The instant the water bottle touched my lips, gusts generated by stone-walled castles and manors below our 50-foot, 6-inch two-spar wing forced the container airborne. Beside me, in the aircraft’s 266-cubic-foot interior, the copilot’s seeping airsickness bag flopped onto the floor and split. Steady on heading, I contemplated why I happened to be 400 feet above the column-like poplar trees of western France.
On Sept. 12, 1998, chief pilot Jan Kristiansen of Ottawa’s Sander Geophysics presented me with the opportunity to crew a Beechcraft Queen Air 65-B80 far from Canada’s snow-blasted forests and frozen waters. First flown on Aug. 28, 1958, as a corporate six-to-nine seat executive carrier, the factory’s wonder machine weighed 6,030 pounds empty and by 1962 it marketed for $139,860.
Photo credit: Robert S. Grant
Early reports termed the airplane “dumpy” yet pilots pointed out that ground handling came as easy to them as riding a bicycle. A lavatory with folding bulkhead door provided privacy in the 9-foot cabin and double-panel windows brought “true vista vision” to everyone aboard. Although the Queen Air may not have been considered graceful in form, marketing data claimed passengers retained their grace and dignity when using a novel airline-like boarding stair to step into a structure tested beyond 6.6 Gs.
Queen Air 65-B80s roamed the world. A few tracked northbound into wilderness and excelled as backwoods passenger carriers and freighters. Powered by six-cylinder IGSO-540 piston engines blasting out 380 horsepower each, they hauled everything from peanuts to people. Assembly line workers and designers would never have envisioned their unpressurized product frightening farm life while conquering high terrain in western Europe.
Coils and cables
Sander’s C-FWZG, serial number LD-386, emigrated north of the border in 1968 and worked within the airborne survey regime for the Canadian government’s Department of Mines and Resources until 1989.
This special niche aircraft appeared occasionally during my previous life flogging float and ski planes above coniferous woodlands. The thought of operating such a powerful twin never came to mind until Kristensen’s call. Formed by Dr. George W. Sander in 1956, the company had already mobilized and ferried the aircraft along the North Atlantic route to European shorelines.
Considered Beechcraft’s heaviest twin-engine ship since World War II, C-FWZG’s advertised 195-knot cruise speed would not be required nor would altitudes such as the 34,882-foot record established in 1960. Minimum survey speed was listed at 112 knots, consuming 225 gallons per hour of 100/130 on line and 1,640 feet from the adjacent track. Modified to reduce magnetic signature by replacing components with stainless steel or aluminum, the underside of Sander’s Queen Air used glass-covered camera mounts. The interior’s elegant wood-paneled walls no longer existed and two-pilot seating with a rear equipment operator’s place became standard. The toilet had been removed and plastic pails substituted.
Originally, two attention-getting stingers or booms, approximately 6 feet apart, adorned the vertical stabilizer and another 9.84-foot unit extended from the nose with a 175-knot restriction. Electrical equipment, coils and cables inhabited the interiors of each one. Multi-channeled receivers, recording computers and plastic-encased cables filled the cabin. An airborne data acquisition system, activated 5 miles from start-of-line, measured and catalogued signals transmitted into French soil and returned to cutting-edge sensors.
A pilot steering indicator with horizontal and vertical needles provided directional commands with a radar altimeter keeping us clear of plowed fields infested with windmills and power lines. Situational awareness took priority in our microworld. This would be no tourist junket.
Daily newspaper Ouest-France informed the populace that Sander would be overflying areas seeking surface breaks where pollutants might bleed into local aquifers or fractures susceptible to radioactive substances. Sander Geophysics expected crews to maintain accuracy as precise as 6.56 feet and function within a world of key punches and bulging bladders.
Getting to know C-FWZG
My first international assignment meant an airline journey to Heathrow, England, followed by a shuttle to Paris before a two-hour jaunt by speed train to Rennes, 191 miles west of the Eiffel Tower.
A team of 10 pilots, A&Ps and geophysicists waited on site with C-FWZG beside a similarly modified Britten-Norman Islander. After takeoff using 35.8 inches of mercury and 2,600 rpm with training pilot Seigfried Hippolyte, the flight brought us 40 miles north to the English Channel for familiarization, air work and instrument calibration.
Photo courtesy: Rob Day
During steep turns and 80-miles-per-hour stalls, the rudder buffeted slightly but retained full aileron control as the aircraft mushed. Heavy rain on return with gusts almost exceeding the placarded 17-knot crosswind maximum caused two extra approaches but fortunately, Hippolyte pronounced the “new-kid-on-the-block” competent.
Later, an indiscreet report by a high-time airline captain stated Queen Airs “should be flown by someone who flies constantly and preferably by a professional pilot if full advantage is to be taken of all the (air)plane has to offer.” In the next eight weeks, it became clear that no aspect of handling the type would pose problems for low-timers.
I soon discovered that France’s air transportation laws decreed that a French citizen must occupy the copilot seat. Most arrived as recent flight school graduates, slavering to log multi-engine hours. With perpetual turbulence and gasoline odours, mal de mer – or seasickness – quickly entered the picture. To mitigate fatigue, we alternated 30-minute lines as long as five intense hours. Despite incapacitated copilots and sharp-tasting French cheese for lunch, the task came across as preferable to digging ski planes out of northern snow back home.
Unfortunately, relaxing in an 8,800-pound gross weight Queen Air came with hazards. Vigilance for birds became paramount. A company manual cautioned that the flickering little creatures folded their wings and dove below our six propeller blades. Evasive turns or abrupt pull-ups to avoid them might create stalls and bank angles could not exceed 30 degrees to prevent tarnishing data readings. Operations manager Brian Clark pointed out that birds possessed tiny brains and were “very stupid.”
Adventures on land and aloft
During days off duty, life in France allowed drives through the countryside and the exploration of Rennes in the Brittany region proved educational. An ancient centre, its history reached back 2,000 years. A green belt surrounded the boundaries and fields teemed with farm animals, including pigs weighing up to 1,200 pounds. The airport hosted numerous vintage jets and classic radial engine antiques. Life aloft in a comfortable Queen Air and relaxation times seemed grand.
Foreign travel, decent salary and historic castles framed by wind-tickled poplar trees turned the contract into holiday time despite fluids from overfilled “sugar sacks” desecrating our boots. Everyone stayed happy until ebony-black rivulets creeping from the left engine caught our attention less than two hours after departure. A prompt precautionary landing at former Luftwaffe base Morlaix followed. One gallon of oil remained in the engine.
The A&Ps spent evenings dismantling, probing and engine running but found no faults. Slightly skeptical, we returned to French airspace and continued monitoring our left-right up-down needles while holding precise tolerances and experienced no further issues.
Years later, high-time pilot Rob Day, who had also flown C-FWZG, recalled powerplant vibrations that necessitated a jug or cylinder change. His final incident led to a replacement engine after sessions above the roiling rollers of Lake Huron.
Sander Geophysics took the aircraft to western France.
Photo Courtesy: Mike Ody via George Trussell/John Rodney
Day spoke highly of C-FWZG. An experienced Arctic pilot, he never encountered complete failure or fully feathered propellers. A landing gear malfunction, however, brought tense moments after a series of north-south lines over Lake Superior’s ice-cold rollers on Michigan’s shoreline. The right main landing gear decided not to lower and lock.
“We did the usual things, you know, like turns and pull-ups before using the emergency system, which meant blowing it down with a wheel well nitrogen cylinder. That worked. When we landed in Michigan on the lake’s south side, there was a stream of hydraulic fluid behind us,” he recalled. “Coming back to Canada, we flew gear down. That was interesting since you’re not going as fast as normal and cylinder head temperatures weren’t coming up. I’m not a big fan of being over water and was happy to reach the north shore.”
Like Day and pilots before him, we flew with one generator off, avoided data-interfering radio calls and never activated landing lights as video recorders taped our tracks. After the first week, sunny skies dissipated into low cloud, constant rain and crosswinds that reached up to 30 knots. Formerly friendly Atlantic breezes collided with rolling terrain and forced us into wrestling controls, plunging toward corn fields and slamming the control column forward. One copilot filled three airsickness bags in 45 minutes. Raindrops scuttling across the windshield created red-rimmed eyes as we strained to peer forward. Data in such conditions proved useless and error messages or turbulence forced us back to base.
Interceptions became an art. Height lost or gained needed corrections before settling inbound on reciprocal headings. Rapid closures toward adjacent lines needed adjustment. At the end of each fresh line, a cockpit mini-terminal indicated the next parallel path. In the process, dropped pencils rolled out of recovery range but keeping the beakers (geophysicists) content became the name of the game. Every team member, including non-pilots, understood the attributes of a stable Beechcraft Queen Air.
Bidding adieu
When my last flight took place Oct. 19, 1998, with departure from France imminent, C-FWZG and I had become friends in spite of the airline captain’s admonition. No fresh wrinkles, cracked wheels or corrosion marred its pristine condition. Superb maintenance kept operations smooth.
Chances of encountering another Queen Air in my future became unlikely since most geophysical organizations invested in lower-maintenance turbine-powered types. On July 7, 1964, the Wichita Eagle newspaper announced the first delivery of a certified turboprop-powered airplane to United Aircraft of Canada. Beech Aircraft Corporation president Mrs. Olive Anne Beech presented the keys and King Airs soon dominated the market.
As for my friend, C-FWZG, the fine example of Wichita engineering crept southbound to Colombia in 2001. We never met again.