LAC LA BICHE - On Sept. 7, the Lac La Biche Flying Club hosted its third annual ‘Splash-In’ on Beaver Lake, landing float planes to the waters near to Holowachuk Estates.
Ken Zachkewich, a member of the club and flying enthusiast whose Lake Buccaneer light amphibious aircraft was among the 13 float planes and three helicopters that participated, said this year’s Splash-In went well.
However, he added, thick, hazy smoke from forest fires meant fewer aircraft were in attendance.
While organizers of this year’s Splash-In were hoping for clear skies, heavy smoke coming from wildfires in Central British Columbia started rolling in on late Friday, obscuring Beaver Lake and the surrounding area in a cloudy haze.
“Saturday morning, we woke up to a pretty hazy, overcast day,” Zachkewich told Lakeland This Week.
Due to Saturday’s smoky skies, the visibility range for flying was between four and five miles. While this range is acceptible for pilots to fly, Zachkewich explained, doing so in such conditions feels uncomfortable, particularly when flying in and out of lakes.
“I think our numbers were down on account of that,” he said, adding that in previous years, the event has attracted more aircraft.
Despite this smoke, the show went on.
The aircraft, Zachkewich continued, arrived from different areas of the Lakeland region, as well as Athabasca, Edmonton and other parts of central and northern Alberta.
Once their aircraft had been secured on the beach, the pilots and their guests attended a social gathering that included a barbecue. Throughout the day, he said, people stopped by to view the aircraft that were flying in and landing on the beach.
What’s it like to land and take off on water as opposed to a runway?
As Zachkewich says, while this is certainly a fun experience, there are challenges and even risks involved.
He explained that a body of water such as a lake is a dynamic landing surface, which means it is continually changing, often from wind conditions.
Pilots, he said, struggle with what is referred to as flat or glassy water, which makes determining altitude tricky.
To circumvent this issue during the 2024 Splash-In, the Lac La Biche Flying Club had a boat go out onto the lake and make small contours on the water to give aircraft, as Zackewich puts it, a “shooting point” or “aiming point”.
“When you’re on the lake in a boat and it’s like glass, it’s the most beautiful, serene place to be, but when you’re landing an airplane on that, it’s very hard to judge your altitude off the surface…and we had that this year,” he explained. “When you’re landing on a mirror, you have no way of knowing if you’re two feet above the surface, or 20 feet above the surface and you can splash really hard, get bounced into the air, and that can turn into a very bad day.”
Zachkewich, along with other members of the Lac La Biche Flying Club, in addition to being experienced at landing on water, have also put down planes on the frozen surface of Lac La Biche during the Winter Festival of Speed. The connection between the two, he says, is that the local flying club hosts not only the Splash-In, but also the fly-in at the annual winter festival.
While airports and clubs across Alberta and Canada host events-including fly-in breakfasts-he said, the Lac La Biche Flying Club is unique in the sense that it has events on both on ice and water.
“That’s kind of what our claim to fame is, we have water events whether the water is hard, or the water is liquid…we like to host events on the water,” he said with a smile.
The annual Splash-in is not a fundraiser, Zachkewich said, but rather a fun event that gives pilots an excuse to go somewhere with their aircraft for a day to socialize with other flying enthusiasts and enjoy a nice meal in the Lakeland region.
“It’s a ‘fun’-raiser," he said with a smile, adding that while there is no charge, the Lac La Biche Flying Club does accept donations to help offset the costs of putting on the event.
