What is everyones favorite historical bush plane? And have you had a chance to see or fly one?

The Travel Airs really make my mouth water......

I see there is a Travel Air 6000 in Twin Falls, does anyone know about it or see it out and about?

Agreed, the Travel Airs are beautiful. I'm also a fan of the Ford Tri-Motor:

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2772

Lysander - WWII combat backcountry aircraft. I saw one in the Sun N Fun museum. Very cool.
Roy Franklin's Stinson Bushman. Haven't seen it in person...yet.
Norseman. The Beaver's old man.

I'll have to go with the Junkers W34 on floats, and even the Beech 18 on floats as well. There's just something about those low wing float planes...

crazyivan wrote:.......Roy Franklin's Stinson Bushman. Haven't seen it in person....

Roy Franklin's Stinson SR-10E "Bushman" , N27782, is now owned by the Port Townsend Aero Museum in Pt Townsend WA. It was donated by someone (a later owner, not Franklin) a few years ago. Cool airplane, must be an awesome performer with that 985 on the nose. Unfortunately I haven't seen it fly since the museum got it. Supposedly all their aircraft are "regularly flown", not just displayed-- but apparently this is not the case.
BTW Roy Franklin wrote an autobiography, " Island Bush Pilot", which was published locally about 3 years ago. It's a good read, esp for us NW Washington pilots who are familiar with all the local places he talks about flying into. The cover photo is of Franklin posing with his Stinson Bushman.

Eric

The Stinson SR-10E "Bushman Conversion," is an interesting airplane. The owner who donated it to the Pt. Townsend museum purchased it from Roy Franklin who had operated it from his base in the San Juans. He and Franklin had gone through Navy flight training together in WW2.
The p.o. had a "incident", and our shop did the recovery and repair to get it back in the air. It is built hell for stout. The tubular steel wing spars are amazing. The fuselage structure is massive. The swing up doors, allow for a lot of cabin space. When we were doing the work, we though you could fit a refrigerator in the cabin behind the pilot seat. It turns out that Roy Franklin carried a coffin a time or two in there.
The conversion was done,if I remember correctly, in the LA area in the fifties. They only did ten. The p.o. had always kept an eye out for others and said that in the 25 years of ownership he only ran across one other Stinson "Bushman." I remember going through an very old AOPA pilot and reading an article by Ernie Gann about flying the Stinson for Franklin. He did write about in in his book "Ernest Gann's Flying Circus."
The airplane was such a fixture in the San Juans that when we were doing the recovery from Eliza Island, an old gentleman came up to us and asked if this was the "Island Sky Ferries" airplane.
I will dig out my pictures and post them.
Read Franklins book, it is a pretty good tale about NW flying back in the day.

David

This would have to be one of the best for length of strips and load. It's not very fast, but the noise makes is seem like you are going somewhere. This picture was taken at Moose Creek, where the Ford seems right at home, in 1993. A group of "old" Johnson Flying Service Service (Missoula, MT) pilots, that had flown in Fords, took the Evergreen Ford into Moose Creek for old time sakes. We knew it would probably be the last time a Ford visited Moose creek. For one pilot, Ken Roth, it was his last visit to Moose Creek and last flight in a Ford before he died. This Ford is now in jail in the Evergreen Museum, I am sure never to be let out. The Chief Pilot for Johnson Flying Service and I made the last Smoke Jumper run in a Ford, out of Missoula in the mid 1960's and dropped four jumpers on the east side of Flathead Lake. On the return flight to Missoula, we flew low, and of course slow, along the shoreline. The folks on the ground heard us coming long before we were overhead and would be looking and pointing as we flew over. The Johnson Fords were workhorses and definitely didn't have the interior like the Evergreen Ford has. When Harrah's restored the Ford that Evergreen now has, they put smooth skin on it. Ken Roth was called in for a test flight and said it flew terrible, so they had to put the corrugated on. Probably not a good day. My kids say write all this down, but like all you other old dogs, I don't seem to get it done. Any way, Good times!

I really like the Grumman amphibs. There are some beautiful examples floating around (pun intended) up here. I would love to have a Widgeon or Goose. And a maintenance budget for it.

Edit: I just remembered that I took a photo of a Widgeon visiting Talkeetna last summer. *rummages around hard drive*


I heard that it suffered a forced landing on land just days after I took this photo and was damaged. Hopefully it can be repaired.

robertc wrote:

This would have to be one of the best for length of strips and load. It's not very fast, but the noise makes is seem like you are going somewhere. This picture was taken at Moose Creek, where the Ford seems right at home, in 1993. A group of "old" Johnson Flying Service Service (Missoula, MT) pilots, that had flown in Fords, took the Evergreen Ford into Moose Creek for old time sakes. We knew it would probably be the last time a Ford visited Moose creek. For one pilot, Ken Roth, it was his last visit to Moose Creek and last flight in a Ford before he died. This Ford is now in jail in the Evergreen Museum, I am sure never to be let out. The Chief Pilot for Johnson Flying Service and I made the last Smoke Jumper run in a Ford, out of Missoula in the mid 1960's and dropped four jumpers on the east side of Flathead Lake. On the return flight to Missoula, we flew low, and of course slow, along the shoreline. The folks on the ground heard us coming long before we were overhead and would be looking and pointing as we flew over. The Johnson Fords were workhorses and definitely didn't have the interior like the Evergreen Ford has. When Harrah's restored the Ford that Evergreen now has, they put smooth skin on it. Ken Roth was called in for a test flight and said it flew terrible, so they had to put the corrugated on. Probably not a good day. My kids say write all this down, but like all you other old dogs, I don't seem to get it done. Any way, Good times!

Awesome Thanks for sharing

Dean wrote:I'll have to go with the Junkers W34 on floats, and even the Beech 18 on floats as well. There's just something about those low wing float planes...

I have the Beech 18 in a few skins for FlightSim, and the one on floats just screams "flying tramp freighter" or backcountry air-mobile fishing pier.
If only the money were there...

Ahhh....the ultimate historical backcountry airplane?? Easy....



Grumman G21A Goose.

MTV

mtv wrote:Ahhh....the ultimate historical backcountry airplane?? Easy....



Grumman G21A Goose.

MTV

Yep, that's an awesome bird.

Also:
Ford Tri Motor
DC3
Beavers

Pilgrim.

Recently posted on Barnstormers for 90k

I have an old magazine with an article about Rusty's Flying Service (in Ontario?), which had a fleet of Beech 18's on floats. They explained the speed/load/cost equation between those and beavers or Otters, the 18's made a lot of sense. And way cool to boot!

Up until about a year or so ago, they were still using the turbine Beech 18's as (I'm guessing) trainers (correct me if I'm wrong) at the Los Alamitos NAS. Kind of miss them now. I work at one of the companys along Katella Ave in Cypress and planes fly over our building all day long. I was even furtionate to see Air Force One fly in one day.

I wonder if the turbine 18's at Los Alamitos were the ones they were using for MedFly dispensing. They use to fly over VNY about 10 in the morning every couple of days.

A Curtis Robin would be cool...

One of my favorites is the good 'ol DC-3, had a chance to see one of the Forest Service DC-3s on a fire in Montana. Neat to watch a 60+ yo plane taking care of business. Not exactly orginal with the turboprop conversion.



Surprised no one mentioned the Republic SeaBee, not quite as graceful looking as a grumman though.....

Kenny Chapman wrote:I wonder if the turbine 18's at Los Alamitos were the ones they were using for MedFly dispensing. They use to fly over VNY about 10 in the morning every couple of days.

You know, maybe.....Because they are using King Air 90's for that now. I found this info (http://www.rapp.org/archives/2009/03/a-day-at-medfly/)while searching for info about the Beech 18's at Los Alamitos.