ramsrc
Whaddaya mean WAS!? There's still a whole pile of them flying here in the great white north. Most have been well modified. Almost all have some form of supplemental heat (designed for Britain where it's not too hot and not too cold--we get both extremes), but some have a lot more. Many are carrying freight, and as such have a lot of the familiar furnishings removed--including pressurization (those superchargers are heavy) windows, baggage doors, and in a few cases a 9ft hole has been cut in the side of an unpressurized beast and a roller floor installed to accomodate pallets and large reight. The most modded one I flew was a fuel tanker conversion. It had been depressurized, had all but the forward freight door removed, windows sheeted over and all but the centre floorboards removed. The cockpit was sealed up pretty well and double insulated. 200V AC heat was installed as well as a bleed air heat system. A King silver crown stack (much like a Cessna caravan or King Air) was installed in the main panel and all the engine instruments squished over to accomodate it. They also installed a 10h.p. honda engine as an APU which had a hydraulic pump and generator installed as accessories. The hydraulics were used to operate fuel pumps down in the belly. Ten 250gal tanks (US army surplus from a C5 Galaxy installation)are installed in the main fuselage and the outboard 15ft or so of wing tank is partitioned off and plumbed into the payload system. This allowed the aircraft to be landing weight limited instead of ZFW on short hauls. Loading and unloading was done by means of single point refuelling points located on the left lower fuselage forward and aft of the wing.
We were able to take a total load of 9250L of unleaded fuel on a short leg VFR(less red diesel or Jet B since they weigh more), which meant it was just a big flying fuel-air bomb.
Standard SAR procedure would be to find the biggest forest fire and work upwind until you find the crater.
It was hard dirty work, but the pay was great!
Here's an actual picture of the beast taking off with a load on about 4yrs ago in northern Ontario.
[ 14 November 2001: Message edited by: Elliot Moose ]