Eye Candy - # 10
Bob
Bogash
| My Best Aviation Photos Eye Candy - # 10 |
Bob
Bogash
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Photo Index Here - Airports, Airlines, Favorite Eye Candy    747 Prototype - RA001  Gee Bee    RCAF Base - Trenton, Ontario  LAX  Gate arrival Lockheed Electra  Jamaica  IL-62 Czech "OK Jet" - Montreal - CYUL  Oakland - I think..... SLC? BOI? Geez, I've got the records, somewhere.  Staggerwing - McMinnville My pal Jim Hodges told me he loved Biplanes.... ....but, he liked Staggerwings the best. You see, for you Silent Ones, like an Old Time Saturday Nite D.J. - I take "Requests"!   WAL DC-6B donated to Purdue University   Vulcan - Castle AFB  In the old days, there was something call Interchange. Pax wanting to travel between two cities not served by a single carrier could often take an Interchange flight on two carriers that used a single aircraft that changed crews and operational control at an intermediate common city, and thereby stay on the same aircraft all the way to their final destination. Sometimes - as here - the common aircraft was even painted with the two airlines' liveries. Some More Nordair Arctic Views  My view looking through the hangar from my office in Montreal  Landing Great Whale (CYGW) in a DC-4. Runway 22. Runway is basically sand with some gravel, alongside shoreline of Hudson Bay. Before Bay freeze-up, fog blew in off the cold water. The Field had a single NDB and Landing Limits were 1000-1 Circling only - Straight -in's Not Authorized No Lights   Runway - 5000 ft - Sand and gravel More sand than gravel.....  737 in Summer at YGW Not like O'Hare....  Winter Runway Length - 5000 ft 737 - No Reverse Allowed (at that time). It's ALL Anti-skid baby! No Auto Brakes in those days either.  Resolute Bay - CYRB Inbound leg landing north: Heading 064M / 343 T (True) North Magnetic Pole was only about 108 NM away. (Now it's about 400 NM.) In my first flight into Resolute, I learned the meaning of the word "Bushed." We hauled a man out; he was bound in a straight-jacket tied to a stretcher. The place was so remote and isolated from the outside world - well, some people went crazy....  Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island 74.72 N / 94.97W For reference - the distance from Montreal to Resolute is about the same as Montreal to Seattle. Except ---- it's going straight North!  737 at Resolute - High Noon  Arrival of the Jet up North - CYVP - Fort Chimo  CYGW - Great Whale Very much like the Old West - where people came down to the Depot to meet the train.  Typical "instrument" Approach Procedure - 737 Most of the "Procedures" we devised ourselves and maintained them in a little Jeppesen-like notebook. Raglan Lake Cloudbreak Procedure 1. Disconnect HSI DG from Fluxgate (special switch on panel). This procedure allowed the airplane to descend safely over the sea, before transitioning to visual Pilotage for the remainder of the Navigation.  Flying up the fjord  Landscape in Winter - Never Never Land  Overhead the Strip - Raglan Lake Landing strip at the time is shown diagonally in upper RH part of photo Near Asbestos Hill and also now known as Donaldson (CTP9), (Kattiniq).  Raglan Lake was home to the Falconbridge Nickel Mine (still operational). I once went down in a mine elevator and at 900 feet deep, we were still in permafrost.  On the ground at Raglan Lake - DC-4 CF-IQM  Unloading 737  Most strips were privately owned mining strips. Usually a single runway with no ramp   A different "way of life" - airline life, that is. It's not LAX, that's for sure. Or ORD, JFK, or LHR. We pioneered a transition that many thought would be impossible. And I am proud to have been a part in it. Nordair moved from DC-3s, C-46s and DC-4s to jets, and did so successfully. Not only equipment, but flight crews as well. Transitioning from DC-3 to 737 is not like Main Line carriers transitioning from DC-7s to DC-8s. In the harshest conditions, dark, cold, snow, no Navaids, no lights, no comms, no 'Nuthin'. And did so safely - operating for more than the next 20 years without a major mishap. At the time I arrived at Nordair, the DC-3 and DC-4 were less than 25 years old. The 737-200C with gravel kit is still being used all over Arctic Canada - if anything - even into more primitive airstrips. It was replacing DC-3s and has become, in a way, the DC-3 of the 21st Century. And... it is more than 50 years old. The "transition' WAS possible.   DC-2      Kenmore Air at Port Ludlow  MOF - BFI  IL-18  Spirit of St. Louis Replica - McMinnville  B-45 - Castle AFB  T-38 - Pensacola  PAE    Beaver  Bob - the Boat Man I've had an interesting career - that's for sure. Let's stray momentarily from airplanes. No, not trains, this time. It's Boats.
One of the things that popped into my life was a 3 year episode
running boats between the Hawaiian Islands. Yes, somehow that
"opportunity" popped up. That's Boeing, you know.
 One of my new business "homes," below the Aloha Tower. View from my Office - not like Montreal! Boeing built a small number of turbine powered passenger hydrofoil boats (about 21).
 Kamehameha - the first boat arriving in Honolulu
Three of them wound up in Hawaii, with Boeing a 25% owner of the operation (competing, BTW, against their customer Aloha Airlines.) As the Boeing Rep in Honolulu, I was sent to boat school and then assigned their care and feeding. I learned a whole new world. Instead of the FAA, it was the Coast Guard. And ABS (American Bureau of Shipping.)  The boats were
called Jetfoils - had two decks - seated 190 passengers, and could run at 50 kts between
Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Kona on the Big Island. I'll prepare a
whole webpage on that adventure .... some day. The boats may have run
fine in Puget Sound but running the Kauai Channel and Alenuihaha
Channel, with high winds and high seas, was another story altogether. The
boats suffered from continual mechanical, structural, and operational
problems and after 3 years were withdrawn and sold to an operator in Hong Kong.
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All of which is a Preamble to this one fine picture I took, returning to Honolulu one day. It was the departure of the SS Mariposa for San Francisco. The Mariposa (actually, the name of several vessels) ran for many years for Matson but was sold to Pacific Far East Line. Being in the right position to snap this picture from the bridge of the Jetfoil was a unique opportunity. It's truly a picture of a different Time and Place. Within a year or two, taking a passenger liner from Hawaii to the Mainland passed into History. Picture if you will, the ending of the fine movie From Here to Eternity. Picture the confetti thrown from the dock. Picture the forest of streamers thrown from the boat by the departing passengers. Picture the flower lei's thrown into the water in hopes of returning one day. Listen to the mournful sounds of the band playing that over-whelmingly tearful Aloha Oe. I could see all that romance as I snapped this picture of the ship departing. One of my Best.  SS Mariposa leaving Honolulu for San Francisco. A long ways from Resolute Bay..... Aloha Oe That's all for this time - tune back in for #11 |
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