I couldn’t get a picture
but I saw a PBV Catalina ( I assume it was a PBV and not a PBY since it was in Canada, which would, I think, make it an OA-10)
Man, it was pretty. I saw it on the ground in the Kincardine airport, and in the air over Owen Sound. There was also a DeHavilland Beaver flying around. A tight DHC-2 Beaver is a half million bucks, I have no idea what the PBV costs or costs to operate- an 18 ton (empty!) aircraft with two 14 cylinder pratt-whitney radials?
Someone still has some money.
I would think the PBY has been re-engined by now with something more modern, reliable, powerful and fuel efficient. Unless the intention was to restore it as a museum/display/airshow plane. There have been likely a few cockpit avionics improvements too.
Heck the new F-35 strike fighter is getting a new engine and we haven’t even fielded them yet.
For the past two days now I’ve been over at Lansing Muni, just to the south of the main runway, for the motorcycle riding course.
Sitting over there at the east end of the tarmac is an olive drab DC-3, and I desperately want to go over there and spend a couple hours gawking at it and taking pictures. Maybe figure out who owns it and finagle a look around inside….
I think an OD DC-3 is called a C-47. Those things are really loud inside. Ear-splitting loud.
The ear candy of the radial engines is a wonderful thing.
5, 7, 9, 14, 18, & more. get ’em on full boost (or as full as todays avgas will allow) and enjoy!
Ear-splitting is right. We put cotton in our ears on the flight up to Darjeeling in a converted C-47 (1967). It hadn’t been converted much. The runway at Calcutta still had old WWII dazzle camouflage paint on it.
My Dad was an Army pilot back in the 1950’s/60’s and regularly delivered Beavers from the Dehavilland factory in Canada to Ft. Rucker, AL. He was also a test pilot and had a “personal” Beaver airframe he flew a great deal of the time doing secret stuff with cameras and other electronics.
After digging around I’ve learned that aiplane is still alive and well delivering tourists and fuel to a remote fishing lodge in Alaska
.
http://wildmanlodge.com/view.php?page=alaska-flyout-fishing-lodge.php&id=24#a
.
It once crash landed on a frozen river and was dis assembled and hauled back out and rebuilt and today probably cost $500,000 in real dollars expended not to mention what the Army paid for it in 1957.
Come to Alaska, Og. Beavers still flying every day here. Catalinas used to be the co-flagship (with Grumman Gooses (Geese?) of the old Alaska-Coastal-Ellis Airlines before it was bought by Wien, before Wien was bought by Alaska Airlines.
Have you ever heard of the movie Steelyard Blues?
Catalina figured majorly in that one.
Alert: Jane Fonda.
But a fun movie.
DC3s used to fly over the house until about ten years ago. Regular cargo runs to/from Willow Run. To think that was a modern aircraft when “Lost Horizon (shangri-la)” was filmed.