Old Beech 18 photos -1971

UPDATE : If you have not seen it, check out our Corvair College FaceBook page at this link: https://www.facebook.com/CorvairCollege/ . Look in the comments section of this stoy and you will see Gary Lampman posted a link telling the exact and complete history of this aircraft, which was owned and operated by Air America. The record indicates the photo, dated ‘Nov. 71’ was likely taken at Ubon in Thailand.

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Builders:

I pulled these out of an album at my parents house. They are of a rare Beech 18 conversion known as a Volpar turbo 18. During the years my family was in Thailand, this was the plane my father flew around between Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Since two of those countries were ‘neutral’, flights were always done in civilian planes like the one below.

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A Volpar is a tri gear conversion. Some of them were equipped with Garret turboprops, like the one above. The N-Number belongs to a different plane today. You can only wonder what happened to this one.

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I asked Dad if he could recognize the airport, but he couldn’t say for sure, perhaps Don Muang in Thailand. When I look at the plane I wonder how it was ferried across the Pacific, how many places it saw, what ever happened to it. All interesting middle of the night questions, likely lost to history. See note in red  above

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-ww.

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