The piston Beaver was owned by an old customer. I did the inspection on another of his Beavers that he had down here. Don is/was definitely old school(not sure he is still alive). He flew for Interior Airways, had his own airline that flew DC-6/7's out of Paine Field to AK, ended up on the board of Western Airlines. He ended up doing lease-backs on his fleet of Beavers in his "retirement."
He never called our radio guy by his first name, but always by "Sparks, because they were all named that."
Before anything was to come in for annual he'd say, look I don't want it zero-timed, just airworthy. He never hesitated to pay his bill when we were done. A real straight shooter.

Here we go the best of both!

The Mk I Beaver is a great workhorse. It has three weak spots, though: it's slow, it's noisy as hell, and they don't climb for beans with a load.

The MK III Beaver fixed all three of those issues. Now that there are conversions available to even higher horsepower PT 6s, they're even better. Viking Air has owned the type certificate for a number of years, and if you've got $$$$ burning holes in your pockets, they can convert your rumbler to a whiner......

Having flown a recip beaver a lot, a MK III Beaver some, a Wipaire converted beaver once, and the one off FWS Garrett powered Beaver a little, I'd say the MK III with a dash 27 or later engine is about perfect. But we all know about opinions That said, it'd be hard to convert one and make it pay these days.

Dogsbody....you talking about Don Gilbertson? If so, he passed away five or so years back....quite a character.

MTV

Mike, yes. I'm sad to hear he's passed. Don was one of those guys that built the aviation industry by building and running a business all the while flying the line. Sadly, that generation is on the way out.

Sorry about the thread creep