doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why I like being Canadian

I always figure layers, but my favorite material for warm and dry when it gets really chilly is wool.

Here in Texas everybody complains of the cold in west Texas. I get a chuckle because it isn't that cold. Their problem is their wearing of cotton under wear. Wet cotton will chill you even it is above freezing.

I spent a number of years in AK and although where I lived in W AK the temperatures seldom got crazy cold, the killer was the wind chill, since the winds blew out there constantly. I layered up pretty good with down and topped it off with a pair of car hart cold weather coveralls and a beaver fur hat with flaps that protected the ears and most of my face and bunny boots...I stayed fairly warm, even when I was riding sno-go's in -30-35F with lower wind chills.

I owned a plane at the time and about the coldest I would fly in was around -20. I had a heavy duty engine cover and if electricity was available where I landed, I would cover the engine and put my electric fan heater under the cowling to keep the engine and oil warm. If no electricity, I wouldn't stay put long enough for the engine to get cold.

I never did, but many stories of old timer pilots who would drain the oil out upon landing into a bucket, leave it sitting on a stove overnight, dump it back in warm the next morning and be on their way.

I don't remember all the commercial bush pilots I either knew or were acquainted with that ended up dead due to, ultimately, bad judgement due to inexperience!

On really cold nights in Winnipeg, when my wife and I went out for the evening, and if there were no places to plug the car in, I'd just leave it running for the five to seven hours we would be out. On balance, when the choice was between having the car start or having it stolen because it was left running, the choice was easy. Lol

That's what blew me away in Chicago, guys that had diesels would leave them running when they were away for 3 or 4 days. There must be a slow speed on a diesel because they would just go clunk clunk clunk.

This is like living on the moon to me.

Maybe this will help you minus double digit winter folks. I knew a Russian geologist while I worked for Halliburton who'd worked in Siberia. On really cold nights he'd dump a quart of gasoline into his engine crankcase and circulate the gasoline/oil mix through his engine before he'd shut it off. The gasoline would thin the oil enough so the engine would start the next day and being highly volatile it'd soon evaporate out of the engine.

Steve

PS or you can go with synthetic motor oil, I know from experience that my car engine with 5W30 synthetic oil in it will start down to -26 degrees fahrenheit. My car started just like a normal winter day, of course the synthetic oil will still pour at -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oil dilution SOP in earlier bush aircraft, mostly gone by with heated hangars, engine heaters, variable/synthetic oils. Red Army truck drivers told me that during the war they kept fires burning at night under their engines. They said they'd be shot if they caught on fire---and shot if they couldn't start their engines in the morning.

There are different weights of fleese. Some are real thick and can be bulky. Thinsulate is very warm once for once but very expensive. It is sold in grams. My duck wadders have 1500 grams of thinsulate in the boots, which is plenty even in the coldest of duck days. 'Micro fibers' are the next generation.

Yep, you can buy different weights and some are not bulky at all but keep you warm just the same. For the price and whether made from natural or man made fibers I would say fleece is the best for the cold.

But you guys from Canada are the experts, not me.

The coldest temperature I ever experienced for a prolonged period was -26 degrees F, which is about -32 degrees C. It was during our flintlock deer season in January. It wasn't bad because I was dressed for it and the wind wasn't howling. But deer guts never felt so good when I finally shot a doe. That was before I would think to use any kind of handwarmer.

On the other hand, I got hypothermia on a last day of flintlock season some years ago when the weather turned abruptly colder. I hit a deer just as the wind began picking up, and it took off into a myriad of other tracks in the snow. I rushed to track it because the snow began blowing and drifting, and threatened to obscure the trail. I followed it for a long way a at a very fast pace and began perspiring. I ended up losing that deer because the tracks became impossible to follow, and I still feel terrible about it to this day. I was now a couple miles from my car, and had to hike back into a severe headwind with heavy blowing snow.

What had started off as a +25 degree F day turned into a howling blizzard, but I don't think it ever got much colder than +15 degrees F. Wind chills were certainly below zero F though. Visibility dropped to near zero and I had difficulty finding my car as I was shivering uncontrollably in my damp hunting clothes. I resisted the urge to drop my gun which was very hard to grasp, or to just lay down and curl into a ball. By the time I got there, my thumbs and fingers weren't working well at all, and it took about 10 minutes to retrieve my keys from my pocket and open the door locks. I kept dropping the keys and just couldn't get the key into the lock. Then it was another several minutes to get the key into the ignition and run the glow plugs a couple times to start the diesel engine. This car had a good heater once you began driving it, but threw virtually no heat until it was running under load. I wasn't about to get out again to scrape the ice off of the windows, so had to drive for several miles with the side window down so I could almost see where I was going. I was still frozen and shivering when I got home 45 minutes later, and had to thaw out in a hot bathtub.

I learned that there is more to enjoying extreme winter weather than just the outdoor temperature and the amount or type of clothes you are wearing. Many of the newer insulating fills and fabrics such as Thermax, polypropylene, polyester fleece, etc. make sitting on a below zero deer stand much more enjoyable than the hand-me-down hunting clothes my Dad had me wear when I was a kid. I did however really miss the size 10 Mickey Mouse boots that I outgrew when I was in 8th grade. Korean war vintage Hood's or Bristolite's are much better than the later air valve type.