Neat little bush plane....

[mike_cyul]

Well, ok, not so little. :)

A friend just sent me this photo of a 737-200 taking off from Canadian Forces Station Alert. The runway, which actually starts about a fifth of the way over from the right of the photo (under the dust), actually ends before the yellow building (fire station) which you can just make out in front (left, from our perspective) of the airplane. Talk about just enough room!

Needless to say, you can see that the runway is unpaved.

The plane can take just 24 passengers, and limited cargo. I bet the pilots calculate the take-off figures pretty closely....


Mike

[bushpilot]

Great shot, love the dust cloud behind the plane:medals:.

I have JustPlanes Alaska Airlines DVD, and there's some really impressive "bush flying" stuff done with their 737-200's. In front of their 737 engines are FOD-tubes (Foreign Object Damage) which blow bleed air from the engines forwards and downwards to prevent any gravel or such to get sucked in to the intakes when operating out of gravel strips. There's also some daring bush type approaches, like one to Reddog at night, when they fly really low circulating some mountains before landing. Their 737-200s can be also configured very quickly to either passengers or cargo.

[Railrunner130]

Alaska Airlines used to have some, that I imagine did some pretty interesting work.

[viking3]

The rough field kit also has a 'ski' on the nose gear to deflect gravel as well as the FOD tubes in front of the engines. The 737-200 is very common in the Far North with 3 Canadian operaters that I know of(Air North, First Air, and Canadian North). I have some experience on the birds and have to say the gravel kits work fairly well but the birds do take a hell of beating. Antennas, landing gear, and belly skins wear out pretty fast. I did some work installing dual GPS Nav systems on the Canadian North birds which was quite involved. Integrating old and new can be quite a challenge.

Regards, Rob:ernae:

[kilo delta]

Speaking of the 737-200..............ohh to only have a native fsx'd Tinmouse. It's sorely missed :(