, mostly tucked away on a higher level. Because of my leg, I didn't feel the urge to go upstairs. On the lower level, there was a Canadarm as well as Chris Hadfield's space suit on the seat from the Soyuz capsule, he was in when he went to the International Space Station. The position it was posed in, looked essentially fetal. Even though the Museum was wide open, I felt claustrophobic just thinking about how cramped the Soyuz capsules must be.

I was one of two people on the tour of the Reserve Hangar. The other was an older Brit who had been a helicopter mechanic in the Royal Navy. He was particularly interested in seeing the CC-130E Hercules as he had a tale to tell about the aircraft type. A helicopter he was responsible for, a Westland Sea King, had broken down in France. After going through the repairs, it was discovered that the true fault lay in a certain gauge which was a defective. If I understand correctly, in theory the helicopter could have flown in an emergency, but in peacetime, it was go/no-go fault. That is, if the device doesn't work, you don't fly. The Fleet Air Arm had the relevant part, but it was in the UK. So, to get it to the helicopter in France, they sent an RAF Hercules. The part delivered, he and his fellow airman felt it would be a shame to send the Hercules back empty. So they visited a local liquor store and bought a considerable quantity of wine and beer to take back to base, if effect turning the RAF into a smuggling operation!

I was feeling a bit like the second banana on the tour, until we turned into a corridor between the dense arrangement planes, and I saw this plane:

I am referring to the the large mostly white turboprop in the background. It is a Convair 580. This was a conversion of an 1950s era piston engine airliner to turboprop power. My interest was piqued by the fact it belonged to Environment Canada and had a radar located under the rear of the aircraft. Said radar was a side looking radar designed to take images of the ground. I had been involved with that aircraft in 1990 when my father hired me as a field research hand for a week. Along with a pair of his graduate students one of which was Huabin Geng from China and another from Africa, we drove to Woodstock, Ontario and spent a week doing the basic groundwork with others. Our job was to collect vegetation and soil samples from various fields just as the plane flew over with its radar. The samples would then be weighed to determine how much moisture they contained when wet and the again when dry. Thus, the radar images might be calibrated so that computers would know that signal strength X meant so much water was in the vegetation. At one point, I was on radio duty, and I still remember talking into the radio saying: "Convair 580, this is Oxford ground." Because of cloud over, I hadn't actually seen the aircraft until then.

The Reserve Hangar held a variety of aircraft and bits of aircraft that the Museum had received but didn't have the space to display. As well, some aircraft were being restored such as this aircraft, the only surviving Canadair North Star. One of her sisters in BOAC service as Atalanta brought the newly acceded Queen Elizabeth II to England upon the death of her father, King George VI. It also had an outer wing panel from an Avro CF-105 Arrow and an Orenda Iroquois engine used by the same. The later was flight tested by attaching it to the rear of a B-47 bomber lent by the US Air Force. When it was returned to the Air Force, it was promptly retired. The story goes that the power of the engine had bent the air frame. This is not impossible as the aircraft wasn't designed to have an engine in that location. It is also possible that the modifications to the aircraft made it unsuitable for further operational use. As well, the aircraft may have been considered "old" to begin with as it was an early model and therefore expendable.

There was one object that pretty much stumped all three of us, e.g. the guide, the Royal Navy guide and me. I am pretty sure it is Canadair CL-89, early form of surveillance drone.

The next day, I went to the Canadian War Museum. It was pretty much as I expected, including somewhat silly rotating dials with different takes on controversial subjects in history. Having two degrees in history, I didn't bother with them. I particularly avoid the section on Trudeau, Senior's invoking of the War Measures Act as the fundamental reason for using it was something that couldn't be said at the time, namely that Trudeau knew that the police and intelligence of Canada were useless at the Federal, Provincial and Municipal levels.

I was also irritated that they hadn't fixed a flaw in their section on the Canadian Armed Forces Search and Rescue functions. They had few strips from Lynn Johnston' For Better or For Worse where Jon and his brother-in-law are rescued by a Twin-Otter. Unfortunately, the plaque described them as having been in a plane crash, when in fact they had suffered a canoe accident.

In another gallery, there were the remains of a covert German automated weather station that had been set up on the tip of Labrador. For the time, the technology employed was something of a marvel. However, the execution had several flaws. Most notably was the fact that people behind it were remarkably ignorant for all their cleverness. They thought to disguise the origin of the devices by painting false markings on one of them as illustrated in the picture below.

There are two problems with the label. The first is that the station was placed in Labrador, part of the Dominion of Newfoundland, not the Dominion of Canada. That might have been overlooked by the casual observer as Canada was active in the Dominion of Newfoundland during the War. However, the Germans seriously goofed by using the word "Meteor" instead of "Weather".

It was only officially found in the late 1970s. However, it had been destroyed and ransacked before then by persons unknown. I remember reading about it in Canadian Geographic. If my memory serves, the author suspected that the Allies knew about it as German reports said the signal was being jammed, before stopping entirely. There is no mention of it in Canadian or British military archives, though perhaps the Americans investigated and didn't mention it to their allies. Because of wartime censorship, the finding and destruction was kept secret to the point that it was forgotten. Another possibility rests in the fact that the location wasn't as deserted as the Germans thought. I've read that the local Inuit considered it a great place for fishing. 

The next morning, after checking out of McGee's Inn, I put on my outdoor shoes and was sitting on the chair when I had the urge to re-check my room. However, I couldn't be bothered to change shoes again. So, I got in my rented car and went to first return it, then take a taxi to the train station. This time, I accepted the help of a staff member. As we walked along the platform, I noticed that there no less than 4 of the new Venture trains sitting in wait. I also noticed that the young woman pulling my roller luggage was wearing Auclair Lillehammer cross-country ski gloves, just like me.

The trip back was uneventful, other than the sight of a field specked with wild turkeys. As the train neared Montreal, I checked my email only to find a message from the McGee's inn to the effect that I had left my glasses behind! Quelle frustration!