North to Ottawa | Part 3, Caution: Wet Paint

Departure from the Canada Aviation and Space Museum

At 2:30 pm, I notified museum staff that I needed to return to my airplane. I was escorted outside by a docent who was supposed to have led the 2:30 pm Reserve Hangar tour, but was available because no one signed up for it. Yes, I missed an opportunity for a one on one tour! But I also needed to be airborne at 3:00 pm or else amend my flight plan and arrival time with US Customs in Ogdensville, NY.

As we walked outside, she spotted the Warrior. "Is that a Piper?" She disclosed that she took flight lessons when she was younger, but only had experience with Cessnas.

I pre-flighted the Warrior, mentally refreshed on my plan for getting home, and cranked the engine. In a prior telephone conversation with the Rockliffe Flying Club, I was assured that I could pick up my IFR clearance in the air from Ottawa Terminal and planned to do exactly that.

"Cleared as Filed"

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
19 Oct 2023	N21481	YRO (Ottawa, ON) - OGS (Ogdensburg, NY) - SDC (Sodus, NY)	2.5	2746.7

I taxied to the departure end of runway 27, ran-up the airplane, and broke ground exactly at 3:00 pm as planned. Clearing the departure end of the runway, I turned 20° right to avoid restricted areas CYR-537 and CYR-538 around the Canadian government buildings and leveled at 1400 feet to avoid entering controlled airspace before establishing communications with Ottawa Terminal.

Ottawa skyline immediately after take-off from Rockliffe.

I was so focused on post launch navigation tasks that I only caught a couple of pictures of the Ottawa skyline as I zoomed past.

In one case, I inadvertently put my camera into a filter mode that captured the above image. Though completely unintentional, I liked the effect and kept it.

VNC depicting filed route from Rockliffe to Ogdensburg via YOW, IKLAX.

My filed route to Ogdensburg was via YOW (the Ottawa VOR) and IKLAX. Per ForeFlight, it was a previously cleared route that carried an impossible to quantify improved probability of being granted. Though it took a few moments to contact Ottawa Terminal because of frequency congestion, I was immediately cleared onto my filed route and given a climb to 6,000 feet.

Ottawa photographed from north of the Ottawa River and over Quebec.

Ottawa, Ontario from 6,000 feet.

My exit from Ottawa Terminal's airspace was perfunctory. I spotted a few traffic targets as they were called out to me, which was easy because they were airliners and quite a bit larger than the average General Aviation aircraft.

Looking southwest toward Kingston, the heavens acquired a dense, gloomy aspect. Below the moody atmosphere, lakes shone with reflected brilliance as though lit from within.

ForeFlight screen capture turning direct Ogdensburg at IKLAX.

At IKLAX, I turned direct to Ogdensburg. ForeFlight predicted an arrival time of 3:38 pm. Customs expected me at 3:41 pm. All went according to plan. Passing IKLAX, Ottawa Terminal handed me off to Boston Center.

The St Lawrence River from over Ontario, Canada.

As I approached the St Lawrence River, I had the distinct impression of being on the wrong side of it. There is always a certain amount of relief that comes when crossing back into United States airspace.

Wet Paint

Over the St Lawrence River.

As I crossed the St Lawrence River, Boston Center switched me to advisory. When I announced my pending arrival at Ogdensburg, I received an answering call from the ground.

"Uh, Cherokee, Ogdensburg Operations."

"Go ahead, Cherokee Four Eight One."

"We have painters working near taxiways Bravo 1 and Bravo 2."

Near them or on them? What do I do with that information? "Do I just need to be careful near those taxiways or avoid them entirely?" I asked.

"Definitely avoid them," came the response.

"Will do, Cherokee Four Eight One." I realized that I should have consulted the taxiway diagram to see where those taxiways were before agreeing so readily. When I did, I saw that they were not needed for me to make my appointment with customs.

In the end, I was two minutes late in meeting customs. The ramp was empty except for a single Dodge Charger emblazoned with "Customs and Border Protection" along the side. I parked at what I deemed a polite distance and shut down. Two officers emerged from the car and approached. One examined my paperwork and asked questions about the purpose of my trip while the other scanned Warrior 481 for radiation.

"Good trip?" Officer #1 finally asked as we were wrapping up.

"Yes! But I'm just glad that I did not keep you waiting." Late arrivals to customs appointments are rarely met by happy officers.

Officer #1 laughed and pointed at Officer #2. "Actually, when it hit 3:41 pm and you were still in the air, she gave me a look and tapped her watch," she confided good naturedly. The two officers formally cleared me back into the United States, wished me well, and walked back to their car.

Being "Handled"

At that moment, a lineman who had been loitering a few feet away during my interactions with Customs officers approached and sheepishly informed me that I needed to pay a $26.50 "handling fee".

"You didn't actually handle anything," I remarked without ire. 

He held his hands up defensively. "I know. We have a new manager and he's implemented an entirely new fee system in the last month. We now charge $26.50 to any single engine piston aircraft that lands here to clear customs." I was instantly annoyed. This trip was not inexpensive. I paid for Canadian charts to facilitate planning and navigation and I will pay a quarterly service fee to Nav Canada for air traffic control services. However, those examples differed from Ogdensburg's handling fee in that I received something of value in return for my money.

Inside the operations building, he presented me with an invoice with the $26.50 line item described as "New Handling Fee". As he ran my credit card, the lineman showed me the full fee schedule. Not surprisingly, the fees only went up from what I was paying for my modest single engine aircraft. "Thanks for not yelling about it," he added. "Some pilots do."

I shrugged. I was annoyed, but not at him. "I'm just less likely to come back," I answered honestly.

He nodded. "Yeah. I get that."

Maybe the new fees are intended to finance all of that fresh paint being applied to airport surfaces.

Idyll

Ogdensburg, NY with the St Lawrence River in the background.

With connector taxiways Bravo 1 and Bravo 2 obstructed, I back taxied down the 6,400 foot long runway and past the painting crew. They waved cheerfully, which was really the least they could do since I went out of my way not to run them over with my airplane.

After the combined pressures of timelines, customs clearances, and somewhat unfamiliar Canadian radio procedures, I chose a relaxing mode of flight home. Hand flying, 3,000 feet, and radio silent except for monitoring Guard (just in case); I ventured through no controlled airspace nor invited any engagement from ATC. 

Watch Out! Don't Hit Canada!

The latter was probably for the best. When I last traversed the region in late September on VFR flight following, the Wheeler Sack Approach controller seemed aghast that I was navigating by visual ground references instead of flying GPS-direct to a specific airport, navaid, or waypoint.

"Canada is very close," cautioned the military controller, his tone steeped in worry. The border was 15 miles off my right wingtip and made explicitly obvious by its coincidence with the St Lawrence River.

"Yep. I'm just following the St Lawrence back toward home," I responded in the most soothingly reassuring "I got this" tone of voice that I could muster. As long as I stayed south of the river, I would not blunder across the border. Navigation does not get much easier than that.

Moments later, when he couldn't take it anymore, the controller issued a directive to assuage his own anxiety. "Cherokee Four Eight One, fly heading 240, vector to avoid Canada."

Seriously?! Of all the preposterous... My days as a student pilot flying without GPS and navigating with a paper chart open on my lap suddenly seemed like ancient history.

I have received vectors around other aircraft, airspace, and weather. I have also received vectors onto instrument approaches. This was the first time I ever received a vector around an entire nation. Tom and Alicia, who overheard everything from their airplane as we flew home from Vermont together, mocked me about the whole exchange later.

And so, after a day of talking to an aeronautical grab-bag of Traffic, Approach, Center, Radio, Unicom, and Terminal, I was content to cruise home from Ogdensburg without talking to anyone. 

Hopefully, I would be able to find my way home without accidently straying back into Canada...

East end of Lake Ontario.

All in the Timing

In retrospect, the key element to such a successful day trip to Ottawa was timing. I carefully timed-out each leg while allowing myself adequate time to explore the museum, crossed each border as scheduled (as reported to the US CBP via eAPIS), and arrived on time (+/- 15 minutes) for customs appointments in Kingston and Ogdensburg. In recent years, I have become reasonably adept at sticking to a schedule and the flight to Rockliffe was a great example. 

For a day trip, I find that I prefer to file everything for the round trip in advance so that I am not scrambling at a remote location to file return flight plans, complete an eAPIS manifest, and schedule an arrival with customs. It means that I need to stick to my plan, but this approach has worked well for me and means less work on the day of the actual flight.

Yes, I made an arithmetic error in converting to Zulu time when I filed IFR from CYGK to CYRO by phone with Canadian Flight Service. Fortunately, nothing came of it. A similar error made in scheduling with customs would have been significantly more unpleasant for me. Despite that error, my overall planning was spot-on.

Most importantly, there was much more to this flight than international logistics. I added two airports to my map, visited a city that once vied to become Canada's capital (Kingston) as well as the actual capital city of Canada (Ottawa), explored a previously unfamiliar part of North America, and learned much at an incredible aviation history museum filled with rare or unique aircraft, many of which were unfamiliar to me. 

What a fantastic day!