Behind the Wings; Beechcraft 18

Matthew Rashad and this is behind the wings. Oh yeah baby, this is a good life right here. This program was made possible by wings over the Rockies, educating and inspiring people of all ages about aviation and space endeavors of the past, present and future. This program made possible by Little Learners can read, write, talk, sing and play at a Rapahoe libraries. Make a play date, join a story time, build a masterpiece and present a puppet show all in one morning. More at a Rapahoe libraries dot org. This episode made possible by... Do Denver's 300 days of sunshine make the smiles a little wider? They definitely make the energy here stronger. So your family can enjoy every unexpected encounter and outdoor adventure.

Denver, soak it all in. Now I say this a lot, but how cool is this? This is the Lieutenant Zach Farrell to my right is Jay Gates, the amazing Gene Cran. You've never seen Aerospace like this. The Beach Aircraft Company was founded in 1932 by Walter Beach in the Air Capital of the World, Wichita, Kansas. Determined to produce an aircraft for the business executives of the day, Beachcraft found success in their first aircraft, the Model 17 Staggerway. By

the late 1930s, Beach knew that his company needed a new design and the Model 18 was born. First flown in 1937, the Beachcraft Model 18 became the perfect aircraft for the private owner and charter operator. But with the onset of World War II, the U.S. military adapted the versatile Beach 18 for military use. Thousands of Beach 18s were used by the United States military for photo reconnaissance, light transport, and bombardier, and air crew training. The four variants used by the Army Air Forces included the AT-7 Navigator, AT-11 Kanzin, C-45 Expediter, and the F-2 Expediter. In the post-war era, the Beach 18 resumed its role as a distinguished business aircraft and regional airliner. Over its lifespan, more than 9,000 of these aircraft were built, making the Beach 18 one of the most widely used

light aircraft in the world. Let's check out some of the features of the C-45 at Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum with Pilot and our long-time volunteer, Jay Gates. Thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here. Tell us a little bit about how you became a pilot. Well, it was by default in some respects. My grandfather was a World War I pilot. My father was a World War II pilot, and then I joined the National Guard when I was 18 years old, so I didn't have too much of it. I was about to say you didn't have a choice. You actually fly for the Commemorative Air Force and you fly their C-45. Now, how did you get involved with that? I've been involved with the Commemorative Air Force now for almost 20 years. They have a B-17 and several other kinds of airplanes, B-25, and I started flying those airplanes. And then the guys up here in Denver said, hey, we need a Beach 18 pilot. Would you come over and help us with that? So that's, I've been now with the

Mile High Wing for about six years. So, we're just standing here in front of this really highly polished, gorgeous lady. And one of the things I'm noticing are two Pito tubes on this thing. Let's start there. Two Pito tubes. What's up with that? Well, it's a backup system. You have a primary and a secondary, so to speak. Either one is same, but one goes to the pilot side of the instrument panel and the other one goes to the co-pilot side of the instrument panel. So, you have a backup and they both connected. So, if one should block, you still have airspeed on both sides. Is that normal for every plane? In the early days, they did that a lot. Today, in modern aircraft, you may see two Pito tubes, but ones for a backup computer and the other ones for the primary computer. Okay. All right, redundancy is a good thing when you're flying. Especially in an old airplane. Okay. One thing we've got to talk about before we go any further is during World War

2, nearly every single beach 18 that Beachcraft built went straight to the Army Air Forces, the Navy or the Marine Corps. And the reason they did that was because they needed them to train pilots in many different roles. And the way to differentiate some of those roles is really easy. It's just by the nose. Let's check that out. Our model is a C-45, which was kind of the VIP transport cargo transport version, but there were two others that the Air Force and the Navy and Marines flew. And one of them was the AT-7, which was the navigator, which actually had a nose very similar to this, but then there was the AT-11, which was the Kansan. And what was so cool about that one? Well, it had a glass nose, and it had a bombardier position. And believe it, it had a northern bombsite in it. And they actually trained students to drop bombs. And in this airplane or the airplane, AT-11 could drop,

I think, two bombs and practice bombs. That's very cool. I've heard a statistic that 90% of all the bombardiers in the US Air Force trained in one of these during World War II. It was a very cheap way to fly, and a cheap way to train people instead of putting them in a big bomber or simulating like they used to as well. So it was easy to go out and train. They put a couple of bombardiers in here, and the instructor would instruct them how to do it, and they would actually fly the airplane automatically. That is really cool. I kind of wish we had that version. It'd be so neat. In fact, in some of the AT-11s, they even trained gunnery students, and they had a top turret and even a tunnel gun back there. I mean, this was a really, really versatile little aircraft. All right, Jay. So let's talk about this Pratt and Whitney. These are what? 985 and 14 bees built for this airplane, and they're 450 horsepower each. If you go

back to when they first built these, they put wasps on there at 350 horsepower. So by putting the Pratt and Whitney's on there, which really was a little better engine for this type of what they were using it for, gave it a little bit more horsepower, and allowed it to climb up to a higher altitude as well. Even today, they use some of these as crop dusters. Oh, no kidding. Yes. And it's a stylish little crop duster. Well, it is. And it's fully aerobatic in some respects. There's some people that actually use them in shows and stuff. No kidding. Wow, that's really cool. Well, let's keep going. I want to take a closer look at this plane, because it's so gorgeous. Whoa. We got to check out that tail. Sorry, Jay. I had to stop you, but this is not really a tail you see a lot these days. No, it has two vertical steps, two vertical stabilizers. And the idea

behind that again is a little repetition. During the war was a problem with one rudder. We still had another rudder to work with. With that also, you eliminate having one great big huge vertical stab and a rudder. Yeah, kind of like the B-17. Correct. Now, while we're right here, I'm noticing that all the control surfaces on this aircraft are fabric covered. And there's a pretty specific reason for that. Well, again, during the war, if a bullet went through one of the control surfaces, it went clean through. And if it was metal, it would disturb the metal and probably disturb the airflow over that particular surface, which could be difficult to fly. Then you induce flutter and all sorts of fat things. Right. And then the mechanics, it was real easy, because you just slapped some patch right on your patch. And that was it. Next day, you're back over Germany. Well, while we're also here, that is what they call the football. That's black. And there's actually an antenna

inside that covering. It's a loop antenna. And what it is, it's for AM frequencies. And it's a directional finder for the pilots to navigate to a particular station. Example any of the radio, AM radio stations in the Denver area, you would turn it and focus on that frequency. And it would tell you where that antenna is, so you would fly directly to it. It's like old, old, old school GPS. They called it ADF on your instrument panel at the automatic directional finder instrument. And it would point at that all the time. So you just steer to it. Oh, that's really cool. So Jay, this probably looks a little bit familiar, doesn't it? It does. It's, it's a more set up for 1942. So let's walk through this. Let's start with the throttle quadrant. You got your two throttles, prop pitch, mixture. But then what are we coming, what is this down here?

You have the manifold heat. Carburetor ice is a problem for carburetors, especially when it starts getting, when you're up in, you know, up at altitude. So what we do is we introduce a little bit of heat to the carburetor to keep it from forming. And that's what these two do. Then over on the other side, you have oil shutters. The, as you get up in altitude, the oil has a tendency to cool off a little bit. And you want to keep it at a certain temperature. So what you do is you close off the intake for the cooling air so that it now, you shut down that cool air and that keeps the oil warmer. Oh, that's very cool. All of these are your instruments for engines. Yes. So you've got cylinder temperature, temp, RPM, manifold pressure, all that kind of stuff. But over on your side is what people tend to refer to

as the six pack. The six pack navigation system with the artificial horizon, you have the altimeter airspeed, obviously. You have the turn and bank on the left hand side. And in this particular airplane, the early days of the forties, the VOR started coming out. And so this particular airplane actually has a VOR gauge in it, which would have been later after the war in some cases. This guy, Magneto switches, I know that. But this bad boy, that's like master switch. That's the master ignition switch. Okay. If you had a problem like you had making emergency landing instead of turning off your engines, just hit that and it's a done deal. Everything goes. Yeah. And then your two feathering switches, which then actually takes the blades of the propeller and turns them directly into the wind. So instead of biting like this, they just. Correct. And then basically with an engine shut down, you want less drag with the propeller wind milling, it creates a lot, a lot of drag.

And right after take off in some instances, you don't really need that drag. Okay. So you hit the button, it feathers the engine. And then you go through the process of just completely shutting it down and then you come back around and land. Is it like flying this old girl? It is a piece of history number one. And it's an honor to fly a BJT, especially the one I fly, which is a Navy version, SMB 5. But flying that airplane, it's just a it's just a dream to fly. It's very stable. It'll climb up to altitude. We fly it over the mountains. We go to tell you ride and steam well. It's just a really fun airplane to fly. Oh, it's very cool. You know, it's amazing. Beachcraft has been in business since what, 1932? I believe so. I believe so. That's amazing. And they're still making aircraft today. In fact, our Colorado State Patrol aerial division is flying

beachcraft aircraft. And I think we probably ought to go check that out, even though it's very cool to be in here. I believe they're not. It's because of this particular airplane the BJT, the King Air was born. No kidding. Oh, I'm out. I got to go check that out. From wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, we're heading down to Centennial Airport to visit the Colorado State Patrol's aviation section. As one of the many units of the state patrol, the aviation section is responsible for transportation of government personnel and assisting in traffic enforcement. If you've ever seen the road signs that say speed enforced by aircraft, that's the state patrol making Colorado roads safer by tracking speeders and alerting officers on the ground. The entire state of Colorado is patrolled with just five aircraft, including three Cessna 182s, a Cessna 340, and this souped up beachcraft

king air that we are going to check out with pilot and good friend of mine, Phil Curry. You are like a king air aficionado, are you not? I am. I'll claim that with 7,000 hours in the airplane. Wow, that's a ton of hours. Now, here's something that a lot of people don't know, and it's kind of a big deal. You are the first civilian employee of the Colorado State Patrol's aviation section in their 53 accident-free year history. That is correct. They were looking for somebody with a ton of hours, which I just mentioned in a lot of experience. Plus, I think some military background too helped. But yeah, I am the first, the truth of being piled to fly for the Colorado State. That is really cool. That's amazing. That's a lot of time. That's an honor. Oh, yeah, no kidding. Well, thank you for your service. Speaking of service, what does the king air do for the aviation section? This king air is a king air 200. We use this for air pull missions, which any state

agency can use this airplane to transport their employees within the state. So, we were talking earlier, and one of the things you mentioned is that you have flown organs in this thing. Transplant missions. As part of the University of Colorado Health, that hospital, they have a kidney transplant team that we fly regularly to the most places within the state, but we do fly a Billings Montana as one of the other places that we go to. That's a worthwhile mission, and that's a very rewarding flight to the state of the least. I bet. Well, let's take a walk around of this aircraft. Maybe we start at the engines and we don't kind of go from there. All right, cool. So, Phil, tell us a little bit about the plane. Like, what's the wingspan on this monstrosity? This is not a small plane. That's not small plane. We're standing at the front of 44 feet of length, about 55 feet of wingspan, and about 15 and a half feet of tail height. That is a tall tail. Tall tail is right. Yeah. If we've some big hanger doors to go with it. And then these guys, you've got two of these monster engines

on this thing, and they are turbo props. Turbo props. Which means what? The jet engine powering a gearbox, powering the prop. Okay. Our engines have 850 shaft horsepower. It's two of them, so we have 1700 horsepower on a 12,500 pound airplane, which is a pretty good power to rate ratio. What's your top speed? There's about 300 knots. No wind, so it's 350 miles an hour. This plane will go even up to 35,000 feet. So it's a pretty good deal with this aircraft. No kidding. I can see why they're so popular. Yep. And there's one other feature about this. It's a jet engine. Turbo prop, like you said. It reverse flows on the air flow. Most jet engines down the intake out the tailpipe. Right. Right straight out the tailpipe. This engine actually makes a 180 degree turn on the air. Comes back to the front of the engine here where the exhaust ports are and exhausts. That's crazy. And the other thing we were pointing out, no mechanical connection to that power turbine right now. So I could literally just hold on to this thing while you started the engine. You could hold it for a while until like it's a developed, it's a 150 shaft horsepower

and you're not going to hold it anymore. Yeah, let's not try that now. This is pretty schmancy in here. Yeah, it is really nice. Now you said that you fly the governor and other state officials, but the king air is a whole is a really versatile airplane. So what are some of the other roles that this guy fulfills? That truly is. The government flies them. Embassies overseas using for transports is like we do with the state, but there's also some few special mission airplanes that are out there that the military uses. The fire crews use a couple of models of the king air for fire support, fire, fire spotting here in Colorado, quite a bit. If you see a king air down low of the trees in the mountains, you'll be a tanker behind him. Yep. But you know, as king airs go too, it's like it's talking about how stout and safety's airplanes are. Yeah. Coming back in from Craig to Denver, took a lightning strike at 25,000 feet from this side, the right side of the airplane to that side. Bolt actually hit the prop, arced over to the L-ron on that side. Two big burn holes in the L-ron,

the big chip out of the prop. With a glass cockpit similar to this, not even a flicker, which tells you how well grounded that airplane is. It should have fried about anything else. It should have fried everything on a ventful landing. New engine, new wheeler on and good to go. Back in the air. That's amazing. All right, before we go flying because we're burning some really nice blue sky, I just want to show you something really cool. Look at this. Who is that? I'm more enthralled with this than I am anything else. I'm a simple man. All right, let's go fly. You didn't pick it, but you were in the governor's seat more often than not. That's the seat. Oh, really? Sitting. I think the reason why it tends to you can see where I'm sitting, you can sort of see what's going on up front, but you were in that seat of honor, I should say. Well, and there you go. I'll throw up the tango, traffic system. I'll throw my final final for the parallel.

I'm both turning left, but the parallelism right here is coming up. I'm right there. Get up and go. Asher does. Oh, wow, that's a heck of a climb right here. Five-year pop up. And you're heading turn left. Heading to zero. Heading now to zero left to zero for five-year pop up. A baby. They perform unbelievably well at these altitudes. So of all the beachcraft products you've flown, which is your favorite? I think any of the King Air series is my favorite by far. You know, it's sort of biased by flying them for the last 20-something years, but we're talking about before the engines, the airframe, one of the safest airplanes in the sky. The performance for us, they patrol or anybody flying in the mountains is phenomenal. So with a 35,000 foot ceiling, I mean, getting over our 14-year mountains is a no big deal. Having those twins out there just, that kind of gives you a nice

sense of security. Sort of biased for that. Only because of the mountains. There's a lot of very good single engine turbine airplanes around, but you like to have two when you have to go to that side. Yeah, to the west. Yeah, no kid. Alfred Torka, sorry, Torka. That's about 148.4 foot. 20-45. Oh, what's the mountain? Yeah, Cheyenne Mountain. That's Norett. That's a no-go. Okay. Let me scroll over there and see. Should highlight it, which is really cool too. Air restrict. Yep. Fine air. You'll find some F-16, but it's hanging around you. Previously on Behind the Wings, that is really cool. And whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo. He's going, oh no, he's dispensing. We're up in players. We're in trouble now. That is a signal that we're in serious trouble. We are going to follow this guy before he decides he needs to escalate. Yeah, it's not good. Bit flying. How long did you say? My first flight was when I was 10,

so that was 55 years ago. Wow. And approaching our three and seven golf. I'll wait on that one. Yeah, we're going to get into the batter. We're going to need to be talking on the radio all the way to the west. We're actually flying here, so we got to stop and go. Between the chatter on the radio, I learned that in Phil's flight career, he's flown many of the beach craft products, including the Bonanza, the T-34C mentor, and of course, the classic B-18. While the original flight plan was to circle around Pike's Peak and fly over downtown Denver, the skies were a bit too bumpy for our camera crew who were getting sick in the back seat. But closing in on Colorado Springs, we took the opportunity for a touch-and-go landing. There's the spring's airport, 12 o'clock out there. See, we're landing right up on the runway. It's so cool. It is 3-5 right. The other one's way over on the left side. We're cleared for adoption, so we'll do what we're going to do with touch-and-go. As we get closer to the runway,

I'll get below the glide slope, but I know that, too. That's why we're here. Play your runway, though, to land on. That's for sure. That's why we're showing three red. Four red, we're below the bassy, which you can see where that would take you on the black clouds on the runway. There's a light, but we're fine. You got two, six, eight, and then two, five, six, eight, four, five. off we go. That 8,000 people raining. Easy. 8,000 people remaining. Interesting. Got some pickup.

Off we go again. Oh, yeah, baby. Other than the lights turning your way up on it because it's bumpy. That's another one I put into my book. My first touch and go. Was it? Yeah. Oh, cool. I got to deal with you. Yeah. It's one of the most widely used light aircraft in the world. Having been flown by both military and civilian personnel for decades. From exploring the C-45 Expediter at Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum to visiting the Colorado State Patrol's hangar at Centennial Airport. And even taking a flight in a souped up beach craft king air over the Colorado Front Range, we've taken you behind the wings of the Beach Craft Model 18. Better? Oh, sorry. Give us a little bit of... Okay, hold on. I got to get my brain going. Cool.

Jay, thank you so much for... I always forget to say I'm going to take your hand if you didn't people are looking at me in that way. Oh, right. Little learners can read, write, talk, sing, and play at Arapaho Libraries. Make a play date, join a story time, build a masterpiece, and present a puppet show all in one morning. More at ArapahoLibraries.org. Do Denver's 300 days of sunshine make the smiles a little wider?

They definitely make the energy here stronger. So you can enjoy the blue skies and mountain view sunsets. Denver, soak it all in.