DC-6 West Indies Odyssey (Part 1) 

Glad we could help you relive the memories! When I was a kid, Delta Airlines DC-6's with their characteristic blue nacelles flew over my St. Louis house every day.

Thanks for watching and glad you enjoy it! It always makes our day to hear comments like yours!

@@AeroDinosaur I also really love the DC7 adventures! When I was a young French Air Force flight engineer(DC8)some of my instructors flew the Six in FAF, they always talked about this beauty with pride and nostalgia. Best regards

Thanks again! Part 2 upload coming shortly.

Sorry I missed this comment of yours from a couple months ago. Airliners/WTP/Just Plane Crazy were great people to work with and I too miss them! I'd be interested in reading your Propliner articles if you get a chance to dig them up.

Thank you for your nice comment (and encouragement). Very hard to monetize like we used to before the internet. We're getting a little but not like it was--time will tell!

The PMDG DC-6 for Flight Simulator 2020 is Excellent!

Sorry for this late reply, I somehow missed the notification of your comment. Thanks for the nice comment and glad you enjoyed!

Small world! I'm finishing a book with Mark G. Morris, president of DHL Cargo back then, the successor company to the one he founded here in St. Louis called Petroleum Air Transport which flew 25 identically painted (mustard yellow and red trim) DC-6's freighters and 3 passenger Martin 404's back then. He sold out to DHL in 1977 and became its president and later CEO. Those DC-6's were the very first major expansion of today's DHL Fleet. If you have any interesting stories to share, please email me. Thanks for checking us out!

@@AeroDinosaur I crossed paths with Larry Hillbloom when he lived in Saipan before he got killed flying a seaplane. At that time I flew sideways on the 727 for Air Micronesia which was partly owned by Continental. Prior to that I flew as a FO on the DC-6 out of Detroit for Universal Airlines, a bottom feeder with 3 Acft, lol. You made me think about my past life...It seems I remember flying with an FE out of Willow Run named Gino. I wonder if its the same guy?

@@petediaz9310 Yes, when Mark Morris sold Petroleum Air Transport to DHL, Larry had him organize all the operating companies associated with their hardware buildup and made Mark president of it all which then was mostly the Hawaiian operations. Mark was later named CEO of DHL Worldwide, but Larry became very hard to work with and Mark quit about 1981--I'm sure you know full well what Larry's character was. Regarding your other comment, I used to see Universal DC-6's come in and out of St. Louis--both Lambert and Spirit of St. Louis Airports on those auto hot-shot runs. This was the 1984-1985 time frame. One of them was in all natural metal with blue "UA" on the tail fin (leased from Atlas Airlines out of MIA and the company owned by the Balnickis that started and ran TAL) and another one painted white with festive red and blue striping from its former Venezuelan operator. Universal ultimately bought that one from Atlas. I do have the N numbers but not off the top of my head, and if you want them I will look them up for you. Really great to hear from you!

@@AeroDinosaur Oh the stories, lol! I remember departing Puerto Rico heavy (on a hot day) wondering if we were going to clear the coconut trees! I think I flew both those 6's you mention. I was with Universal between 86'& 88' Went to Continental in 88'

Now that is as cool as it gets! Glad our video touched you in that way. I recreated all my TAL flights on FSX a few years ago with the A1A Boeing 377 (not accurate, but at least realistic and fun), before your DC-6 model was available. HAVE FUN WITH IT!

Sorry I missed your comment from 4 months ago! I'm just getting caught up. I'm glad I missed the days of the machine guns down there! It appears they didn't like cameras back then.

I wonder the same thing. I never rode on them. None of those are flying anymore, but I did see them operating out of St. Croix in 1992 with Tradewinds. Maybe someone else was able to capture experiences on them--that might surface on RU-vid at some point. Several short clips of the CL-44 have been posted, but no story behind them.

Thanks! Send me an e-mail and I can fill you in on details.

Peter Bach-great to hear from you! I too had beers at the Cielo Mar patio overlooking the bay with engineer Geno Gentile. Pilot Joel Reeves and F/O Edgar Alvarado had dinner with us but did not drink. The stories were incredible. In the months after my DC-6 trip with them, 2 of their 4 DC-6s underwent lengthy overhauls so they were short on capacity and running the heck out of the other two-- I guess partially explaining their engine shutdowns. In March 1992 I went on another "Duty-Free Triangle" trip with TAL in their DC-7C. They did not like to use it on that run but they had to because those two -6s were still down. In the 1970s and 1980s Trans Continental, Zantop, Universal, etc. were flying hot-shot auto parts into my home airports of St. Louis Lambert and Spirit of St. Louis (we had 4 assembly plants at the time). I got lots of photos from that era. Petroleum Air Transport (PAT Air) was based in both St. Louis and Ypsilanti on those auto runs with 25 DC-6s--the largest fleet of them at the time. They got acquired by DHL who later exited that business so they never flew Electras or DC-8s. I am finishing a book with PAT Air founder, owner and pilot Mark Morris on his airlines during the confusing post-propliner era from around the late-'60s into the early 2000s. We talk a lot about Trans Continental, Zantop, and freight forwarder Auto Air Cargo in the book. Second Wind of the Aerial Leviathans is set to be published before the year is out--hopefully. If at some point you e-mail your contact information I will get a copy out to you once published. Otherwise, glad you enjoyed our video.

@@AeroDinosaur my 2nd line trip as a DC 6 engineer, was out of Spirit. We had to do a 3 engine ferry back to YIP. That was before the feds mandated such trips as check pilots only. A year or two later, I was qualified as an engineer on the 6 and the 8 at the same time. That’s not a good combination.

@@peterbach3416 I figured if you were with Trans Con you would have flown into Spirit at some point. GM Wentzville plant is 15 miles up the road. I can see that being engineer qualified on both the 6 and 8 could cause a procedures mix-up for anybody--a night and day difference for sure, but I guess they were planning to phase out the 6s by then anyway.

That is an early GPS unit. At that time (1991) GPS was unreliable and illegal for aircraft navigation, but the our captain was using it as a backup anyway. JA Reed.

Thanks a lot for checking the book out--hope you have been enjoying it! Very interesting follow-up on N44DG--would certainly like to see the photos you found and exchange stories with you. Apparently RU-vid got rid of the PM feature a few years back, but my email address can be found in the "About" section of AeroDinosaur, so please contact me at your convenience. Thanks again! J.A. Reed.

@@AeroDinosaur I cannot find an email to contact you on “about” on your RU-vid profile.

@@redbaron3120 I have been all tied up while out of town--sorry for my delayed response. FYI: My email is j.reed3930@sbcglobal.net. You can find it under the "About" section of our AeroDinosaur channel (and most channels), but you have to press the "View Email Address" button further down to see it. Look forward to hearing from you!! JA Reed.