Any X-Men Fans Out There?

[flightsimer]

Any X-Men fans out there?

The newest movie in the series will be coming out in just a few weeks, X-Men: Days of Future Past. Since it has finally made it into a trailer, I feel its safe to finally say that Air Heritage's Fairchild C-123K, Thunder Pig, will be makings its debut appearance in a mainstream film.

We have previously been in a low budget film named "The Naked Man" as well as a Rap Music Video and two TV series episodes; "Believe" which premiered on NBC a few weeks ago and another that was filmed last year for one of Amazon's Internet TV series.

Last year we flew it up to Canada for the filming. It along with two Hueys, from Washington State I believe, were all used in the filming. An Interesting story that was passed along from out crew upon retaining was that for some reason a SWAT like team intercept both hueys as they were leaving the airport on the trucks they had arrived on. Everyone was detained and the aircraft were taken into possession. I would imagine this was some sort of mistake, and probably had to do with some paperwork issues as I know we had to fill out a ton of paperwork for us to fly the plane into Canada.

We ourselves ran into some troubles when we returned from the shoot when we were in Buffalo, New York, to pass through Customs. We lost the fuel pump on our Number 1 Engine due to paint that some vandal had put in our fuel that was being stored outside the aircraft while maintenance was being preformed on the bladder prior to us leaving.

However, here is the trailer. Both us and the Huey's can be seen between 1:15 - 1:20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6acRHWnfZAE

Here is us arriving at the airport; CSY3, Sorel Airport in Quebec. The runway there was only 4000x75ft, the shortest we like to take the Pig into. There is two views for each phase of the arrival and at the end you will get to see us back the plane up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-kiJHpkRlY

[Brad]

An Interesting story that was passed along from out crew upon retaining was that for some reason a SWAT like team intercept both hueys as they were leaving the airport on the trucks they had arrived on. Everyone was detained and the aircraft were taken into possession. I would imagine this was some sort of mistake, and probably had to do with some paperwork issues as I know we had to fill out a ton of paperwork for us to fly into Canada.

That is not even remotely close to what happened.

[flightsimer]

An Interesting story that was passed along from out crew upon retaining was that for some reason a SWAT like team intercept both hueys as they were leaving the airport on the trucks they had arrived on. Everyone was detained and the aircraft were taken into possession. I would imagine this was some sort of mistake, and probably had to do with some paperwork issues as I know we had to fill out a ton of paperwork for us to fly into Canada.

That is not even remotely close to what happened.

Please shed some light as we would like to know. They honestly did not know what was happening, but that's just how they described it as it appeared to them, though I'm sure it was probably exaggerated some. It would certainly clear the situation and avoid any rumors.

The way I wrote it also might have been a little overly dramatic as well, but my safari on my ipad kept refreshing and deleting what I had wrote and that was about the 6th time I had re-typed out the entire post and at that point I just went with it.

[CAPFlyer]

Great to see you guys getting some work.

Also, laughed at the second video. She certainly has R2800's. I a couple times when the mechanics were checking the reverse on the 240's at Air Tahoma when they'd buck like that as the prop transitioned when the plane was stationary and momentarily interrupted the airflow into the engine.

[Warbird Kid]

The Canadian Warplane Heritage was also used for a scene in the original X-Men movie. It's where Bruce Davison's character, Senator Kelly is walking from the hangar to get on a helicopter. For just a second you can see the Lancaster in the background.

[SaxMan]

I remember seeing the Pig at the Frederick, Maryland airshows in the mid-90s. What I still recall was how much smoke the motors kicked out on start up. You could hide the plane in its own smokescreen.

It looks like the Pig may be getting a nearby playmate soon when the Hagerstown Aviation Museum get theirs ferried up from Florida. I don't think the Hagerstown folks are planning on flying the plane, but it would be very cool to see a pair of 123s in formation.

[Warbird Kid]

I remember seeing the Pig at the Frederick, Maryland airshows in the mid-90s. What I still recall was how much smoke the motors kicked out on start up. You could hide the plane in its own smokescreen.

It looks like the Pig may be getting a nearby playmate soon when the Hagerstown Aviation Museum get theirs ferried up from Florida. I don't think the Hagerstown folks are planning on flying the plane, but it would be very cool to see a pair of 123s in formation.

It seems they do have some small flyable aircraft. Hopefully over some years well see enough infrastructure and support to see some of the larger aircraft fly again.

[Brad]

An Interesting story that was passed along from out crew upon retaining was that for some reason a SWAT like team intercept both hueys as they were leaving the airport on the trucks they had arrived on. Everyone was detained and the aircraft were taken into possession. I would imagine this was some sort of mistake, and probably had to do with some paperwork issues as I know we had to fill out a ton of paperwork for us to fly into Canada.

That is not even remotely close to what happened.

Please shed some light as we would like to know. They honestly did not know what was happening, but that's just how they described it as it appeared to them, though I'm sure it was probably exaggerated some. It would certainly clear the situation and avoid any rumors.

The way I wrote it also might have been a little overly dramatic as well, but my safari on my ipad kept refreshing and deleting what I had wrote and that was about the 6th time I had re-typed out the entire post and at that point I just went with it.

Tyler, were you there at the film location? It sounds like you were based on the way your original post reads and I met the rest of your crew but I don't remember meeting you.

Here's what happened. The other mechanic and I stayed out late in the evening taking the Hueys apart for transport after the last day of filming. Early the next morning, with the help of our two truck drivers and a crane operator we loaded them on our trailers and left the airport. The trucks left, loaded exactly like they had been two weeks earlier when they originally left Washington and exactly like we load Hueys on a regular basis. Me and the other mechanic got in our rental and were heading back to Montreal to catch our flight back to Seattle. One cop car pulled the 1st truck over infront of the Tim Horton's about a mile before getting out of town. The second truck, waiting at a red light, pulled up behind the first truck to wait. We saw it all happen and assumed somebody didn't signal for a turn or something like that so we pulled into the Tim Horton's Donut shop parking lot to make sure everything was okay.

One of the drivers told me it was a random commercial vehicle inspection and didn't seem like a big deal. It ended up that the cop was actually Canadian Department of Transportation guy. He was a very cool guy and friendly. Because there was two trailers he called for backup to come out. The second guy was an absolute jerk. I mean he couldn't have been anymore of a butthole about things. We had a little time to goof off before our flight so we just sat down and waited to make sure everything was okay. I went into Tim Horton's and got a bear claw for breakfast.

The first cop was quite happy with what he saw and was ready to let everybody go after spending about thirty minutes looking at log books and the trucks and cargo. The other guy wasn't letting it happen. Over the cours of the next two hours, he started coming up with all sorts of violations and accused one of the drivers of falsifying his logbook. Finally he presented his list of demands in the form of a citation and said if they weren't fixed then the trucks, trailers and cargo would be impounded. I asked then if we could move everything into the parking lot as we'd been blocking the right lane for a while. We were told no. We had gone through a broker in Montreal at the start of this trip to ensure all the rules of the road were met. A call was placed to him and he swore everything was right. The cop told him on the phone that he had to come out and look for himself or everything would be impounded. The guy said he was getting in his car right then and heading our way.

A good deal of this time I was giving tours of the Huey to the kids and moms that came to Tim Horton's. The cool cop's wife even brought out their kid to sit in the front seat. A good time was had by all until about ten or fifteen more minutes went by and the butthole cop, who had just told the broker we would wait for him to arrive, suddenly announced that a tow truck was coming to impound everything. He had suddenly decided that we couldn't block the road any longer. I asked again about moving to a parking lot and he said no. The other cop finally managed to convince him that we should be allowed to just drive ourselves over to the impound. I bought another bear claw and a cup of coffee for the road. The cops led us on all sorts of winding roads through alley ways and residential streets until we came to an auto repair shop with a small impound yard in the dead center of a residential area. Many of the residents got great pictures of the American invasion driving down their narrow streets. It took nearly an hour but the drivers managed to get both trucks and trailers with the Huey's on them into this tiny impound yard. The entire yard was taken up and the owner wasn't happy. The good cop was embarassed and the owners wife got in a fight with the butthole cop about something. I couldn't understand most of it because they were yelling in French. The butthole cop and impound yard owner were both mad because the drivers refused to leave them the keys to the trucks. Before we left I crawled all over both helicopters and took pictures of every square inch in the event that they tore something up. A crowd gathered up to take pictures over the fence. I dumped my coffee in a plant pot. Finally we loaded up the drivers and their crap in our rental and took them back to the hotel we'd been staying in and the other mechanic and I headed for Montreal.

Even though both trucks made it through customs, multiple weigh stations, inspections, 3,000 miles of Canadian highway and had the services of a professional broker, after holes were blown in every other charge they tried to bring, everything boiled down to the DOT butthole cop saying the Hueys were three inches too long. I'm not even sort of kidding when I say I saw them measure the trailers at least five or six times each. It took that long for them to come up with a measurement that was too long. Of course it was suddenly okay to drive an "overlength" load down the highway after you paid the right amount of fines and waited a couple of days for the new permits to process. While we were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the cop to finish his shakedown, an employee of the movie company stopped by to see what was happening. I told him and he said that it was very routine for the DOT guys to set outside of the film locations around Canada and just wait for the trailers to leave. He said they figure if they stop enough of the trailers with odd loads on them then they are bound to find something they can fine you for. I'm sure we do the same thing here in the US from time to time.

That's all there is to it. Not even a rumor until one was started here on WIX. There were two cops and only two cops. Nothing even remotely close to a "swat like interception" in any sense of the word. It was a simple, every day, traffic stop. Nobody was detained and nothing got hurt. The local government got a little more money out of the movie company, some kids got to play in a Huey on the side of the road, we got to talk to some single moms in very broken French/English, the drivers got to lay around in the hotel a couple more days and I got two eat two bear claws from Tim Hortons. I've got pictures of the entire incident, except the women and the bear claws. Maybe I'll post them here before too long.

[Joe Scheil]

Brad,

I have to admit I have no idea about what the heck X men are other than that I thought it always should have been about Scott Crossfield, Apt, Kincheloe and the rest...

Your story however is simply perfect, a really good yarn. Cops, roadside discussions, Single moms, rampaging kids and Bearclaws...simply perfect.

All the best and next time I'm in the area.....

JOE

[Forgotten Field]

Brad,
You ruined all the fun and wild speculation. I hope you can look at yourself in the mirror after this.

On a serious side note- are Canadian Bear Claws different than the ones down here? And were the single moms good looking?

[Brad]

50/50 on the moms. The bear claws were a different size but I blame the metric system for that.

[Thomas_Mac]

Brad,
You ruined all the fun and wild speculation. I hope you can look at yourself in the mirror after this.

On a serious side note- are Canadian Bear Claws different than the ones down here? And were the single moms good looking?

50/50 on the moms. The bear claws were a different size but I blame the metric system for that.

I know them as Beaver Tails if that helps

[flightsimer]

Tyler, were you there at the film location? It sounds like you were based on the way your original post reads and I met the rest of your crew but I don't remember meeting you.

Here's what happened. The other mechanic and I stayed out late in the evening taking the Hueys apart for transport after the last day of filming. Early the next morning, with the help of our two truck drivers and a crane operator we loaded them on our trailers and left the airport. The trucks left, loaded exactly like they had been two weeks earlier when they originally left Washington and exactly like we load Hueys on a regular basis. Me and the other mechanic got in our rental and were heading back to Montreal to catch our flight back to Seattle. One cop car pulled the 1st truck over infront of the Tim Horton's about a mile before getting out of town. The second truck, waiting at a red light, pulled up behind the first truck to wait. We saw it all happen and assumed somebody didn't signal for a turn or something like that so we pulled into the Tim Horton's Donut shop parking lot to make sure everything was okay.

One of the drivers told me it was a random commercial vehicle inspection and didn't seem like a big deal. It ended up that the cop was actually Canadian Department of Transportation guy. He was a very cool guy and friendly. Because there was two trailers he called for backup to come out. The second guy was an absolute jerk. I mean he couldn't have been anymore of a butthole about things. We had a little time to goof off before our flight so we just sat down and waited to make sure everything was okay. I went into Tim Horton's and got a bear claw for breakfast.

The first cop was quite happy with what he saw and was ready to let everybody go after spending about thirty minutes looking at log books and the trucks and cargo. The other guy wasn't letting it happen. Over the cours of the next two hours, he started coming up with all sorts of violations and accused one of the drivers of falsifying his logbook. Finally he presented his list of demands in the form of a citation and said if they weren't fixed then the trucks, trailers and cargo would be impounded. I asked then if we could move everything into the parking lot as we'd been blocking the right lane for a while. We were told no. We had gone through a broker in Montreal at the start of this trip to ensure all the rules of the road were met. A call was placed to him and he swore everything was right. The cop told him on the phone that he had to come out and look for himself or everything would be impounded. The guy said he was getting in his car right then and heading our way.

A good deal of this time I was giving tours of the Huey to the kids and moms that came to Tim Horton's. The cool cop's wife even brought out their kid to sit in the front seat. A good time was had by all until about ten or fifteen more minutes went by and the butthole cop, who had just told the broker we would wait for him to arrive, suddenly announced that a tow truck was coming to impound everything. He had suddenly decided that we couldn't block the road any longer. I asked again about moving to a parking lot and he said no. The other cop finally managed to convince him that we should be allowed to just drive ourselves over to the impound. I bought another bear claw and a cup of coffee for the road. The cops led us on all sorts of winding roads through alley ways and residential streets until we came to an auto repair shop with a small impound yard in the dead center of a residential area. Many of the residents got great pictures of the American invasion driving down their narrow streets. It took nearly an hour but the drivers managed to get both trucks and trailers with the Huey's on them into this tiny impound yard. The entire yard was taken up and the owner wasn't happy. The good cop was embarassed and the owners wife got in a fight with the butthole cop about something. I couldn't understand most of it because they were yelling in French. The butthole cop and impound yard owner were both mad because the drivers refused to leave them the keys to the trucks. Before we left I crawled all over both helicopters and took pictures of every square inch in the event that they tore something up. A crowd gathered up to take pictures over the fence. I dumped my coffee in a plant pot. Finally we loaded up the drivers and their crap in our rental and took them back to the hotel we'd been staying in and the other mechanic and I headed for Montreal.

Even though both trucks made it through customs, multiple weigh stations, inspections, 3,000 miles of Canadian highway and had the services of a professional broker, after holes were blown in every other charge they tried to bring, everything boiled down to the DOT butthole cop saying the Hueys were three inches too long. I'm not even sort of kidding when I say I saw them measure the trailers at least five or six times each. It took that long for them to come up with a measurement that was too long. Of course it was suddenly okay to drive an "overlength" load down the highway after you paid the right amount of fines and waited a couple of days for the new permits to process. While we were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the cop to finish his shakedown, an employee of the movie company stopped by to see what was happening. I told him and he said that it was very routine for the DOT guys to set outside of the film locations around Canada and just wait for the trailers to leave. He said they figure if they stop enough of the trailers with odd loads on them then they are bound to find something they can fine you for. I'm sure we do the same thing here in the US from time to time.

That's all there is to it. Not even a rumor until one was started here on WIX. There were two cops and only two cops. Nothing even remotely close to a "swat like interception" in any sense of the word. It was a simple, every day, traffic stop. Nobody was detained and nothing got hurt. The local government got a little more money out of the movie company, some kids got to play in a Huey on the side of the road, we got to talk to some single moms in very broken French/English, the drivers got to lay around in the hotel a couple more days and I got two eat two bear claws from Tim Hortons. I've got pictures of the entire incident, except the women and the bear claws. Maybe I'll post them here before too long.

Glad to hear it was not nearly as bad as I reported it and thanks for the clarification. I was not with the crew for this trip as I did not have a passport at the time nor was I on the insurance for the pig to fly it so there would have been more or less no point for me to have gone. Until we get this insurance issue figured out, I'm stuck just doing training flights in it and riding backseat to airshows to help with the PX or tours of it.

As for the story, I am sure it was probably the movie people who told our members about it and somewhere in between us being told and me being told, the story took an interesting turn lol.

Now on to what actually happened. I hate idiots like that. Cops wonder why so many people dislike them and it's idiots like that the causes it.

Though it by the sounds of it, it would have made for a great episode of lizardlick towing. For those of you that do not know of Lizardlick Towing, it is a tv show on TLC or some other channel in the US.

[flightsimer]

I remember seeing the Pig at the Frederick, Maryland airshows in the mid-90s. What I still recall was how much smoke the motors kicked out on start up. You could hide the plane in its own smokescreen.

It looks like the Pig may be getting a nearby playmate soon when the Hagerstown Aviation Museum get theirs ferried up from Florida. I don't think the Hagerstown folks are planning on flying the plane, but it would be very cool to see a pair of 123s in formation.

Lol, yeah she can smoke quite a bit at times, especially the first run up after the winter. Though by the end of the season, especially if we are flying two weekends or more a month, she barely smokes.

About Hagerstown...

Last year our president and some of our 123 crew members were flown down to Florida by them to inspect the aircraft as we will be the ones ferrying it up to there facility for them.

However, just from talking with a few people, by the sounds of it, they are planning on flying the aircraft once they get it home. We are in need of a new fuel bladder and I had said to the crew chief about seeing if we might be able to trade for one of theirs since they do not fly their aircraft and that's when he said that they intend on flying it. So I do not know who told him that.

I do not know if they have any crew members for it or if we will even still be doing the ferry. For not flying any aircraft, I do not know if they will even be able to support it as a flyer. It will be one heck of a plane to start out with if they do try.

I know ponderous Polly was close to being back in the air last year! but it sounded like hints stalled out with her as well.

[Chuck Giese]

Brad,
You ruined all the fun and wild speculation. I hope you can look at yourself in the mirror after this.

On a serious side note- are Canadian Bear Claws different than the ones down here? And were the single moms good looking?

50/50 on the moms. The bear claws were a different size but I blame the metric system for that.

I know them as Beaver Tails if that helps

I trust that you're referring to the Bear Claws.......