transporting a 170

[Green Bean]

Yes, That was Keith and Andy B. in 1973

[W.J.Langholz]

A friend of mine had a Winebago that looked just like that.......could never get it to go fast enough to rotate.......

[n3833v]

Looks like a little whale giving birth . Well, you do what has to be done to preserve these old planes.

[W.J.Langholz]

I love to see N4917 up close in action...what a bird. Wonder what it would be like in a cross wind?

[hilltop170]

They actually fly very well, I got about 20 hours in one during the Valdez oil spill. Very drafty though, always wear full arctic gear while flying one in the winter. I also witnessed one operating from a 1200' total length sand bar on the Stony River in Alaska. It flew in with 2500 pounds of cabin supplies and flew out empty. Had plenty of room left on landing and takeoff. I had an accident-prone buddy who got his 185 flown out in the same manner.

[Green Bean]

The Sky Van was built by the Short Brothers of Ireland, and was an exceptional aircraft, with excellent performance capability, and should NOT be compared to the later built Sherpa or Shorts SD330 or 360, which doesn't perform in the short field arena and has terrible cross wind performance.

The SC-7, Sky Van, often called a "skybox", flew with Wien from 1967-1977. Wien Consolidated (named after merger of Northern Consolidated and Wien Airlines, later changed to Wien Air Alaska, but always referred to as WIEN) operated the 2 Sky Vans and 5 DHC-6 Twin Otters to over 100 Alaskan communities from bush stations of Fairbanks, Bethel, Nome, and Kotzebue. Most of the bush airports at that time were in the range of 1200 to 2000 feet in length. The Sky Van was used extensively for over size cargo or passenger/ cargo, i.e. snow machines, furniture, freezers and refrigerators, drilling pipe, building material, and sometimes live Reindeer, etc. The crosswind capability was very good with 25 knots not being a problem. In the 10 years that Wien operated the bush with these aircraft, they flew approximately 1500 hours a month. Wien they had only one major accident with a Twin Otter, in 1969.

Two operators are still flying the Sky Van in Alaska today. ATS (western Alaska) and Alaska Air Taxi.