The Birds are out and about.

[Bob Womack]

Saw the same grand old lady returning yesterday, the lovely old Dakota. And wondered........... If you owned one, are they easy to maintain? Are spare parts readily available? Literature for maintenance, manuals etc etc?

The nearby University where my father worked as I was growing up had a DC-3 (civilian liner) and a C-47(military cargo). My dad flew lots of missions in the back of the C-47 developing an infrared thermal imaging system for the CIA. They eventually switch over to an Aero Commander for that duty because the C-47 was a fuel glutton. The DC-3 was lost to an accident. The pilot was a friend of ours and was the pilot who flew my dad in the C-47. He was the most conscientious and safety-conscious pilot I ever flew with. He was taking a cross-country flight in the DC-3 and stopped in a little airport for Avgas. After takeoff the plane made it up a couple of hundred feet and the engines conked out. It crashed into a forest killing all aboard.

It turned out that the fuel distributor put a new kid on the fueling job. Rather than Avgas he pumped in jet fuel. Charlie, the pilot, did his fuel drain test into a cup but saw no jet fuel because it floated above the gas in the tank. Sad.

Bob