1959 airshow 8mm stills

[Holedigger]

If you noticed the date on the head of the thread, five years ago, it is a Zombie Thread...broken links happen especially with old files.

[vernicator]

If you noticed the date on the head of the thread, five years ago, it is a Zombie Thread...broken links happen especially with old files.

Ah. Never looked at the date of the origianl post and the one that mentions the links being broken was so wordy that I immediately ignored it as I guess some others did as well. LOL!

[Rajay]

If you noticed the date on the head of the thread, five years ago, it is a Zombie Thread...broken links happen especially with old files.

Ah. Never looked at the date of the origianl post and the one that mentions the links being broken was so wordy that I immediately ignored it as I guess some others did as well. LOL!

Wordy? At least I was trying to add something of substance, something actually worth discussing! I guess that you aren't interested in "reading the articles" so much as just "looking at the pictures." ("LOL!")

[Holedigger]

WORDS!!!! Without pictures!!! Such a waste of bandwidth! I hadn't heard of the 4 engined Goose, so I had to go on a wild Goose chase and find a pic! Here is a link to a PICTURE of it. Cool bird! Just follow the link to the PICTURE....no more words here! (Sorry for more words and no actual picture, I try NOT to show pictures I don't have permission to take and redistribute, just the link!)
http://www.wdaguy.com/goose/04.JPG

[Rajay]

That's the one! N150M - McKinnon G-21C s/n 1201 (ex-Grumman G-21A/JRF-6B c/n 1147). After being rebuilt and zero-timed (really!) by McKinnon under TC 4A24, it was technically no longer a "Grumman" but the "heritage" is obvious. As far as I know, McKinnon didn't have a new name for it either (it was still just a "Goose" to him), at least not until much later after it had become a G-21D "Hybrid" (s/n 1251) with PT6A-20 turboprops (just two) replacing the 4 Lycomings - at which time he started calling it a "Turbo Goose". If you find a photo of that configuration, you won't believe it is the same aircraft, but it is. I do have photos, but I don't have a hosting account for them...yet.

If anyone wants a copy, send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll pass along a copy or two.

And 10 years later (after N150M got its turbine engines), it was no longer correct per GAMA standards to call a turbine aircraft "Turbo" anything, or to have "Turbo" badges and stickers on a turbocharged piston aircraft because of worries about line personnel misfueling them. Avgas in a turbine is not nearly so bad as jet fuel in a piston aircraft.

Also, BTW, it apparently was a real "dog" especially in the water. With a 12,499 lb. gross weight compared to the 8,000 lbs gross wt. of a basic G-21A, it had something like only 3 inches of freeboard in the water - no rough water capability because it would have been too easy to swamp!

Sorry for being so "wordy" again. ("LOL!")

[Rajay]

These are stills from a video transfer of 8mm home movies taken at the World Congress of Flight in Las Vegas in April, 1959.

Chris said that he was going to try to rescan his original photos or whatever. I'm really looking forward to seeing them since I missed them when they were first posted 5 years ago.

I was also curious to recheck where he said the airshow was - Las Vegas? Interesting. According to the records I've seen, Angus McKinnon held on to and operated N150M until long after its turbine conversion in the mid-1960's, but I once heard a rumor that it had been operated briefly by a little local airline out of Lake Tahoe in 1959 before its conversion to a G-21D in 1960. I found an old newspaper clipping referring to it, but when I tried to contact the writer/author, she had retired and apparently nobody at the paper passed along my contact attempt to her. In any case, if it HAD been based in Lake Tahoe in 1959, it would have been easy for it to make it sown to Las Vegas for Chris' airshow.

That newspaper reference was from the following article:

Lake Tahoe Airport's heyday is long past - Facility may soar again
By Nancy Oliver Hayden
Nevada Appeal News Service
Friday, February 1, 2008

"Tahoe Air Lines Inc., introduced flights out of the airport in a four-engine amphibian McKinnon Goose in August 1959, and air ambulances started flying out of the airport in September."

[vernicator]

Yeah but you're talking to a guy with a very short atten....SQUIRREL!

[Rajay]

Now, I'm ROFL! And my dog is looking at me like, "What? What'd I miss?"

[Chris Brame]

Gee, you guys are having so much fun with this thread - why bother with pictures?

OW! Hey! Quit it! OK, OK. I re-recorded the VHS tape to DVD, used another program to make the stills, changed them to jpegs and started color-correcting them this morning. Hopefully I'll get them finished when I get home this evening.

[Chris Brame]

OK, here we go - start with the little Grumman:










The first PB4Y fire bomber; unfortunately wrecked not long afterward.






The Goodyear inflatable plane skids to a landing. What did it look like flying? Ever see an air mattress get picked up by a good breeze?


Taiwanese Thunder Tigers demonstration team; they flew a very tight nine-ship diamond routine.


F-86F 52-5116 - now N186SR with Rossair in Waukegan, IL.

















You asked - you got! Here's a link to a newsreel of the event; love the crowd reaction after the B-58 goes by:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLzSxxoD2Q

Some of the shots are nearly identical to mine.

[Holedigger]

WOW! That is quite the vintage SAC airshow!!!! Lovely! Thanks for the work and reposting!!

[Rajay]

The British are coming! The British are coming! The Avro Vulcan is trying to bomb Nellis!
And why not, the USAF aircraft certanly dropped a few pounds or ordinance in that video, too. Between the bullets, bombs, and jet fuel, they sure don't spend money on airshows like that anymore!

I did love the pass by the Convair B-58A Hustler, too - especially in the video on You-Tube.

And, as I expected, I was correct about the "4 engine Goose" - that is in fact N150M, the very first McKinnon conversion, G-21C s/n 1201. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this forum before, there is currently a different aircraft still flying around that claims to be McKinnon s/n 1201, but it isn't! (I keep wondering when the FAA will catch on!) McKinnon G-21C s/n 1201 technically ceased to exist a year after this film (from which these stills were taken) was shot. It was converted again in 1960 to become the one and only McKinnon G-21D s/n 1251. Then even later, about 1965 or so, it was once again modified and the four Lycomings were removed and two PT6A-20 turbines were installed. At that point, it became the first McKinnon "Turbo Goose" - all the while, it was N150M.

Hal Beal of On Mark Aviation in Knoxville, TN owned it for a while in the late 1970's. I got a chance to talk to him in person about it when he visited Antilles Seaplanes a couple of years ago. He said that of all the planes he ever owned, he loved it the best because it could do practically anything - fly just about any type of mission that he needed. He regreted selling it to the Whittington brothers in the early 80's; they apparently later got mixed up in some drug smuggling to support their car and airplane racing. N150M was rumored to have been seized, abandoned, and later scrapped in Haiti in the 1990's. What a shame!

I want to add my thanks as well, Chris, for all of your hard work to restore those photos!

[vernicator]

Wow, truly amazing shots!!

I have seen the newsreel before and always thought it was cool when the B-58s shock wave hits the crowd.

Thanks!!!!!

[Rajay]

OK, here we go - start with the little Grumman:





Some of the shots are nearly identical to mine.

"the little Grumman" was neither "little" (as far as G-21 series aircraft are concerned) nor a "Grumman" either. The four-engine McKinnon G-21C conversions were actually "zero-timed" (rebuilt) and re-certified as completely new aircraft under a whole new type certificate (4A24) - at which point they were officially no longer "Grummans" in any way. And as far as being "little" or not, while basic Grumman G-21A Gooses had a max. gross weight of 8,000 lbs, the McKinnon G-21C was certified all the way up to 12,499 lbs - more than half again as much.

I also just found a color photo of its sister ship (s/n 1202) online (I've already seen this same shot in B&W before...)

BEFORE (1967) at GAtwick Airport near London:


and AFTER (2011) at Dhaka Zia Airport in Bangladesh:


Whereas N150M (McKinnon G-21C s/n 1201) had red stripes and trim from 1958 until 1966, N3459C (s/n 1202; later as AP-AUY in Pakistan from 1967 until 1972 and as S2-AAD in Bangladesh after 1972) had blue trim and stripes.

After its conversion first as a long-nose (with 4 extra seats) model G-21D (s/n 1251) in June 1960 and then to have two 550 shp PT6A-20 turbine engines (replacing the four 340 hp Lycomings) per STC SA1320WE in 1965-1966, N150M (the red one in the old 1959 stills above) was eventually repainted with gold stripes and trim.