by Ray Hunter,
Well, let's see--there was the time...
Actually most of my Dakota time was with the USAF from 64-66 at RAF Mildenhall (~1,000 hours) and except for a
couple of engines which quit, it was fairly uneventful.
I was fresh out of pilot training and was assigned to be an instructor and to fly with older staff pilots and make sure they met their AF requirements. I can say that I learned a lot more from them than they did from me.
I flew around Europe for most of three years in all the low ceilings, fog, etc. and had two trips that were memorable.
One was ferrying 50887 C-47 to Thailand from Mildenhall, England and the other was ferrying another one from Europe (tail # forgotten) to Miami, where it was to be converted to an EC-47 or AC-47.
The Europe-Miami trip took us from Lossiemouth (sp) Scotland to Rejkavik, Iceland and then to Sondestrom, Greenland and over to Frobisher Bay, Goose Bay, Dow AFB ME, and then down the East coast.
On the Europe-Thailand trip the only leg which was dicey was the one from Masirah Island, Saudia Arabia to Bombay, India. I believe around 6-7 hours over water with the usual 800 gallons of gas.
The fun part is the flying I am now doing with the Yankee Air Force. Our C-47 (Yankee Doodle Dandy) is a sweetheart
(only 15,000 hours) and belonged to the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan before we bought it around 8
years ago.
We fly her about 50 hours a year to air shows, etc. It's configured with bucket troop seats and late 40's, early 50's crew
compartment set-up.
Two of our pilots managed to forget to lock the tail wheel last year on takeoff at Oshkosh and after the dust settled, we
had incurred a large repair bill from Basler's in Oshkosh, WI who fixed her for us. If the accident had happened
elsewhere, I don't know what we would have done to salvage the bird. Anyway, she's back in the air and doing
great.
Cheers for now!
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