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377

Lockheed Lodestars as jumpships

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The lodestar from stormville ny was the first airplane i ever experienced a LANDING in.....
I had about 150 jumps...
I was never in a plane until i started jumping.....and never rode a plane back down... so i had 150 take offs and Zero Landings:|B|

while visiting family near Stormville in '73 i headed over there to make some cessna loads...They had a pea gravel target accross the road.....
Willy saw a good handful of jumpers were there, that day, and declared... "let's drive over to Poughkeepsie, to the airport, and "get the big plane"...:D:)
"who want's to go, " ???/
so i and maybe 5 others piled into the back of his pick-up truck,,,with cap,,, and rode the 15 minutes or so, to Dutchess County Airport.....
We flew back, with the plane,,,,, a short hop..:D No rigs, no seatbelts, no problem!!!:P:S

i recall looking out the windows as the trees were flashing by,,, and the runway seemed to be yet Miles,,, ahead of the windshield.....
figuring that we'd never even GET close to it... But we did , and all was well..
Stormville Ny was fairly big time for those days.. and did lots of RW jumps........ :)a few years later... It was no more...[:/]:(
and word spead of a NEW place,,, a better place... a place with a gravel runway,, on the OTHER side of the Hudson River...
some called it The Ranch, some called it Gardiner,,,,I thought of it as Billy and Kays' place... many called it home....and so THAT story Began !!!

thanks for the pictures. i certainly DO remember that split rail fence up near the airport building, which is shown in the background of your photo.. of the Lodestar with the red car....
The DZ building(s) was further west at That end of the runway....
wow such a long time ago.. yet still vivid in my minds eye...



jmy
a 3914
d 12122
nscr 1817

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Someone just bought Duncan Baker's Howard 500 in the UK and will be ferrying it to the US. The Howard 500 is a Lodestar on steroids, R 2800 engines, pressurized, and FAST (338 kts)! This particular 500 had been sitting idle in a hanger for a decade, but was made airworthy with no major trouble.

http://home.comcast.net/~fishnpilot/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.zoeller/H500.htm

377
2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

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Randy DeLuca took this photo at The Gulch in Arizona sometime in (I think) 1974.
A few folks managed to get out, including the guy just above the tail, and the rest of the load rode it down to about 7000 feet before the pilot got it back under control.
They don't call them Lodestalls for no reason.



The photo tells it all; no gear down. That's 500lbs about 6 feet aft of where it would be when down. Bill Buchmann used the same setting Poppenhager eluded to, about 90 kts with gear down and full flaps.

If the story that got back to us (at Z-Hills) was correct, the pilot of the aircraft in the photo was just out of the Air Force as a test pilot. He got the aircraft under control after lowering the gear on the way down. We heard the recovery was at about 4000 ft.

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Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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It seemed like we were in a dive for a really long time, but I think the plane recovered at nearly 12,000. Jumprun was just over 15,000. Randy Kempf and Steve Graas (RIP) were in the cockpit. One of them told us that it took the strength of them both to pull the plane out of the dive.

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It seemed like we were in a dive for a really long time, but I think the plane recovered at nearly 12,000. Jumprun was just over 15,000. Randy Kempf and Steve Graas (RIP) were in the cockpit. One of them told us that it took the strength of them both to pull the plane out of the dive.



Thanks for that; it could well be a different stall that my story eludes to.

I was not aware Steve Graas had died, do you know from what?

Do we know each other (you've been in the sport long enough)?

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Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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I'm not sure when Steve died, it must have been at least 20 years ago, maybe someone knows.

He did help save many of our lives that day of our loadstall.



I met Steve in Hinkley when Bill Buchmann and I flew the Loadstar up from Z-Hills for the summer of 75. I was building Bill's Eagle rigs for him at the time.

Roger Nelson wrote about Steve and me (among others) in Pat Works' "United We Fall" book. Here is a link to chapter 5 of the book. If you scroll down to "Pre Stars, Hey man, you're late," you can see what Roger had to say: http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~esj/uwf/uwf5.htm

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Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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Steve died flying a Lear Jet out of Denver. If I recall correctly it was overgross and lost an engine just after departrure. This had to be in the late 70's.maybe 1980. Steve was a great jumper and pilot.



Thanks for the update. Sad to have lost yet another friend. Yes, he was a great guy, excellent pilot and skydiver. He was also the first person I ever heard use the term aarrrggg. We had a rig back from Jim Hooper to resize the harness a bit and Bill had just completed cutting all the stitching that holds the container to the harness about the time Steve walked through the front door at Overton's Airport (a small house with an airstrip in the back yard we lived in during the summer of 1975). Just as Steve was saying hi, Bill ripped the container from the harness at which time Steve let out a loud AAARRRGGGG. Bill must has looked like superman or something; it was pretty funny and I still remember the moment like it was yesterday.

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Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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Waz there.... The LoadSTALL falling was fearful. ... Jump Run. Guys Climbing out.... Floor tilts crazy up then down. Then just falls out of the sky, FAST. Like a bad-ass roller coaster making that first high-dive. Your footing & balance go away. Your stomach freaks. Huge G-Forces pin you to where ever you is. OH! SHIT! Oh Golly! Exit,! Your brain says get out! No chance. ~ 6,000 feet of altitude fall away at Mach speed. The floor whomps up as you as Gravity returns to "down." You act "Mr. Cool" while your heart and nerves jangle your frame. Your cool diminished, you've earned a new respect. You've met a dark friend. Real Big Guy. Mr. Fear. Oh! Dear!

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"Get out! Get Out! GET OUT OF MY WAY!'
Still in commercial use today, the Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar was a World War II era. passenger transport
Aug. 21, 1983--Eleven, including nine jumpers, died when a Lockheed L-18 Lodestar stalled and plunged 12,000 feet at Silvana, Wash. The 15 survivors included 11 who jumped before the plane went out of control and four who escaped on the way down. [ Stanwood, Wash., UPI --, Aug 22, 1983]




“After the first 10 or so exited things went crazy and the plane flipped and began a flat spin... at that moment time seemed to slow way down and it appeared that I was watching a movie in slow motion as it seemed to just waffle and fall past me with little horizontal separation from me. I could see people exiting from the aft end of the plane. Then everything went back to real time and I cleared myself and dumped. During opening I could see the fireball at impact and under canopy I heard it. I quickly counted open parachutes and I knew we were missing nine.” Their average descent rate was 550 ft/sec (it was 23 sec. stall at 12,500 ft. to-impact.) [Survivor tbdavis1 (D 7719) In Dropzone.com, ]

“I’ve got pieces of people everywhere in my barnyard.” Said McGuire whose property borders the crash site.
Excerpts from the FAA Accident Report,
Lockheed Learstar L - 18, Landry Aviation, NI16CA, August 21, 1983, Silvana, Washington

About 1832 p.d.t.. on August 21, 1983, a Lockheed L-18 Learstar, N116C.4, operated by' Landry Aviation crashed in a farm field adjacent to a State highway after uncontrolled descent from 12,500 feet. The airplane had carried 24 sport parachute jumpers and 2 pilots. Fifteen parachutists successfully parachuted from the airplane during the descent. Nine parachutists and the two pilots were killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the operator and the pilot-in-command to assure proper load distribution during the jumper exit procedure.
Surviving parachutists stated that takeoff and climb, to the jump altitude were normal. All the parachutists remained in the positions occupied at takeoff until jump altitude was reached. Surviving parachutists also stated that none of the jumpers seated on the floor used the available seatbelts. About 1 minute before the airplane arrived above- the drop zone, two jumpers moved aft to the door to spot the airplane for the jump run. ,,,, the drop zone, the jumpers moved to their prejump-positions. ….. as they jumped, One of them observed the airplane was in a steep right bank, that it then rolled over, the nose dropped, and that it entered a steep dive during which it made one or two slow spirals as it continued the steep dive until it struck the ground. Descriptions of the descent offered by several other jumpers were similar. that they felt the aft end of the airplane drop, then oscillate slightly up and down, after Three jumpers, the 9th, llth,and 12th in the planned jump sequence….
the airplane rolled to the right before the jumpers were able to reach the door. One was killed and two were seriously injured when they struck the tail. Sixteen of the 24 jumpers were able to leave the airplane.; 13 were uninjured.
Witnesses on the ground, stated it rolled to the right, entered a steep dive, and rotated slowly during the dive. They described loud “screaming” engine* sounds which continued until the airplane struck struck the ground in a steep nosedown attitude.”

* * *
* “screaming engine* -- “…the aircraft was in a dive at full power… over 400 knots. you could hear rivets popping out of as the airframe gave way … sounded like a machine gun…” JW (Witness).




Excerpts from a similar but not-fatal incident at “The Gulch”

Michael D Larson, Owner-Operator Casa Grande DZ posted, “Closest I've ever come to getting snuffed was in that old Lodestar. “This is the Rande DeLuca photo of the Casa Grande “Lodestall” with Randy (Roach) Kempf flying at the Gulch. About 6 of us got out before the G's held everyone on the floor until Randy recovered. “That's where the term, "Get out, get out, get out of my way!' was coined. ….. Randy was (is) one of the best pilots we ever had and not everyone could recover a stalled Lodestar. It took somewhere between 3 and 6 thousand feet to get back to level flight. The Lodestar just was not designed to be used as a jump plane and took a very specialized procedure to do that safely. ….. Somehow we survived thanks to guys like Randy and Steve Gras.”

. . . OH! SHIT! Oh Golly! Exit,! Your brain says get out! ~ 6,000 feet of altitude fall away
Pat Works nee Madden Travis Works, Jr .B1575, C1798, D1813, Star Crest Solo#1, USPA#189,

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Hi 377,

I know this is old and I just stumbled across it. Since I'm an old, old, old jumper from Washington state I remember the Lodestars. I never jumped the one from Arlington, but we had another at Issaquah and I made quite a few jumps from it.

As far as the pilot in Arlington being able to get control back, he may have had his hands full. Back in those days we sat on the floor with no seat belts and I have heard speculation that, when the stall occurred, there may have been jumpers that were flung up into the cockpit and interfered with getting it back under control. Pretty scary thought, but it has the ring of truth to it.

This was very sad and I lost a number of friends in this accident.

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Hi Bob,

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I never jumped the one from Arlington, but we had another at Issaquah and I made quite a few jumps from it.



I was not there that day, but I think this is the same aircraft.

BTW, I was a longtime friend of Rich Johnston's; I noticed where he died last year. I think we've met a couple of times, 'back in the day.'

Jerry Baumchen
D-1543

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Just stumbled across this thread myself. At the time I heard Steve crashed a King Air, but that could be wrong. However, he had just taken a serious test to enter the navy. He had the second highest score on record! Roger, I remember you when you worked for Jeff at Z-Hills. About 1972. Jim T

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N-33LM was owned by a guy named Rutherford in TX. A friend converted it to a jumpship. Used it in the z-hills turkey day meet with 100 10 way teams! That bird was hopped up with blowers and big engines. Always wondered what happened to it. I think there is also a L-18 at Eloy that they threaten to put in the air. Jim T

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gb1

Just stumbled across this thread myself. At the time I heard Steve crashed a King Air, but that could be wrong. However, he had just taken a serious test to enter the navy. He had the second highest score on record! Roger, I remember you when you worked for Jeff at Z-Hills. About 1972. Jim T



That would have been 1973 and part of 1974. Jim T???

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

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RogerRamjet

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When Palatka got a loadstar, they brought it over to Z-Hills to learn to fly jumpers with it. Bill flew right seat on the first flight, I was in the rear of the plane. On takeoff, the aircraft entered the steepest climb I had ever seen. I was sure we were going in when I heard the engine power reduced and shortly thereafter the nose came back down. Bill had saved the plane and all of us by knowing what to do and when (the pilot's first reaction was to increase power). Of course it's been 30 years, so I could have that all wrong, have to ask Bill next time I'm in Deland...





Mentioning Palatka, FL in the late 70's. I jumped that one there and we got them to come up to Eutaw, AL for a boogie weekend. Bigways in Alabama back then were generally in single digits. But I seem to remember that we broke a record. It was either a 16 way or 20. Long time ago. I don't think we held the 20 for 3 seconds??? People came from Louisiana, Mississippi, and even further. Great fun but I wasn't a pilot then, and didn't have a clue about planes except that it was more fun to jump out of them than land them.

The Lockheed Lodestar was very fun for us in Alabama and Palatka, FL. I guess we survived by dumb luck. :-)

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