I know they have a bigger payload and operate more efficiently and cheaper but there is something not quite right about putting a turbine engine on a single engine aircraft. I'm talking about the
Beaver and more so of the
Otter.
I don't know how many of the aircraft I've loaded and unloaded over the years, a couple hundred probably if you throw in the
Norseman and every one of them was a piston engine. These machines had heart, they had a personality, a life. They had to be tickled and talked to softly when at -70 you put back in the battery and oil that you had taken out the night before and hauled on a toboggan up to the house so they wouldn’t freeze solid. They had to be cursed while you had to put on the engine tent and fire up the blow pots to heat the frigid metal before you finally attempted a start up in the morning. You swore even more when the skies were frozen into the slush and had to be hit with an axe to loosen and you still had to have people pulling from side to on a rope tied to the tail of the plane to try to work the aircraft loose.
Then, the roar of power with the smell of av-gas in the cockpit mixing with the odor of wood smoke coming from your moose hide mitts as you rose into the rising sun. You can't possibly understand how much I truly miss those days. But I digress...
There was romance and feeling to these aircraft which flew as they were intended. Yes, I know the reasons but it's still sacrilege to put a turbine engine on a great machine like the Otter. Anyone out there have an opinion? Please jump in with a comment.
PS: I actually still do a lot of flying but now it's all on the computer. What do I fly most often? I alternate between a DHC-2 Beaver on floats, a
Grumman Goose and a good old
DC-3. All have piston engines as some things just aren’t meant to be changed.
I know they have a bigger payload and operate more efficiently and cheaper but there is something not quite right about putting a turbine engine on a single engine aircraft. I'm talking about the Beaver and more so of the Otter.
I don't know how many of the aircraft I've loaded and unloaded over the years, a couple hundred probably if you throw in the Norseman and every one of them was a piston engine. These machines had heart, they had a personality, a life. They had to be tickled and talked to softly when at -70 you put back in the battery and oil that you had taken out the night before and hauled on a toboggan up to the house so they wouldn’t freeze solid. They had to be cursed while you had to put on the engine tent and fire up the blow pots to heat the frigid metal before you finally attempted a start up in the morning. You swore even more when the skies were frozen into the slush and had to be hit with an axe to loosen and you still had to have people pulling from side to on a rope tied to the tail of the plane to try to work the aircraft loose.
Then, the roar of power with the smell of av-gas in the cockpit mixing with the odor of wood smoke coming from your moose hide mitts as you rose into the rising sun. You can't possibly understand how much I truly miss those days. But I digress...
There was romance and feeling to these aircraft which flew as they were intended. Yes, I know the reasons but it's still sacrilege to put a turbine engine on a great machine like the Otter. Anyone out there have an opinion? Please jump in with a comment.
PS: I actually still do a lot of flying but now it's all on the computer. What do I fly most often? I alternate between a DHC-2 Beaver on floats, a Grumman Goose and a good old DC-3. All have piston engines as some things just aren’t meant to be changed.
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