A few pictures from Butler Aircraft

Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:16 am

Tom;
I know that tanker #66 was a "Ports of Call" (I may have that name wrong) Airplane before being converted to an air tanker. I think that was a Denver, CO airline, Just an FYI.
Scott......

Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:00 am

RNDMTRS4EVR wrote:Tom;
I know that tanker #66 was a "Ports of Call" (I may have that name wrong) Airplane before being converted to an air tanker. I think that was a Denver, CO airline, Just an FYI.
Scott......

"Ports Of Call" was a Denver-based travel club, rather than an airline. I've seen photos of some of their prop-driven aircraft in various propliner books. They operated out of the old Stapleton airport. As I recall, one of their later jets (a Convair 880, perhaps?) was abandoned at Stapleton and may still be sitting there.

Cheers!

Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:06 pm

The Denver Ports of Call Convair (I actually think it was a 990A) was sectioned up and moved over to the scrap yard on site several years ago.

Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:49 am

If you go to my website www.ruudleeuw.com scroll bottom page fill in Ortner in Google box and you'll get 3 hits for pages of my website mentioning Ortner
hth
Ruud 'Rudi' Leeuw

Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:34 pm

There has been a bit of activity around the ramp at Redmond this week.Tanker 67 (the C-130) left for Visalia on Tuesday.Tanker 66 was moved from in front of the hangar to make room for the Freighter/Test Stand to take it's place.The engine that was removed from the #3 position on that "aircraft" will replace the #3 that is currently on Tanker 62.If nothing else,it gave me something slightly different to photograph,if that's the correct term for digital pictures.

Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:26 pm

RuudLeeuw wrote:If you go to my website www.ruudleeuw.com scroll bottom page fill in Ortner in Google box and you'll get 3 hits for pages of my website mentioning Ortner
hth
Ruud 'Rudi' Leeuw

thanks for the ortner link, i live 5 minutes from their old airport. incredibly they flew those c-46's & dc-7's from a 3800 foot airstrip. gratifying that so many of their birds are still flying including the p-51 donald duck posted on another wix thread. i wrote a 2 part article in air classics about the ortner air service about 4 years ago. some of their plane carcasses are in the weeds at the airport, & some are owned by a local private collector nicknamed the western "walter soplata". i have taken fellow wixer tulio soto their to see it all, as well as wixer oscarduece who lives in the area has seen both places. tulio.... post the wakeman airport pics!!

Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:37 am

Is Tanker 65 (C-54 N8502R) still current with Butler? Haven't seen it mentioned in this thread.
Andy Marden

Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:47 pm

Andy,Tanker 65 is one of TBM's airplanes.The last word that I heard was that it is still at TBM's maintenance base at Sequioa Field near Visailia in Central California.I also heard that T65 is slowly deteriorating,but I haven't been to Sequioa Field in a few years.I'll ask about it the next time the guys from TBM come to Redmond to work on the Green C-130.I'll add a couple of outdated pictures from Google Earth of Sequioa Field.

I took a few more pictures around the Butler Hangar while I was changing the oil in my car today between snow flurries.I'm not sure how many people are interested in our engines,but I took a few shots of the #2 engine on T62,which had some of the cowling removed as well as an engine on a Whiting stand with a few cylinders removed.The Whiting stand pictures actually show the lower left side of the engine.I'm also including another cockpit shot that shows the display for our TCADS traffic warning system,which is on the glare shield just to the right of the rudder trim wheel.The TCADS is an excellent aid to situational awareness in crowded low visibility areas.I don't know how I ever managed to work on wildfires without it.One more picture shows the data plate on T62.It's located on the door frame for the front entrance door and the picture has been rotated 90 degrees for clarity.The last picture shows my 1995 Subaru after the oil change.This is what a "successful tanker pilot" drives these days.I bought the Subaru new in 1995 and have driven it almost 178,000 miles.It's the best car that I've ever owned.I'd planned to replace it with a new one in 2004,but that was the year that the Feds cancelled all of the tanker contracts at the last minute.Oh well,,,,

Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:48 am

Larry,
Thanks for the info.
Andy

Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:27 am

Larry;
You know it is funny that that your DC-7 was newer than the first C-130 air tankers brought into service! :shock:

I just a kick out of that.

Scott........

Thu Apr 24, 2008 1:14 am

There was mention of a Whiting Stand in another post the other day.I think that it was on the Diamond Lil epic.Anyway,I took a few pictures today in Butler's hangar of the R-3350 that's getting a top overhaul,among other things and is currently in a Whiting Stand.The latest word is that 13 cylinders will be replaced on this engine.Anyway,Whiting Stands are pretty cool as they allow you to rotate the engine to any convenient postion.They also allow for moving in the vertcal plane,but we don't often use that feature.If we ever get a half-way decent day around here,I'll open up Tanker 60 and the freighter/test stand and take some interior pictures.

Thu Apr 24, 2008 1:21 am

One of these days Larry, I'm going to get down there to visit you all.
It's not very far from Olympia.

Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:03 pm

What a fantastic piece of kit Larry,thanks for posting the pictures!

How is the engine attached to the stand though? I couldn't see a hole in the arm for a nut or bolt ,to pass through.If possible could you take a close up for us?
Thanks.
Ps,As a coincidence G-APSA ,our DC 6 is in the hanger at the mo having a check ready for the season,hopefully it won't need to have an engine out for a while though!

Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:55 pm

The prop shaft goes into the mounting. I believe it's secured by several set-bolts (aka set-screws). It's amazing how much weight those prop shafts can take without having any damage done.

Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:19 am

Alan,I'll try to get some detailed shots of the attachment configuration on the Whiting Stand tomorrow.In the meantime,I opened up the Freighter/Test Stand today and took some pictures.I'll have to see if I can open the rear door sometime to get some usable shots of the aft part of the cargo compartment as it's simply too dark in there to get anything useful without extra lighting.However,here are some pictures.There's a heavy bulkhead between the cockpit and cargo area with only a small doorway aft of the radio rack.If you compare the overhead panels above the pilot's and co-pilot's side windows to those in the pictures of Tanker 62 earlier in this thread,you'll see how much gear had to be either removed completely or moved and modified to install the very useful overhead window kits developed by Aero Union when they had DC-6's and DC-7's in their tanker fleet.

A few pictures from Butler Aircraft

Ortner