Post by Colonial on May 30, 2009 21:11:21 GMT -5
The sheer depth of interesting stories and information in the flying world can easily keep someone occupied for years. With the number of aircraft types, operators and years that they operated, I always find myself constantly learning new things.
Take for instance my story. I remember the old airport terminal in Calgary from when I was a young lad, by the time I saw it it had already been supplanted as the main Calgary airport terminal by the new one built on the NE. The old terminal, part of what was then 'McCall Field' was by the late 70's and early 80's our 'executive aircraft terminal' and storage dump for some of the small local operators. I decided to do some more research and gather pics of the old terminal in its day so I could then have enough info to try my hand at building a model of the terminal and doing 'McCall Field 1958'.
I researched pictures from the archives, both the Federal and local and came up with some good pics. I ended up also finding some very interesting pictures of the old days here in Calgary such as when Bing Crosby came through on a stop in a Howard 500 on his way up to Jasper to film a picture, when Duncan Renaldo 'The Cisco Kid' visited in 1960, Joe Louis coming by on a War Bond Drive in 1944, the Bristol Brittania 312 demonstrator visiting in 1957, the first Western Airlines service to Calgary inaugurated June 1, 1959 with two WAL DC-6B's and a pipe band...interesting stuff. What really caught my eye and imagination, was a picture of the arrival of our Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, on a Vickers Viscount in 1960 with a fancy paintjob and clearly in Canadian government service.
Well this for me was something of a mystery. Canada had a government Viscount? When? How long? How many? What happened to them?
I searched and searched out pictures, information and images and was getting confused. It looked like there were a couple Viscounts, but everytime I found a picture, nothing linked, the basic paint jobs were the same but each picture had different titles on the aircraft, cowling paint and tail paints were all over the place.
Anyhow, I ended up solving the mystery from the www.vickersviscount.net/ webpage. Thanks to those chaps, I would have been muddling through.
I have five paintjobs I need to do to capture all the major era's of what turned out to be three Viscounts in Canadian government service from about 1955 until the early 80's.
CF-DTA used by PM Diefenbaker on his cross Canada trip in 1958.
CF-GXK as it was in 1974.
Apologies for the long story, I have been pretty excited about this for a while. Thanks to Jaap de Baare who without his help in sending me his Viscount paintkit this wouldn't have been possible without a whole heck of a lot of whining and hand wringing.
Take for instance my story. I remember the old airport terminal in Calgary from when I was a young lad, by the time I saw it it had already been supplanted as the main Calgary airport terminal by the new one built on the NE. The old terminal, part of what was then 'McCall Field' was by the late 70's and early 80's our 'executive aircraft terminal' and storage dump for some of the small local operators. I decided to do some more research and gather pics of the old terminal in its day so I could then have enough info to try my hand at building a model of the terminal and doing 'McCall Field 1958'.
I researched pictures from the archives, both the Federal and local and came up with some good pics. I ended up also finding some very interesting pictures of the old days here in Calgary such as when Bing Crosby came through on a stop in a Howard 500 on his way up to Jasper to film a picture, when Duncan Renaldo 'The Cisco Kid' visited in 1960, Joe Louis coming by on a War Bond Drive in 1944, the Bristol Brittania 312 demonstrator visiting in 1957, the first Western Airlines service to Calgary inaugurated June 1, 1959 with two WAL DC-6B's and a pipe band...interesting stuff. What really caught my eye and imagination, was a picture of the arrival of our Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, on a Vickers Viscount in 1960 with a fancy paintjob and clearly in Canadian government service.
Well this for me was something of a mystery. Canada had a government Viscount? When? How long? How many? What happened to them?
I searched and searched out pictures, information and images and was getting confused. It looked like there were a couple Viscounts, but everytime I found a picture, nothing linked, the basic paint jobs were the same but each picture had different titles on the aircraft, cowling paint and tail paints were all over the place.
Anyhow, I ended up solving the mystery from the www.vickersviscount.net/ webpage. Thanks to those chaps, I would have been muddling through.
I have five paintjobs I need to do to capture all the major era's of what turned out to be three Viscounts in Canadian government service from about 1955 until the early 80's.
CF-DTA used by PM Diefenbaker on his cross Canada trip in 1958.
CF-GXK as it was in 1974.
Apologies for the long story, I have been pretty excited about this for a while. Thanks to Jaap de Baare who without his help in sending me his Viscount paintkit this wouldn't have been possible without a whole heck of a lot of whining and hand wringing.
