" 912 Performance "

[Aurele Lavigne]

Well, back from the moose hunt. Extremely poor weather for 4/5 days, high winds, low ceilings and rain otherwise. Barely got to leave and worse trying to get back and only 1/2 hour away from home. Had to make a forced landing on a remote lake and spend the night, fortunetly, turned out to be a local hunting camp there, fully stocked with food and other excellent provisions from LCBO. Managed to get back home this morning at break of dawn before conditions deteriorated once again.

As to performance for those who previously asked, the 912 is not meant for excessive loads ( I estimate 1300 lbs is too much on floats), and winds of 10/15 kts, gusting to 20/25 kts ++ were far too much to handle. Of course, most of you already knew this and so did I, even before Wayne mentioned it a few days back. I should point out that conditions were substantially better on take-off and deteriorated to this level after 10 minutes in the air with a change in wind direction and speed. Had the Rebel flying into the wind at 39 kts and when decided to land, cross wind going sideways at 80 kts and handsfull putting her down. Still, manged to keep the Rebel in one peice, great little aircraft !

Chock this one up for bush pilot experience. Can't wait to go back !!!

Aurele Lavigne
Rebel 063R