Dornier 228 - Late 80's?

This is going way back, but thought I'd ask...

During the late 80's-early 90's I worked for Precision Airlines, based in Manchester, NH. A couple of times during the summer we leased out one of our a/c for jump weekends. I think they were out of Pepperell, MA. We'd even haul a fuel truck there to take care of the a/c. I never had the seniority to go, but always volunteered! The tail #'s would have been N228-245RP, and most likely painted in either purple and gold Precision Airlines, or Eastern Express colors...there's a few pics from Airliners.net attached. Maybe this will stir up some old memories!

Chris

Turners Falls, MA, was the first (and as far as I know the only) New England DZ to use Dorniers, and the first ever to use them for jumping in the US. (I was on the first load.)
They were rather fast on jump run and floating was a problem until we figured out to give "five left and cut..." That shielded the door enough to keep people from blowing off. (No outside rails or anything like that.) I don't think we were allowed to remove the front door section.
Here are some pics of 233RP in Eastern colors at Turners, though we also jumped one in Precision colors. (I have video of both in action).
Precision Otters were also used, both at Turners Falls and at Pepperell (pic of 16RP at Pepperell attached.)
Precision Beech-18s were also used at several Massachusetts DZs, including Orange. I have some early '70s movies of Lew Sanborn, D-1, dirt diving an 8-way beside a Precision Beech at Orange.
In the past month, I've seen four ex-Precision pilots (all also jumpers.) One of them, Nate Pond, D-69, flew everything Precision had. I've also seen Mike Lindh, another jumper, who worked in the shop at Manchester.
Enough old memories for you?

HW

Awesome, Howard! Yep, I knew both Nate and Mike. Nate was seniority #1 in the pilot pool, and Mike did most of the fabric work on the 228's. Great guys. I worked there from 1987 - 1993. I even got to go to Nate's farm once. I still keep in touch with a couple of friends from the RP days. Lots of great memories from back then. Precision was still basically a family airline, Walt and Suki (the owners) were there, and we could talk with them about anything. Good people. I started out fueling a/c, and left there as a flight follower. And did almost everything else in between: ramp, CS, helped out the maintenance guys...even got to fly the 228s a few times on ferry flights, which was a lot of fun for a lowly 150 hour pilot!

The Otters and -18's were gone before I was there, but we did have Beech 99's. Thanks for the pictures and memories!

Chris

I used to fly Dorniers from Denver to Durango...it was my lucky day! to get the window AND the aisle...and a nice pleather seat. Is that the one with the hump in the middle of the aisle?

Katee,

I think you're thinking of the Dornier 328. An airline called Mountain Air Express used to fly them out here...pic from airliners.net below. I was offered a job with them back in 1996 or so, but turned them down. Little did I know then that I'd leave the airlines to come to Denver the next year!

D-228's have square, not round, fuselages...

Chris

Quote

Katee,

I think you're thinking of the Dornier 328. An airline called Mountain Air Express used to fly them out here...pic from airliners.net below. I was offered a job with them back in 1996 or so, but turned them down. Little did I know then that I'd leave the airlines to come to Denver the next year!

D-228's have square, not round, fuselages...

Chris

So they are still flying the 328s? Turbulence was rough with those. I remember flying down to Durango over the massive fires we had several years ago and we were so low that we could smell the fires inside the plane.

Quote

I used to fly Dorniers from Denver to Durango...it was my lucky day! to get the window AND the aisle..]

Pretty tough not to in a 228.They are so narrow that all seats are both window and aisle. As to the "bump in the aisle," not that I remember and unlikely in a high-wing aircraft.
In their day, they often replaced Twin Otters on commuter routes because they could keep up reasonable airspeeds on approach to busy airports.
I only flew as a passenger one time -- a round trip between Boston and Islip, NY. Wierd to be a seated passenger in a plane I'd jumped out of many times. (They just took the seats out when they were being used for jumpers -- were never full-time jump planes.)

HW

Mountain Air Express is long gone. They filed Chapter 11 back in '97 or so, and shut down not long after that if I remember correctly. Not sure what happened to their planes...

As far as I know, there's few if any Dornier 228's left in the states...

Chris

Nice post Howard,

But how could you not mention the D-228 and the French King Bridge ? It is public knowledge.

The view, the look on the fisherman's face, and Dave W. not knowing what happened are some of my favorite skydiving memories

Needless to say, the skydive itself was horrible, as everyone's adreneline level was maxed out.

But I'd sure like to do that again !!!

Blueskys!!!

P. Smurf

Probably,

I started at Turners Falls in 1975. My memories of the 70's are a little hazy at best.

Blueskys!!!

Josh "Papa Smurf" Wolfe

Quote

But how could you not mention the D-228 and the French King Bridge ? It is public knowledge.

Prove it. Get me a copy of the video. I know you know who has it

Quote

and yet my first time in front of the NTSB wasn't such a hot memory.

I somehow had severe short-term memory loss when the friendly gentlemen called me, and never appeared anywhere.

HW (FK#?)

During that same time period 1985 to 1987, I attended several Dornier 228 boogies in Leutkirch, Bavaria, near Ulm in Southern Germany.
It seems that the local baron (?) was an avid sports flier, so he arranged for a Dornier 228 - from Dragon Air (?) a West German commuter airline to fly there once a month.
One time I remember the co-pilot trying to "help" us with extra altitude by taking us to something ike 19,000 feet above sea level. My student was hopelessly hypoxic, so I had to carry him the length of the cabin. I was puffing like a locomotive by the time I got to the door. Fortunately the freefall went pretty quickly, maybe 60 seconds - without a drogue. The most exciting part of the dive was falling between purple and orange cumulo nimbus clouds!

I'd heard vague stories about the bridge right up until I left Precision in 1993! Never heard any real details about it though.

Chris

French King Bridge....I seem to remember having to go to a meeting with Mass Aero and the FAA about that load. They were none too pleased about the incident and wanted to hang the skydivers as well as the pilot.

From what I remember, both pilots lost their stripes because of the flight. The story was that one of the jumpers was from the Friendly Aviation Administration, and wasn't too pleased about the bridge part of the flight. True or not, it's the story I heard.

Chris

This brings back fond memories of Turners Falls. I was there for that boogie, we were doing 10-way scrambles, I was the rear float and first out...........when I swung out, I was blown off the plane. The 10-way never knew. They only built to 9. Never-the-less, because I was out of the picture, our point total froze at 9. Although it was a problem with the Dornier, it was still embarrassing to get blown off.
The flight under the bridge was awesome, guess the FAA rep was not happy, as she reported the incident. I've talked to Mike, one of the pilots. He got out of trouble by self-reporting.
Mike was a avid skydiver (still jumps) and a hellofa jump pilot. He is currently flyng Challengers.

As a military jumper jumping at the R.I. Leapfest, had rig, looked up and found TFSPC and got to make a few jumps up there....heard the story about the Do-228 and the French King Bridge from an incredibly reliable source....LAP

Quote

....heard the story about the Do-228 and the French King Bridge from an incredibly reliable source....LAP

It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't me. I don't remember a thing.
HW

Our memories die so fast. SEVEN years, SEVEN, since this skydiving legend (completely true) has been reminisced about. OK, here's hoping to put the cap on the bottle. Most of the above is true, but allow me to introduce myself.. The Horse's Mouth. (Never mind jokes about the horse's other end.)

This is a person who ACTUALLY FLEW on the famous Dornier French King Bridge load.

Our two pilots, Mike and Fred (the insane one), were congenial young fellows and seemed swept up in the enthusiasm one of our organizers, Jasper (name changed), created about the whole boogie event. Tales tall and true were told. One of the true ones was Jasper's marveling over a fete of considerable cojones, the underflying of the French King Bridge by a local pilot in a Cessna 172... "Big Balls Bobby the Brave". (Name changed slightly.) Fred in particular seemed captivated by this, but most of us must have missed the gleam that must have been in his eye as he talked with Jasper before the next load. I would love to have heard how the conversation went...

Because about 24 of us took off for 13,500' for a mid- or late-afternoon skydive. Everyone was in fine spirits and relaxed, and really didn't pay much attention to the covering of much more ground, down low, than we ever did on normal skydives. One group of jumpers (including Jasper) seemed more excited than usual, and instead of taking seats for the typically 20-minute ride to altitude were standing up and looking out the windows. I remember absently wondering, what's all this.

I was to find out really soon. The jumpers were vibrating with excitement and I could hear a rising yell. Two seconds later I saw a vertical concrete bridge support member flash by my window about five feet from the tip of the wing. SHOCK! HOLY SHIT! People on the plane started cheering. I was so unhinged even felt some ebullience-- like someone had fired a shot at me and wound up merely ripping my sleeve with the bullet.

No one could give it much more thought because now we were going up for our jump, but after landing we just kind of hung around each other, stunned. A couple of people who had been excited were starting to rub their heads and saying "what the hell just happened"?

Most continued to laugh about it-- at least through the end of the day. Probably half of the jumpers were going Yahoo! One of the best jumps of my life!, while some others were going God damn it, that was a risky stunt without asking me first.

This is what had happened. Jasper had suborned, or evangelized, or whatever you want to call it, the pilot Crazy Fred (as some of us called him thereafter) into this grand final gesture. Final gesture because Fred had spent as much time as he was going to looking for a job and was giving up aviation-- who cares about my license? Poor innocent pilot Mike was in quite a spot-- Fred ignored him when he said "don't do this you idiot"! and Mike was not about to be one of two people pulling the controls in opposite directions (then, the plane could do anything.) Poor Mike had to sit there and watch a potential career-ending act take place with him on board as co-pilot.

Well, skydivers stick together, so no one (almost no one) ratted-- but the one who did knew how to make a Godawful lot of trouble. She was a law student enrolled in Harvard Law School by the name of Patty Burns (rhymes with her real last name, but I don't want her finding her name via Google and deciding she's been libeled). (Remember, Patty, if you're reading this, that truth is a defense to libel.) She was like some women are, just so incensed someone had misbehaved in her presence (I think you know the Kind I mean) she wrote a description of the event, not to the club president, not to the Safety and Training advisor, NOT to the US Parachute Association, but to the Federal Aviation Administration... so out of sync was she with the Mind of the Skydiver. Of course, the shit hit the fan, she was ostracized from jumping for hundreds of miles around (maybe even on the West Coast by some reports), and Mike the pilot got in a dangerous career scrape. I did not know, but am glad to learn, he saved himself by self-reporting. No one whom I know knows how it fared with Fred, but whatever happened was probably for the best!

Now Patty lived out her long, high-pressured life as a big-city law firm corporate-type attorney, finally fleeing for some peace as a spinster to a remote ranch in New Mexico. If she has friends, she may or may not tell the story, which to her was probably one of the great unfair treatments of her life. The rest of us keep the memory, and some are still ambivalent in feelings about the whole thing.

But hey, we were young, and it was skydiving.

riggerrob

During that same time period 1985 to 1987, I attended several Dornier 228 boogies in Leutkirch, Bavaria, near Ulm in Southern Germany.
It seems that the local baron (?) was an avid sports flier, so he arranged for a Dornier 228 - from Dragon Air (?) a West German commuter airline to fly there once a month.
One time I remember the co-pilot trying to "help" us with extra altitude by taking us to something ike 19,000 feet above sea level. My student was hopelessly hypoxic, so I had to carry him the length of the cabin. I was puffing like a locomotive by the time I got to the door. Fortunately the freefall went pretty quickly, maybe 60 seconds - without a drogue. The most exciting part of the dive was falling between purple and orange cumulo nimbus clouds!

haha...hilarious! I like that short story!

Will someone PLEASE post a picture of that infamous bridge ... near Turners Falls?

.

How many feet between the ironwork and the water?

Shit!!!. Not much room for error there!!.

He shouldn't have taken a full load through there. Why didn't he do it after he'd dropped the load.