Travis Museum director Terry Juran spent most of last week in Anchorage. The airplane will be test-flown there, later this month. A TV crew will document that flight, both externally and internally. On the ferry flight, FAA will allow only the essential crew (pilots and engineer).
The fuel fund is complete but any further contributions will be essential to covering incidentals: insurance, site preparation, aircraft renovation, etc. All contributions will be dedicated to the C-133 project.
Terry Juran will return to Alaska, in August, with all of the aircraft markings to bring it to USAF standard. So, it will be a USAF airplane that flies into Travis.
The basic schedule is, maintenance gods willing, to fly from PANC to McChord on 28 Aug, with 29 Aug as the backup. The final leg will be McChord-Travis on 30 Aug. That leg may even include air-to-air photos.
Details on the C-133 at Travis will be posted, when available, on the Travis AIr Expo web site: http://www.travisairshow.com/. They will also be on Cal Taylor's web site (http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/c133bcargomaster/home.html) and will be posted here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
VERY EXCITING, CAL!! CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SUCCESS!!
My son and grandson live in Seattle and would like to see the C-133 in flight at McChord. Will base ops have the schedule? Any suggestions about how they should proceed?
Thanks, Rick Spencer
I was stationed at Dover AFB from 1955 thru 1958. I was a mechanic in a C124 outfit (40th Air Transport Squadron which later became the 1607). The 39th squadron had C-54 aircraft.
A few months prior to my discharge the new C-133's arrived to replace the C-54's. The C-133's flew training flights and maintenance test hops. They seemed to have problems that grounded them from time to time. During this time they had the first fatal accident with the aircraft. We heard rumors, but no facts. A C-46 pilot (LOGAIR) reportedly saw the aircraft on its back falling to earth. They used one of our hangars to reconstruct the wreckage. There was a rumor circulating that the props had reveresed in flight, but I never heard an official determination of probable cause.
A short while ago I was talking to a friend who was in the Air Force at the same time as I was. We were discussing the varios types of aircraft that we saw. The subject of that accident came up.
I remembered that one of my high school classmates (Rick Spencer)had flown in C-133's. I asked Rick to direct me to a web-site that may have accident info and he sent me here. After researching this and other sites, it is clear that not many C-133 accident investigations ever produced a probable cause.
After the Air Force I remained in civil aviation and eventually retired from the FAA after nearly 30 years. I recall that a few years before my retirement we received a notice not to issue ferry permits to certain C-133 aircraft due to questionable time pertinent to life limits on fuselages an/or wing spars. I was surprised to hear that any of the aircraft were evenaround, let aline flyable.
I remember a Major I knew (Herman
Stefan) who went back into flying the C=133 and said they were having
some trouble and doing some type of tests concerning operating the C-133 in cold climates versus hot climates I think he was involved in a fatal c-133 accident in 1964/65 at either taking off from Guam or Iceland during these tests. A long time ago and the memory is a bit hazy.
Susan, thank you for your Comment. I'm afraid it's so buried in the blog, no one will see it but me. Would you be interested in adding your e-mail address to our list? We use it mostly in communicating with interested people about our plans for another reunion....probably in May, 2010, in Dover, DE.
Post a Comment