Ah, the memories are flooding back after looking at this thread. I did some cloud seeding with Maslings 67-68 in 310 WRG and 320 FJW which had belonged to Fletcher Jones of clothing fame. Had a very pleasant couple of weeks flying FJW out of Hobart as a backup to the East West Twotter. After Maslings I flew for Civil (Moorabbin) mainly on cloud-seeding and the aircraft we used were CFB, CFR and CFS, all C55 Barons and CFJ which as someone mentioned was a B55 with all the bells and whistles. I operated it out of Adelaide in the latter half of 1968 and with all that gear and the small engines it didn't take too much ice to send you towards terra-firma. CFS was the only one fitted with radar but that didn't stop one of the guys having a nasty encounter with a hail-storm one day out near Eildon. Lots of damage.
I flew out of Horsham for six months in 1969 initially with CFS then CFB. CFR was operating out of Mt Gambier at the same time mainly with Russ Thompson and Doug Krause. I don't remember seeing CFA used for cloud-seeding in Victoria but it may have after I left in early 70 as well as in WA. CFB seems to spend most of its days sitting at Murwillumbah lately.
C310B TTM was also mentioned on this thread; I never flew it while I was with Maslings but later flew it for the would-be third airline Jetair out of Eagle Farm as well as the also mentioned Twin Bonanza CLO which was a bucket of bolts way back then (1970).
I'm surprised Fantome hasn't appeared here yet as he spent a lot of his youth playing with clouds and aeroplanes. Another great guy involved in the cloud-seeding with Maslings was Lane Morrow, a Yankee import. Unfortunately he passed away in early 2004.
My first encounter with cloud-seeding was about 1964-5 in Wagga when the CSIRO were operating REK and REL from there with the legendary Chris Braund being one of the pilots.
Last edited by WTFIGO; 8th Dec 2009 at 10:55.