If It Can Fly, It Can Float!!! (106 Viewers)

[Sisu]

A bit of an ugly duckling compared to the DO-24, but a personal favourite. Photographed in Red Lake, Ontario in 2005.

 

[Sisu]

Downtown Red Lake, Ontario in the summer of 1994. It was a great place to hang around if you like round engine sounds...

 

[MiTasol]

Only one Otter

I loved the sound of them both on the ground and in the cockpit.

 

[Sisu]

Only one Otter

I loved the sound of them both on the ground and in the cockpit.

Not to worry -- there was another one down the road a click --this one owned by Green Airways. It had a Polish 1000 hp motor and four blade prop -- much safer with big loads and small lakes. It did change the look and the sound though, and not for the better......

 

[Sisu]

So is it really bush flying, if home base looks like this?

 

[MiTasol]

Not to worry -- there was another one down the road a click --this one owned by Green Airways. It had a Polish 1000 hp motor and four blade prop -- much safer with big loads and small lakes. It did change the look and the sound though, and not for the better......


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With all that extra power did they modify the wings because otherwise it would be very easy to exceed the very low Vne.

We used to joke that you could read and translate a foriegn flight manual in the time it took to get off the water. I bet with that 60% power increase they are airbourne and climb much faster.

 

[Sisu]

With all that extra power did they modify the wings because otherwise it would be very easy to exceed the very low Vne.

I have no idea, but I see in the previous 2 posts that the wingtips on the Green airplane are quite different from those on the Chimo example. In the real world the big engine airplane was heavily used for supporting far northern mining and exploration outfits -- heavy loads and often iffy lakes, while Chimo's mostly worked the more genteel fishing camp trade.

I suspect those huge collector exhaust pipes gave the stocker that lovely sound.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Steamed_Banana]

That's super interesting, I hadn't thought about custom mods for these kinds of planes

 

[Sisu]

Any airplane from the 1930s or 40s that is still working (as against exhibition or airshow restorations) will inevitably be quite different from how it came out of the factory. The Twin Beech was a 1930s executive mini-airliner. It did not have floats, ventral fin, three blade props, big cargo doors or a crew escape hatch in the cockpit roof. Anything that made an airplane safer or more profitable to operate was fair game to change...

 

[Count de Bastrop]

Well, maybe they had some of those things...

 

[MiTasol]

I have no idea, but I see in the previous 2 posts that the wingtips on the Green airplane are quite different from those on the Chimo example. In the real world the big engine airplane was heavily used for supporting far northern mining and exploration outfits -- heavy loads and often iffy lakes, while Chimo's mostly worked the more genteel fishing camp trade.

I suspect those huge collector exhaust pipes gave the stocker that lovely sound.


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Thanks for that. I had not realised those with the Polish engines had Horner tips but they are probably an option for all Otters. Do the high power Otters still have the ventral fin? The Pratt powered ones windcock at 5kn which makes operating off some lakes and rivers problematic.

 

[Sisu]

Thanks for that. I had not realised those with the Polish engines had Horner tips but they are probably an option for all Otters. Do the high power Otters still have the ventral fin?

I found one shot of the whole airplane, which I cannot show because my slide scanning computer has failed. Interestingly enough, it does not in fact have a ventral fin. I have shots of the same airplane in 1994 with the old R-1340 and it did have the ventral fin at that time, as well as normal wing tips. Seems there were a lot of changes that went with the engine change.

 

[Sisu]

This was Red Lake in 2005, from a Chimo Cessna 180 with the door removed. Chimo Air at the bottom, with Norseman, Twin Beech, Otter, Super Cub, and another Cessna. To the left is "Norseman Park" where the town has a Norseman restored and on a pylon. Norseman CF-KOA is taxiing in from the right.

It's interesting to see the relative sizes of the Beech, the Norsemen, and the Otter. The Twin Beech looks almost petite in this company.

 

[Sisu]

Though the Beech 18 comes close, my great waterbird love is still the 1930s classic Noorduyn Norseman...

 

[Steamed_Banana]

I have a kit of one of those in 1/72 in my office behind me

 

[Sisu]

These 1930s designs just look better on water than on land.....

 

[Wurger]

 

[N4521U]

I had a chance to take a ride in a floatplane a few years back at Lake Macquie here in Oz.
Cost a packet but he did a Splash ans Dash at another lake. Too cool.
I got to do some aerobatic training inna Christen Eagle.
The instructor owner of this plane went to Alaska to get some float time.
Ended up getting hired by the business and flew floats summers.
What a life!

 

[Wurger]

Polikarpov Po-2M

the pic source: the ent.