A an old bird sighting

There was an old saying when I was in the AF.  When the Air Force retires its last manned aircraft... they will fly all the dignitaries there in gooney birds!

Nice! How asking around to see if you can get a ride in her? LOL! Never hurt to try and ask.

Ever since Griffis AFB in Rome, NY closed due to base realignment, a familair sight has ALWAYS been the B-52. The unmistakable noise I dearly miss hearing to this day.

BlackSheepTwoOneFour

Nice! How asking around to see if you can get a ride in her? LOL! Never hurt to try and ask.

Ever since Griffis AFB in Rome, NY closed due to base realignment, a familair sight has ALWAYS been the B-52. The unmistakable noise I dearly miss hearing to this day.

I am pretty sure that this prticular Goonie does do rides. But for a fee. It has livery for a local service that flies between Long Beach airport and Santa Catalina Island a short hop out to sea.

It's always fun to see something unusual fly over.  Years ago, I worked in an office that was right across the street from the end of Dobbins Air Force Base's  main runway in Marietta, GA.  Had lots of close-up looks at F-15s, F-16s, C-130s and occasionally a C-5 Galaxy.  That was one impressive sight, to see that thing coming in for a landing a couple hundred feet over our heads!  It blacked out the sky!

Yes, I see lots of C-17s flying in and out of there. That suckcer is huge as well. Not quite as big as the C-5, but imagine a cross between a bat and a whale and thats a C-17 in flight.

I remember seeing a bunch of nearly derelict Gooney's around there when I last lived out that way in '79.

You mentioned Catalina Island,,,,,so, that triggered another memory, does Catalina Airlines still fly any PBYs on tours out of LB? Back earlier than '79 they had so many PBYs parked so close to the old "Douglas Plant" fence that you swore you could ride your bike under the wingtips. Some of those must have been spare parts donors or airframes waiting for a refurbish, some were pretty ratty.

I grew up to the sounds of A-6 Intruders, Prowlers, C-130s, and Harriers.

I miss the sound of the Intruder the most

Later I cut my teeth working on the Hornet and C-130, and got to do a JATO shot in Fat Albert in 1998, now that was one WILD ride.................

Nifty!  About the only thing that could have made the sighting better would have been to see a stick of troopers jumping out!

Brian

USMC6094

I grew up to the sounds of A-6 Intruders, Prowlers, C-130s, and Harriers.

I miss the sound of the Intruder the most

Later I cut my teeth working on the Hornet and C-130, and got to do a JATO shot in Fat Albert in 1998, now that was one WILD ride.................

Something like this? Of course it is not Fat Albert, but...

Tarn, I had forgotten all about those PBYs that used to be out there.  Wow that brought back some memories. Those are long gone now for many many years... probably the early 80s. I have not seen any PBYs flying in this area since perhaps the early 90s. You would probably not recognize much of the area anymore as it has been thru so much redevelopment since the turn of the century. Only the Boeing (ex Douglas) plant, the airport runways & terminal (new control tower though), and the 405 freeway are about the same as they were.

NH, that would have been sweet. There was a C-47 painted up in D-Day markings flying locally for the annual Armed Forces Day parade in Torrance last month, but it was too far away for me to get any decent photos with my cell phone. And no jumpers. I would love to drop from a C-47 just once, just to be able to say that I did. And maybe a C-119.

yeah it looked a lot like that lol, but from inside it was even more interesting

When I was stationed in Japan I used to see JASDF P-3s and Shin Meiwa PS-1 flying boats over head all the time.

The greatest sound though was the day after the last air show I was at MCAS Miramar for and the two QF-4S Phantom II drones took off for their return flight to Pt. Magu, talk about a beautiful sound........

I can imagine. I've done short rough field take offs in a 130 and that was intersting. I can only imagine the RATO boost...

Theres a nice DC-3 in the intro to Bourdains latest show on CNN.

And a cute scene (partly CGI) of one at the end on a recent "Magic City" episode.

I'd like to see a Connie fly...

My dad loves the Connie. When he started out with the airlines in the mid 1950's that was what he used to work on.

USMC6094 - I'd love to experience a JATO on a C-130, Heck, l'd love to experience the short runway landing in one. LOL! That's gotta be better than a rollercoaster ride.

www.youtube.com/watch

Short field landing (skip to around the 7:35 mark.)

www.youtube.com/watch

we just had the second B-17 bombing run over denver this month. memphis belle was in earlier and aluminum overcast is here now. last year  i got a chance to climb all over the JU-52 that belongs to a german furniture company. ALL OVER.

stikpusher

My dad loves the Connie. When he started out with the airlines in the mid 1950's that was what he used to work on.

He had a funny story about a DC-8. Sometime in the middle 60's an absent minded United crew coming out from the East Coast to Portland landed about 10 miles short at Salmon Creek, OR. The cargo was unloaded and sent by bus to Portland.

Dad flew up the next morning with a test flight crew to evaluate the retrieval, as the airport had about a 4,000 foot runway. After some intense slip stick work, he calculated the minimum fuel load for take off and the short flight west.

So the pilot asked him, "Kid, do you think it's gonna work?".

"Yessir, I do".

"Good, because you are coming with us".

LOL! Thats a good story. Yes, my dad worked for TWA starting in about 56 or so. Before that he was with American Airlines for a short while before he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. He retired from TWA in late 92 while he still had a retirement pension before corporate raiders destroyed that airline. I have many good memories of the goings on with TWA at LAX behind the scenes from when I was growing up.

Here's a DC-7 / DC-3 story.

In 1959 we all went to Honolulu from San Francisco (3 year old me, mom and dad).

Moms college roomate married a guy who was in whatever the Navy called ROTC.

He eventually became a boomer commander, which is another series of good stories.

We used to visit them summers at wherever they were and that year they were at Pearl.

So we fly out economy standby, pass kids as you know. United had a first class flight on a 377 that left SFO at 9 am and a coach flight in a DC-7 that left at 11 am and landed right behind the stratobruiser.

After a week on Oahu we three went down to the Big Island on an inter island carrier.

DC-3 with sideways benches. Bet I got you there  silk boy.

The only other passengers were a chain gang of native Hawaiians returning from road work on Oahu. Dad being dad made friends with them, so a couple of days later we went up to the pen. Their industry was making platters and those really huge spoon fork sets our of very beautiful koa wood. He got a case of it sent home as extra cargo on a freight flight.

Of course I remember it all!

Hi :

When I was a tad ( oooh ,that was a long time ago ) I lived right next to the end of the runway area of what is now Buffalo N.Y. International Airport . I got to see many of the planes I would eventually ride in .Constellations , DC7-Cs and DC-6-B models and Lots of Capitol and United DC-3s for short hops . I remember when the first Capitol Airlines Vickers Viscount landed there .Boy What a fuss that caused in the neighborhood .It sounded like a funny jet back then .

  When I went to Grandma's house in NIAGARA FALLS they lived right next door to Bell Aircraft's helo Plant .Remember those little Helo's from Mash ? There were hundreds of them ( well , maybe not that many , but I was a kid, remember ) Parked all over the place .Grandpa got me a ride in one ! I have never forgotten taking off straight up with No Door ! Scary Yes ! Great , You Bet !

Yep United bought those Viscounts along with the airline.

I feel old.

My mother remembered the first DC-3 that flew into the teeming metropolitan airport at Lima, Ohio.  When I was in grade school (and getting interested in model building), the sound of a propeller-driven airplane would be heard several times a day over our house in Columbus.  If it was a Constellation or a DC-7, or a Flying Boxcar from Lockbourne AFB, I'd stop what I was doing and watch it till it was out of sight.  If it was a DC-3, I wouldn't bother. (Borrrring!)

I took my very first flight in a TWA Constellation.  (Dad bought us a round-trip ticket to Dayton, so we could go to the Air Force Museum - still one of my favorite places in the country.)  I remember when the first jet airliner, a Convair 880, landed at Columbus.  (Hundreds of cars line the road to the airport to watch it fly overhead; when it finally did, there was a mass honking of horns.  Dad and I got to look in the cockpit for a few seconds.)

I remember watching a PBS show about the DC-3, the big point of which show was that hundreds of them were still flying, because maintenance was so cheap that they could spend most of their time on the ground and still make money for the owners.  That show must have been at least 20 years ago.

Just a few years back, as I was passing the little airport here in Greenville, NC, I heard loud, twin-engine sound over my head, and there was a DC-3 coming in for a landing. I made a u-turn and drove into the airport in time to see it park.  It was an ex-military version, with the fancy double passenger/cargo door and a round piece of metal covering the hole for the astrodome.

Now DC-3s are considered museum pieces.  There's a beautiful C-47 hanging from the ceiling of the U.S. Army Airborne and Special Forces Museum in Fayetteville, and the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer has a Continental Airlines DC-3 under restoration.

I feel old....

Those Viscounts were nice aircraft. We flew one from Miami to Norfolk, probably in about 1965. My primary memory of the thing was the round door.

United had the first domestic short range jet, the Sud Caravelle. Dad was a procurement engineer on that, before Concorde. We lived in Toulouse a couple of summers. I think United bought 48 of them.

Yeah;

The Viscounts were nice .We had a neighbor who was a PILOT and he said that the pilots he knew called them " Turbo - Plops " cause if you didn't do it just right they would end up either on or in the ground .That included that short lived American made plane .

That short lived American plane served the Navy quite well. My own particular childhood spotting targets were the P3s out of Moffett NAS in Mountain View CA.

Those guys were in and out all day. It's a pity that there was only one kit of it available, a not very good box scale Revell.

But Electras and Viscounts aren't exactly easy to come by.

Caravelle? Fuggetaboutit

My stepson, during his brief Navy career, trained to be an Aviation Ordnanceman on p-3 Orions. That got me sort of interested in the airplane. I know of two Orion kits other than the ancient Revell one: the big 1/72 Hasegawa monster and a very nice 1/144 one originally made by LS and later issued by Otaki. Minicraft also makes(or made) an Electra in 1/144. I don't know how hard it would be to find any of those kits.