Mutt:

HARS will be making a decision soon on wether to fly it or dismantle it and ship it by sea.

Cat Driver:

Thanks for the website P/Boat.
Great stories which I have copied to a floppy for my library & onforwarded to a couple of pals who are exCat, which regretably I am not. I once haunted the hangar of a company operating a PBY for geophysical survey to get a co pilot job; but wound up flying an Avro Anson on low level photogrammetry.

Capt. X/W:

Was it a Mk5?

Didn't you just love those vaccum over hydraulic brakes?

Only the British would think of such an abortion to stop an airplane.:D :D :D

Cat Driver:

Not a lot of people these days who have flown in a Anson Capt. C: I have, when it was the station hack at Cottesmore, 1960, with one J E Johnson as the pilot! He was the Station Commander, I was self-loading joy-rider.

There is a very good article in the July edition of Pacific Wings [which is available in OZ I think] by one of the current pilots of the New Zealand Catalina. He is a lot younger than the aircraft, and found some amusement in his conversion to type, like 'avoiding making Catalina shaped holes in hangars while taxying'.

That is the second Catalina of course, the first one having made a night ditching in the Pacific en-route.

Stay away from the C-46 with drum brakes with the expansion bladders. One application before they faded to nothing.:eek:

Avro Anson
 

Chuck, Yes it was a MK5 , and as you say the braking system was not designed to make life easy. I recall it was a bitch to taxi & prone to losing all braking when you got to the ramp.
The Germans are as adept as Brit designers in bastard brake systems.
Another less than usefull way to stop an airplane was the pneumatic braking system on the Junkers JU52-3M.
You pulled the boost levers back past idle to get braking.
You know the way it works - nothing for five seconds - pull a little bit more - nothing happens - then you get max braking & the
acft trying to stand on its nose. All accompanied by loud hissing & blowing noises from the system & expletives from the handling pilot.

Avro Anson
 

Thanks for the comment Samuel - as the man in the R/H seat on your Anson flight I guess you got the task of winding up the gear, two hundred odd turns of the crank, I think.
Yes Pacific Wings is available in OZ - thanks for the advice.

I didn't hear about the Cat ditching & maybe others on the forum haven't heard of the accident . How about relating story ??

C46
 

Pigboat, you're a brave man to have flown the C46.
I've heard it described as a single engine acft with half an engine on each wing !
But then so was the Anson,I guess.

Capt. /XW:

I flew several Ansons on magnatometer work in the mid sixties for Austin Airways, actually the things flew quite nicely, except when it got to the part where you needed brakes.:D :D

Cat Driver

Capt. C, I didn't realise at the time I was "asked" by Johnie if I wanted to fly. As a young airman in total awe of the man I was into the seat before he got into his! It was much, much later that I realisedhow much the volunteer had to do, but mainly in respect of winding the undercarriage up.

As I recall it seemed a fairly sedate old bird. I might add that I pulled that 'take me with you' stunt on at least forty different types.

Anson -Magnatometer Survey
 

Chuck,That sounds pretty hairy to me,with the equipment & crew crammed into an Anson, you must have been grossed up every T/O. Engine failure on runs would have left you no altitude to go any where except down.
In comparison the photo survey Anson was walk in the park.
Just a pilot,survey nav, Wild RC9 camera & a skinny camera operator. Always well under MTOW except on ferry. It was a good stable camera platform,but always a sweat in a congested ramp area,because of the braking system.
We were usually around 6,000 ft on the runs, so when the stbd
engine sprayed oil all over the wing I was able to make a field about twenty miles away with 500ft up my sleeve when I got there.

All the magnatometer work was done by the PBY,because of the bulk/weight of the equipment & crew required.

I've got a couple more PBY stories in the pipeline - watch this space.

Samuel,you'd have liked my Anson as it had an electric undercarriage mod. Sheer luxury (for the Nav) when it was fitted.
Would you be able to dig up the story on the Kiwi PBY ditching?

I'll try. Basically, the aircraft was purchased and serviced for the flight LA to Auckland, and flown by an American familiar with that particular aircraft but accompanied by a Kiwi co-pilot and one or two others. The aircraft turned back after the first attempt, but seemed fine on the second. They lost an engine well out into the Pacific, perhaps around Tonga, and had to make a night landing! They could see nothing of course and had to set the aircraft up in the shallowest of descents known to man, and did in fact land, though causing the hull to rupture. They all took to the liferaft, and were picked up the next day by a container ship diverted for that reason. The aircraft sank.

Australian Aviation published on its Talkback [airways?]a transcript of the Oceania radio communications prior to the landing and up to the rescue. I'm sure they would recall it, and I believe, sell you a tape! I don't think there was a book, but certainly an article in Pacific Wings, or New Zealand Wings as it was then.

PBY Ditching
 

Thanks Sam, that one must have slipped past me when I was up North for a couple of months.
Is the current Kiwi PBY a working acft or a warbird?

It's a warbird; doesn't do any commercial work as far as I know.

I last saw it at Wanaka at Easter. It's quite a sight to see it touch down only metres away; all very gentle and delicate!Sounds nice on take-off also!

ZK-PBY
 

The NZ Warbirds Catalina conducts weekend local scenics to raise funds to keep it in the air.

KermieWarbirds

I have a neighbor, Walter Conway, who flew the Cats in the Pac during the war.

I invited him to make replies, but he declined.

Does anyone remember Walter Conway?

He was curious about old buddies.

Capt. the Kiwi PBY operated for years in Canada with Austin Airways, with the registration CF-JCV. I remember it from 1966 when I was on another PBY, CF-IHN, that Austin had wet leased from our company. At that time they had two, JCV and CF-AAD.
AAD was lost and was replaced with CF-DFB. When Austin got out of the PBY operation, DFB became a water bomber and JCV went to the west coast where it operated for awhile as a flying fishing lodge. When that operation ceased, it was stored in the desert for awhile. The next I heard of it, JCV was registered as Z-CAT in Harare. A father - son team from Montreal flew it up and down the Nile, from Alexandria to Lake Victoria I believe, hauling tourists. That operation didn't last long, and the aircraft was acquired by the Kiwi association. Chuck has almost surely flown it.
The C-46 was actually a great airplane if it was flown at reasonable weights. The old style expander brakes left a lot to be desired. On a foggy day, you could hear the squeaks and groans from the braking system before the aircraft hove into view. I have very little time on it, since I left that company to go fly the F-27 for another operator.
Some operators flew the passenger version. Once on a ramp somewhere, a nervous passenger asked the Captain why the aircraft he was about to board had only two engines. The pilot, obviously thinking on his feet, pointed to the second row of cylinders and informed the guy that that was the second engine in back of the first, and the same arrangement could be found on the other wing. Two plus two equalled four engines.:D

Yup Pigboat:

I flew all of them at Austin. in fact me and a young thing performed a truly digstusting act in the left Blister of JCV one fine day near Port Harrison. :)

I met my wife on a trip in AAD after the above incident and never again sinned. :) :)

DFB is now on a pedestal in NFLD.

The last time I flew JCV was its last commercial flights in Canada on the sport fishing thing.

Bob Dyck and Ray Bernard were the last Canadian pilots to have flown JCV in Africa and Bob ferried it to N.Z. and still goes over to do annual rides for the Kiwis.

The Africa safari thing was a good idea, however African corruption and bizarre politics swamped the project. There is a good video about it called "The Last African Flying Boat." well worth looking for.

Cat Driver

When the former RAF Station at Seletar in Singapore became a largely civilian operation. with Lockheed operating out of at least two hangars, there were some interestingly vaguely marked C46 Commandos drifting in and out.

They didn't "look" quite right did they!