I did a posting on Transport Blog the other day, about a trip taken by a friend of mine to the Hebrides, that involved a plane landing on a beach, on purpose. The beach in question being Barra Airport.
Michael Jennings, who knows everything, supplied some detail (I’ve cleaned up some of the comment-type blemishes) about the plane in question:
The Twin Otter is famous for being really really good at landing on beaches, gravel, and other difficult runways, as well as airports at high altitude. (I have flown on them in the Himalayas.) de Havilland Canada produced them from 1965 to 1988, and ceased production. A company named Viking Air (also Canadian) was given the contract to produce spare parts for the many airlines operating the aircraft. Eventually, airlines explained to Viking that as well as spare parts, they would like to be able to buy entire aircraft, and so Viking actually put the plane back into production in 2007, and quite a few new ones have since been ordered and built.
So here is a great product literally being brought back into existence, through customer demand. Shades of Classic Coke. Compare and contrast, as they say, temporary governmental contrivances which, despite popular revulsion, never then go away.
It is also an example of a second hand market influencing the decision to recreate a new market in a situation where there was not a new market.
This is something we are seeing a lot more of. Once upon a time, second hand booksellers really had no idea what was a fair price for most books, except for a few collectibles, and you could sometimes find those as bargains in places where the bookseller did not know they were collectibles. These days, second hand books are sold on the internet, and there is a precise market price for just about any book ever published. (Amazon basically runs an exchange here. For any book there will be twenty booksellers or more offering the same book for their best price. It looks very similar to the order book in a financial market). Publishers can find out instantly which books are selling at high prices and are thus in short supply, and which need to come back into print. In fact, there are niche publishers that exist specifically to produce new editions of books like this. It’s quite impressive how what people want gets produced when it is made easy to find out what they want.
Nothing to do with this topic, you guys are ranked #40 among libertarian blogs:
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/dbkpreport/2011/07/libertarian-top-50-sites-june-july-2011/
You are, of course, number 1 in our hearts though.
I bet you say that to all the blogs.
1930s Ford tractors, completely remanufactured from the ground up.
http://www.n-complete.com/Index/remanufacturedtractors.php
I’ve flown in a single Otter (DHC3) and in a Beaver (DHC2). One thing you don’t realize about these things until you fly in one is just how awesomely over-powered they are – the key to their short-field performance. Even the older and lower-powered Beaver, with full flaps down and full throttle, can lift off the ground at a rate that can have you checking your lunch. It’s nothing at all like flying to St Louis in a 727.
llater,
llamas
The Beaver is especially quaint – the engine oil filler and dipstick are in the cockpit, against your left knee when in the co-pilot’s seat. You can check the oil and add a quart in flight, if required.
Didn’t someone bring back push lawnmowers in a similar way?
Another point, the UK income tax was introduced and repealed twice during the Napoleonic wars and I could have sworn that I read somewhere that when it was reintroduced a third time it was claimed, as it was in the US, that it would be a temporary measure. The Wikipedia account does not state this, however.
I’ve long suspected this and now it is confirmed by a reliable source.
The top of my fantasy wish list is a de Havilland Beaver with amphibious floats. llamas, that horse power doesn’t seem like nearly so much when a plane is loaded heavy and the water is pretty flat. Overconfidence in all that power leads some pilots to do amazingly stupid things.
Here in Costa Rica, regional airline Nature Air operate a fleet of DHC-6 Twin Otters. They are amazing birds. I’ve flown in them on numerous occasions. It makes getting to the beach much less tiresome. When Nature Air started, there were not many tarmac airstrips and so, for the first few years of operation, they did indeed land on the beach.
One wonders when the DC-3 will come back into production… after 70 years of ‘replacements’ it still soldiers on and has outlived all but the newest of those intended replacements. Some designs are just so good you can’t improve on them.
llamas
That is a feature found useful when flying in the Arctic during periods of Arctic weather: see “Bent Props & Blow Pots” for some of fun details.
For proper Twotter Fun …
Cheers
The RAAF hasn’t been able to replace its DHC-4 Caribous. Aircraft with the same general performance tend to have issues like ‘can’t turn around at the end of this list of strips in the New Guinea highlands’.
Classic aircraft are a lot like certain firearms: you simply can’t improve on them all that much, and they keep on going for decades. The Beaver and Twin Otter are the epitome of the Canadian bush plane: tough, STOVL aircraft that you can trust to get you home when your flight plan regularly features hundreds of miles of unpopulated tundra, muskeg, or sub-arctic forest.
I flew in an Otter on a tour of Denali that involved a glacier landing. I was amazed at the ease at which we took off. It did not seem we were going anywhere near fast enough but the plane just lifted up like it wanted to be in the air. Very different from some of the labored takeoffs I have experienced in big jetliners.
The C-130 Hercules is another plane that belongs in this discussion. With four engines, it’s larger than the others. It’s been in production for over 50 years. If you want to take lots of cargo from one unprepared runway to another, it’s the plane for the job. They can be used to carry passengers, but don’t have passenger windows, so they’ll probably never take over the tourist market.
I flew on a Twin Otter out of here, once. This was in 1997, too, when the runway was gravel. The 12% gradient from the horizontal and the mighty chasm at the end of the runway are all nice touches, not to mention that it is at almost 3000 metres above sea level. You really want a plane that can get off the ground fast.
Are there any Lysanders still flying?
They were the Kings of STOL. They could land in a ploughed field, leave alone a beach. Me mum worked in the Planning office converting them for SOE use during the War.
The idea of being able to go anywhere, do anything is what makes the idea of owning one of those light STOL aircraft, or even the Piper Cub such an enduring dream.
But only if I had the money.
There may be a few Lysander’s still flying as Warbirds, but in actual service they didn’t long survive the war and the Beaver killed them off in practical service by providing the same STOL performance with an actual useful load (the Lysander carried 3 people and essentially no cargo, it was a lousy STOL transport but a good observation aircraft. Need, not capability, had it doing support for spec ops in WW2).
Michael, what the heck were you doing in Nepal?
Twin Otters are great jump planes, the USAF Academy has a pair of them used by the Wings of Blue. I made a few jumps from them in May 1981, even got dropped through a really small hole in the clouds at one point- kinda nice when the crew has radar to help aim the jump run…
That also happened to be the last time I saw my father; he died a few weeks later after a fall from a ladder. The irony of me falling miles safely, while he was killed by an eight foot drop, does not escape me.