World Scenic Flights by HeliGraphix

Yes, it definitely is. The people seem to be quite relaxed, and all those we met were exceptionally friendly and helpful. Canada is the second largest country in the world although its population of 33 million is quite modest in comparison.

The state capital is Ottawa, not Toronto. However, with 5 million inhabitants the multicultural city and provincial capital of Ontario is the country's most important and best-known metropolis. It is a clean place, crime rates are reported to be low. World-famous landmark is the CN-Tower; with 553 m it is currently the tallest building on the planet (but will be surpassed soon by a skyscraper in Dubai). This said, also the Canadians are "cheating"; it seems that the competition of which country has got the highest construction is increasingly morphing into who can put the largest TV antenna onto a tower. ;-)

Canada was originally explored by the British and the French starting in the late 15th century. However, France finally ceded nearly all of its colonies in 1763. The process towards total independence from the UK was a long one; the last ties have been cut only recently in the Canada Act of 1982! The country today is a federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories; form of government is a parliamentary democracy and at the same time a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Official languages at federal level are English and French; this means quite some efforts as all documents, signs, etc. have to be bilingual.



It is quite a contrast when coming to Canada from Chile via Mexico – it was sweating whenever you moved, and a day later you walk out of the airport and it's piles of snow wherever you look. A strange and cool experience at the same time, and certainly only possible in today's Global Village.
Anyway, we collected our rental car and drove straight to Niagara Falls about 120 km south of Toronto – the name refers to both the city of "Niagara Falls" and the waterfalls themselves. They are (or let's better say: They used to be!) the most powerful waterfalls in North America. The height is "only" about 50 m, but the Falls are very wide. One distinguishes the Canadian Horseshoe Falls (the name owes to their shape) and the much smaller American Falls. And yes, this means the border between Canada and the USA goes right through the Falls (actually through one of the islands that separates the two parts). About 90% of the total water flow goes through the Horseshoe Falls; their crest is about 800 m long while that of the American Falls is considerably shorter, measuring a little over 300 m.



As you'd expect it is the Niagara River that dives down into the depth. The Falls were formed at the end of the last ice age when glaciers receded and the water from the newly-formed Great Lakes carved a path to the Atlantic.
Today the Falls are an important source for hydroelectric power; an unbelievable 4.4 GW are generated by a number of power plants. It is hard to believe, but up to 75% (!) of the Niagara River's water flow is diverted via a system of huge tunnels to the generators. Such things always have significant consequences for the environment; the one you can directly observe is that at night and especially during wintertime when there aren't that many tourists the Falls are "turned off".
Heeeehhh?! What does that mean?! Turn off a waterfall of the size of the world-renowned Niagara Falls – this cannot be possible, can it? Well, it's possible; the water going over the crest is a mere fraction of what the river brings along, and what you get to see today (it's still impressive!) is mainly there to keep the tourists happy. Consequently, during the nighttime the water flow is usually halved and there are already plans to build another tunnel and power plant!



Talking about tourists, the Falls are visited by over 20 million people a year! This most incredible figure tells you it will be pretty hard to pull off a model helicopter stunt during the summer season. Even in winter there's still busloads of visitors coming in. Because of this ever-growing number of tourists it is no wonder that hotels, casinos, etc. are just mushrooming. Nearly all you can see in the above picture has been constructed in the past few years – and this, too, comes at a price! The buildings changed the airflow around the Falls; the mist shooting up into the sky as high as 100 m is now increasingly blown towards the street and the visitor's platforms on the Canadian side. Especially in winter the street can be like glass.

The mist is the biggest problem for flights over the Niagara Falls. If it is blown towards you, you'll be wet to the pants in no time. Filming is impossible as the lens is covered with water in a split second. And conditions can change fast as we learned … The shot below shows the same spot one day after our flights – no way to fly under these conditions!



We inspected the location the first day and found – as Marc Endres had suggest before – that either you fly from greater distance with the Falls merely in the background or you really fly over the Falls, but then from one of the platforms upstream to avoid the mist. Problem here is that you merely see the water disappear over the crest, and that's it – no Niagara Falls in the picture. So what now?
The second day we were lucky with the weather – and especially with the wind! The mist was blown downstream most of the time so we dared to start right next to the Falls. Impressive view, still part of the Falls was barely visible through a cloud of mist.
The temperature was below freezing point; not good for battery packs, camera equipment and especially not for the pilot. I did not really want to fly with gloves and thus took them off for the flights. The humidity and constant breeze really make your fingers numb within a minute or two. Not so nice, especially when doing some aerobatics over a waterfall of this size!



Canada was definitely worth the visit even though standing in the cold for a prolong time got us a sore throat and Saskia even caught a more severe cold. But we're currently on the way to West Africa – it's a long flight with a quick stopover in New York. Unpleasant, because it means you have to go through U.S. immigration even though you're basically just in transit. But never mind, we look forward to Africa and will report from there. So once again stay tuned for the latest news from the forefront of R/C helicopter flying!

Greater Mexico-City counts more than 20 million people and is – maybe apart from Tokyo – the largest metropolis in the world. We were surprised that the airport is comparatively small, and after some discussion at the customs because of the helicopter we found it wasn't allowed to take the trolleys out into the arrival hall. Instead you had to pay somebody to take your luggage to the taxi; including our carry-on baggage we have a total of over 80 kg and thus not much of a choice. As pointed out in ROTOR 11/2007 and especially after the attempted express kidnapping in India we made sure to take a pre-paid and registered taxi to the hotel.



The ancient city of Teotihuacan in the state of Mexico is one of the most important archaeological sites of the country. In 1987 it was added to the list of … you know what! These guys … :-)
It is situated within reasonable distance of Mexico-City so we went there on a private tour. Our driver and guide Jose Luis was simply great; he spoke perfect English and had done all of his homework properly. In fact, Mexican tour guides have to study at university for three years and learn at least one foreign language. What's more, they have to attend additional courses every other year to keep themselves up to date; if they do not show up of fail the test they lose their license. That's the reason why these guys do not talk as much nonsense as many freelanced guides in other countries.

Anyway, the city of Teotihuacan was a political and religious center for many centuries. Most notable are its broad central "Avenue of the Dead" flanked by the world-famous Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon. The founders of the city are unknown till present day; fact is that work on the smaller buildings started about 200 BC while the large pyramid was completed around 100 AD.
The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid of the world. Its height is 63 m, the base length an impressive 220 x 220 m; this accounts for a total weight of about 3 million tons! Unlike the Egyptian pyramids both the Sun and the Moon Pyramids were no tombs; instead, they were platforms for temples used during ritual ceremonies. They used to have a nice dark red color in former times.

Since the Pyramid of the Sun is not nearly as high as the Gizeh pyramids it made no sense to picture them from a greater distance, e.g. from the hills in the vicinity. Another advantage in Egypt was the missing vegetation; this made those pyramids look even bigger. And finally, the Egyptian buildings were surrounded by hills which allowed a perfect view.
Upon arrival at the archaeological site we bumped into big signs stating that photography was not allowed unless you paid a small fee. Not a problem, but professional photography had to be additionally authorized by the archaeological office. The term "professional" meant using non-miniature cameras or a tripod, not to mention a somewhat bigger video camera. So we obviously fell into the "professional" category and problems were preprogrammed.



We went straight to the boss of the pyramid site and explained the WSF project. We literally drowned him in a sea of pictures, showed our multi-language project description, our travel itinerary and other documents. It seemed he was most impressed with our visit to Gizeh/Egypt; those pictures (all WSF pictures!) are really priceless and maybe the best cover shots ROTOR magazine ever had. It's a pity you can't be on the cover all the time; the World Scenic Flights are without any doubt the largest project in the history of model sports and there is countless new photographs which should be in big print on a front cover rather than a line-up of smaller images somewhere in the middle of a magazine. Having said this, we know that being an editor is not an easy job and there are many different aspects that have to be taken into account when putting together an issue.
We finally got permission to take pictures from the ring road around the archaeological site. Like explained earlier the luxuriant vegetation as well as a high fence with barbed wire on top made it impossible to get a good view. From wherever you looked, it was the big fence, then trees, trees, trees and the tip of the pyramid in the distance. We therefore drove around the whole site and eventually stopped at a restaurant behind the moon pyramid; the owner was a really nice guy and we got access to the roof. Quite a good view … but not good enough as the position of the sun was bad, also there were some overhead power lines plus two big trees, and finally we could only see the rear side of the pyramid.

We continued driving back and forth; there had to be a suitable spot, only we hadn't found it yet. We got out of the car and walked up and down the fence. After a lengthy while we ended up in one spot where the trees almost formed an avenue towards the pyramid. Yes, this place seemed to work; if only the damn fence were out of the way! It was really high – how could you possibly film over it?!
We decided it was best to have lunch as an hour later the sun would be in a much better position. We ate some traditional Mexican food including cactus. Saskia liked it but it was not made for me. We hear Japanese researchers claim eating this kind of cactus raw is very healthy – the only problem being it then tastes several times worse than the cooked version! This is another indication that nature doesn't want us to grow really old; if it did, it wouldn't be that hard to lead a healthy life, would it?! ;-)



After lunch we returned to the designated spot. We had borrowed a ladder and a high chair to be able to look over that disturbing fence. :-) As you would expect the whole construction was quite shaky! Saskia was busy not to get hurt by the barbed wire while I was busy not to fall off the chair while piloting the heli. What made the flying even more interesting were some trees over the take-off/landing area; it wasn't that bad, still I had to be careful to cross the fence at an altitude as low as possible.
Flying at the other side of the fence was not a problem; robbe/Futaba's 2.4 GHz system performed flawlessly also under these conditions. The nasty thing for me was the uppermost wire of the fence which constantly obstructed my view of the helicopter. It was a problem to judge the distance to both the machine and the nearest cactus and tree. Making bigger movements while standing on a chair is not the most brilliant of ideas, so I simply tried to either fly in closer distance or to remain rather stationary between the trees. Because the size of the helicopter has to be in reasonable proportion to the backdrop (in this case the pyramid) you often don't have much of a choice but to fly in a way that it looks good in the picture. Man, the good old days at the flying field where you could just fly what, where and how you liked were really great …

We managed to do two quick flights of five minutes each. Right after the second landing security showed up from all directions – really, it looked like if we were under siege! Our tour guide was a big help negotiating with the people. We explained we did have permission, but unfortunately they couldn't reach the chief of the pyramid site on either of his phones. He had left the office around noon and thus nobody believed we'd really talked to him. All explanations of the WSF project were in vain; we had to leave our contact details and were told we could not use our photographic material unless approved by some central authority in Mexico-City. Most of the guys were quite reasonable but seemed a little bureaucratic; from our point of view things were made much more complicated than they actually were. We better spare you the details of these lengthy negotiations; we are glad our hard work wasn't confiscated right on the spot. At the moment we are still in contact with the guys to make a point of the outstanding nature of the WSF project and to find a good solution to create a win-win situation.



Meanwhile we have continued to Panama in Central America. We have long given up the idea of a day off to relax and just look around. Insanity never sleeps, and we are right in the middle of the next adventure. Stay tuned!