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The photos of N4395N and the other blue and white 196 bring back memories. I crewed on one of these 196's, N4355V, and later on a 195 while working for Park Aerial Surveys in 1964-1965. These three conversions were done by Falls City Flying Service at Standiford Field in Louisville. They used BT-13 cowlings and the engine mounts were hand built by Falls City. If you look closely, the round plexiglass pilot's portholes are visible in the belly just forward of the gear. These were used to help keep the ground track of the airplane "on the line". Department of Agriculture ASCS mapping was done county-by county, with parallel lines drawn one mile apart on photomaps the pilot unrolled as he went. It was all shot 0n 10" square negatives, 300 per roll of film. The cameras were big vacuum operated Park units, hand made in Mr. Park's Labs in Louisville. The camera sat in a gimbal ring mount in the floor and shot out through a camera hole cut in the floor. There was a horizontal metal bar mounted across in front of the windshield with 2 degree increments marked off on it. A vertical "whisker" was behind it and the pilot sighted across the whisker and bar to some reference point selected out on the horizon to "dope the crab" needed to stay on the desired ground line. The marks on the bar allowed the pilot to consistently hold the same crab angle as he hopped back and forth between the seats flying up and down the line in opposite directions. The nadir of the film track had to coincide within 300 feet of the center track on the ground, or the government lab would refuse the film. Try maintaining that accuracy from 2 and a half miles up when the winds aloft are 40 or 50 mph at a 40 or 50 degree angle to the line... took a lot of experience to make a mapping pilot... The photographer in the back had a rotatable ground glass screen viewer(driftmeter) with interval lines marked off to equal one statute mile per exposure... The trick was for the pilot and photographer to work together and set the proper crab angle, then crank in the exact amount of camera twist needed to counteract the crab and make the "line" in the film come out perfectly aligned as though there were no crab or crosswind at all. The ASCS (Agriculture) work was all done at 13,750 ft. AGL, so when working out in Colorado or Utah, we were frequently at or above 24K feet MSL.
All of the Park R-985 conversions had an extra 44 gallon gas tank in the baggage compartment, and two of them, 95N and one other one (the blue & white one in the photo) whose number I cannot recall, also had the 15 gallon tip tanks. I notice that the tip tanks have been removed from 95N in the photos. N4355V, the aircraft I was on had no tip tanks installed. I was transferred to a stock C-195 (300 Jake) in early 64, and shortly thereafter 55V was lost in an accident at Silver Springs, FL. Jim was climbing out to the north headed for the job and as he was passing through about 11K, there was a big bang from up front, the Pratt quit and the windshield covered up with oil almost immediately. He managed to get the Hartzell feathered before all of the oil was lost and told center he was going to try and make Silver Springs airport with it. He was still heavy with a full load of gas, plus that big camera, oxygen tanks, film and such filling the back end. He began to feel it out a bit, since he had never flown a 196 dead stick before... he began to slow it down in gradual increments... he said that when he got it below about 115 IAS she started "quivering noticably" so he used 125 for the rest of the glide... Enough of the oil cleared off the windshield that he was able to locate the airport and set up for the approach...His only option was to line up on the grass strip, landing downwind and hot... and he got the mains on about halfway down it... he was running out of strip, but every time he got on the brakes a little harder the tail started to come up... I might mention here that the 196 conversions are nose heavy, particularly if the baggage compartment tank was empty. On the Fall City mounts, The R-985 hung out 10 inches further than the original R-755 Jake and of course was heavier.. Long story short, Jim almost got her stopped, but not quite... Said he briefly considered an intentional ground loop at the last instant, but didn't... The airplane went into a chain-link fence and for a long couple of seconds did a nose-stand before falling on over on her back. There was all hell breaking out inside...the little 195 windshield was buried in the dirt...and the back windows were all blacked out with cardboard for the camera work...it was almost completely dark inside there and cans of film, boxes, the big camera, 4 oxygen bottles, etc. were all in a jumble in a cloud of dust... Jim said they were hanging there upside down and he could hear the gurgle of gasoline and smell the fumes... they dropped to the ceiling and there ensued a mad scramble to find the door and get out. They then stood there at the end of the wing looking back and debating whether to go back for the Park Camera, which was a very expensive piece of gear... they finally did...and it never caught fire. The final flip broke the airplane's back and it was not repairable. I saw 55V disassembled, stacked against the wall in the hangar in Louisville later that year....sad. Turns out that the master connecting rod journal failed in the Pratt. Next revolution of the crank pretty well cleaned out things. Jim was lucky in a lot of ways...lucky it didn't catch fire in the air...lucky he got the prop feathered.. lucky enough of the oil blew away to let him find the strip...
I was just as happy to be back on a stock 195... sweet flying old airplane. The 196 did one thing very well...got to working altitude in a hurry. I never much cared for the way they flew.
Bill T.
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Bill T
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