The Aqua Plane

Skiing on Waterton Lakes is nothing like skiing anywhere else. The water is so cold that you very quickly learn to take off from the dock and end either on the dock or you simply beach the ski's. You do NOT want to fall in the water since that water has only moments earlier melted off some glacier somewhere. The traditional skiing place is on the lower lake tucked in behind a ridge that comes off of Vimy mountain. The water is perhaps one or two degree's warmer than the upper lake (38 instead of 36) and the mountain ridge protects that part of the lake from the hurricane force winds that are typical in Waterton. If you were a really good skier you would leave about ten feet of slack in the rope and tell the boat to "hit it" so that by the time the rope went tight the boat was up to full speed. You would then jump from the dock on a single ski and take off without ever getting wet. I never was that good. I would sit on the edge of the dock with two ski's and then come around and drop a ski near the dock where someone could pick it up. No one would take off out of the water. To land you could either ski right up to the dock and let go of rope timing things just right so you could merely sit on the dock or you could head for the beach and ski right up onto the gravel. You'd want old ski's for that method. The dock was a floating dock so it was pretty level with the water. That is a good thing because one time I figured I was good enough to sit on the dock but unfortunately, without my glasses I'm pretty much blind and when I came towards the dock I never saw it in time and I skied right across the dock and sank in the water on the other side. After that I figured I'd stay with the beach approach.

One year Greg got the bright idea of making an aqua plane. This was essentially an airplane that you would tow behind a boat and "fly" underwater. It was made of wood and you would lay on top of the contraption and use your hands to push or pull the ailerons up or down. It was made out of 2 x 4's and the wings were plywood and the ailerons were attached with hinges. With the water being as cold as it was no one was too anxious to actually try it out but I was actually quite excited. The thing worked surprisingly well. I went straight to the bottom of the lake and I "flew" across the bottom as long as I could hold my breath. It was a toss up whether I ran out of air first or if I got too cold first. I really wish that we'd had wet suits back in those days. It would have made the plane a lot more fun.

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NASA has successfully tested an unmanned airplane with a scramjet engine that reached mach 9.6. That is nearly 7,000 miles per hour. They launched it from Edwards air force base and let it crash into the pacific. At this speed it could fly from LA to New York in twenty minutes. It could go around the world in three and a half hours. I can't wait for a commercial jet with a scram jet engine.

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