Found this on a Google search the other day. I got typed in this in 1981. We renovated it at Davis, CA after a minor crash by the previous owner and flew it in Long Beach Harbor, over to Catalina, and around Southern California, based out of Long Beach for several months. It's a handful, much heavier than the stock P boat, but fun to fly. And no, it won't stay in the air on the two Lycomings. We feathered both the Pratts one afternoon out over the ocean to find out and made a controlled splash into the drink. Funny as hell.

The main engines are P&W R-1830-90D's.

http://www.airbum.com/articles/ArticleBirdPBY.html

Last I heard, Dr. Bird is still living at Sand Point, in his 80's. He spent a fortune on engineering drawings on this airplane and got an STC issued. It's the only one of its kind. The Lycomings sported fully reversable electric props, so you can spin it around on the water in its own length.

Last I heard, some guy bought it and tried to reconvert it to a regular PBY, not realizing that it is a type-certificated airplane. The FAA shut him down. It's just sitting somewhere out west, wasting away.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
Found this on a Google search the other day. I got typed in this in 1981. We renovated it at Davis, CA after a minor crash by the previous owner and flew it in Long Beach Harbor, over to Catalina, and around Southern California, based out of Long Beach for several months. It's a handful, much heavier than the stock P boat, but fun to fly. And no, it won't stay in the air on the two Lycomings. We feathered both the Pratts one afternoon out over the ocean to find out and made a controlled splash into the drink. Funny as hell.

The main engines are P&W R-1830-90D's.

http://www.airbum.com/articles/ArticleBirdPBY.html

Last I heard, Dr. Bird is still living at Sand Point, in his 80's. He spent a fortune on engineering drawings on this airplane and got an STC issued. It's the only one of its kind. The Lycomings sported fully reversable electric props, so you can spin it around on the water in its own length.

Last I heard, some guy bought it and tried to reconvert it to a regular PBY, not realizing that it is a type-certificated airplane. The FAA shut him down. It's just sitting somewhere out west, wasting away.

Do you think maybe he just never heard of vortillons??

Bird created this modification during the 60's. The two smaller engines provide excellent on-water handling, which the P Boat always lacked. The engines are so close together that turning off of a stiff breeze is very difficult.

The Innovator would make it from LAX to HON in about 17 hours with plenty of reserve, and it was very comfortable. Had a full galley, bunks back in the waist, and the flight engineer's station in the pylon had been removed. There was a seat up there and I often sat there with the slide windows open when another crew member was training and watched the world go by. The increased fuel capacity was very handy.

We landed it on the mountain top at Catalina Island several times and in the ocean off Avalon. Also took it inland and touched down on several lakes.

The guy who maintained our bilge pumps was one of the guys working on the tow boat that pulled the Spruce Goose out of its berth when Hughes flew it the one and only time. It created quite a stir in the SoCal area and we got a big picture writeup in the LA Times, as I recall.

Max gross weight for land operations approached 50,000 lbs and you could operate off water at around 35K.

It was a handful, since there is no boost, but it was a fun airplane to fly. Too bad it's gone. It was very novel for its time.

I got typed in it at Long Beach CA in 1981. The owner sold it about a year later and I was only able to log about fifty hours in it.

We used to step taxi it through all the anchored ships in Long Beach harbor at 80 knots. Felt like a 30K lb. ocean racer. It would howl.

Last time I saw that bird she was parked at Cutter Aviation in ABQ. I think Dick Duran owned it at the time. That was about 10 or 15 years ago. It was painted metallic blue with dark blue stripes.

Yeah, he did. I flew it for him when it was in Florida after he rerigged the controls. They weren't rigged correctly and I wrestled it around the patch and landed it. Would have stayed in the air a while but the tower called smoke on takeoff from the right radial so we brought it around. Turned out the mixture was too rich. I had salt stains in my Levis after that trip.

He had it delivered to ABQ and did a new interior and a paint job. Don't know anything about what happened after that. I was flying Hercs then, so it must have been fifteen years ago, anyway.

I had a lot of great photos of it when we were flying it in SoCal, but they were destroyed with my home in Hurricane Andrew.