Warbird Information Exchange

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Antonov AN-124-100
RA-82045
Fort Worth Alliance Airport
13-APR-2013

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

Nice pictures Dean,thanks for posting.That airplane,or a sister ship,has been into Medford,Oregon a few times.They had some problems with taxiways due to the landing gear configuration.Then again I have trouble with a few of the Medford taxiways in the DC-7.

Beautiful shots! I just watched that one depart Paine Field on Thursday.

One was up here at SWF last Monday--not this one but the 124-100 with the big "20th Anniversary" in yellow on the nose. Took our Tuskegee Airmen youth program kids out to do a walkaround, courtesy of Atlantic Aviation. They were carrying big Sikorsky helos back to England after some kind of major AD fix at Stratford. A Brit Coast Guard bird arrived for loading while we were looking at the airplane. One thing I noticed from up close, they don't have much of a tire budget--bunch of baldies,especially the inboard mains. Of course it hurts when you have to change out 24 tires...

We see them at AFW, Alliance/Ft Worth, occasionally to pick-up an engine from the Rolls Royce/American Airlines engine shop or Bell Helicopters, for delivery.

see them at CFB Trenton once in a while still! not as much since we got the globemasters!

They show up at LGB (Long Beach) on occasion as well.

I've been in the 225 when it was @ KPAE in 1980 for AIR FAIR and loading earthquake relief supplies. It's like standing next to a ship. The airport had to bring in a 1 inch thick steel roadway excavation cover plate so it's APU exhaust wouldn't melt the ramp. The fueler from FLITELINE plugged in his hose and handed the deadman to the flight engineer as the refueling panel had about 50 dials and selector switches all in Cyrillic.
BDK you'd be interested in the gear on both as it's dead nuts DOUGLAS in philosophy (but, then again so is the gear under the 787).
124's show up @ KPAE fairly regularly to drop off engines and such to the Lazy 'B' and once picked up the entire lower 41 section 'canoe' for a 747 and flew it to Tahiti for an AOG repair on an airplane that misplaced the end of the runway there, the assembly was too big to fit any U.S. aircraft and sending by ship would have taken far too long and been too complicated.
Seeing it banking around @ Abottsford after take off and below the tree tops was an eye popping experience , it was so graceful doing it you almost forgot it's sheer size, and it went around like a 172 with no dramas -'so yanqi's, how you are liking me now?'

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Back in 1998 I was enrooute to somewhere and we stopped at Gander for fuel (I did that three times within six months...it got to be a second home) and there was one parked with a bad engine. Another 124 was flown in with a spare and the various kit to do an an engine change...not a job for the faint of heart.

As far as tire wear, heavy aircraft go through tires awfully quickly. I read that an airliner tire lasts about a month. Even in the USAF, some of our B-1 tires looked pretty ragged just before being changed.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
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I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.