Quebec Flying

Click image for more photosNatalie and I hook up with the Distance Vol Libre crew outside Montreal

After attending my brother Ryan's wedding on Toronto Island, Natalie and I flew to Montreal to see what the city had to offer. We were both quite impressed with the old part of the city and the nightlife was completely different compared to Victoria or Vancouver. It has a very unique culture and we look forward to visiting again one day!

We drove 35mins out of Montreal on both Thursday and Friday to Mt Yamaska where Vincent Vaillancourt owns a very established flight school, 'Distance Vol Libre'. Complete with a dedicated landing zone, four different takeoffs, and regular shuttles, the 'mountain' is roughly 1000' and is covered by deciduous trees with farmland below. A $20 daily fee and $10 per ride up makes sleddies a bit pricey but we enjoyed flying the new sites and meeting some of our Quebec pilots.

On Thursday we flew from the east and smallest launch. It was interesting to watch the locals do running reverse launches in next to no wind. Chacun son gout!
Natalie had a solid forward launch and I followed her down on a demo SPORT 4. Supposedly, a few days earlier they had all enjoyed some nice glass-off conditions but it wasn't to be today.

On Friday, we could already see 3 or 4 pilots soaring the south west face as we were arriving so we were hopeful for longer flights this time. There was nice wind coming in on the south launch but unfortunately, there is no LZ on the south side so you have to fly around to the west side of the mountain right away to be sure and arrive with sufficient altitude over the landing area. Natalie had a good reverse launch and then headed towards the LZ. On my flight, I found a thermal on the west side and was able to put some 360s in before deciding to land.

I left the SPORT 4 demo with Vincent as he is the new Quebec dealer for Airwave.