Chuck’s birthday jump
Just fallen out of the airplane. Charlie, an avid Chicken Wings reader who talked me into this, is holding my hand to comfort me.
The plane in the comic is as accurate a copy of the Dornier DO 28 D2 (callsign D-IEDO) as I could manage. She’s a pretty colorful bird! And I can proudly say, that I did not rip off the belly radio antenna when I jumped!
The Para Club is celebrating it’s 30th birthday this summer! So, happy birthday to all the brave men and women over there!
Not being familiar with this aircraft, I need to ask: does it really fly with the gear down even though it has gear pods?
hi awesome, yup, she has a fixed landing-gear. the ‘gear pods’ are actually the nacelles. forward half is turbine, rear half fuel-tank. not much place left in there 🙂
The amount of times I have been JM on a flight with Tandem Pax:es who are litteraly “bricking it” and then later on the ground telling their friends how brave they were in the plane and they did not feel scared in the slightest…they were tollerated as long as they did not go over board with the braging.
My treats where the few cocky buggers who usually had to be carried off the DZ after landing, poetic justice at its’ best! Unfortunatley it did not always have the effect on the friends as you would hope…
The one time I jumped they couldn’t do me tandem — I’m very large and the petite JM looked at me and said “no” — so since they were also doing solo jumps from about 1000 meters they taught me how to land properly (bend those knees!) and then we went up and I stepped out of the plane. It was one of the few times in my life where I literally blacked out. Those few seconds between the step out and the ripcord being pulled by its attachment to the plane are gone from my consciousnesses. We went up again and the second time was not nearly as frightening.
and his glasses stayed on the whole time….amazing? Also I note no frap hat? As a wee nipper I think I had an airfix Dornier “Skyservant” as an air ambulance…awesome looking plane. I did dive from a BN Islander one time in the Lake District of the UK and it was one of the best
Warbirdali: “As a wee nipper I think I had an airfix Dornier “Skyservant” as an air ambulance…awesome looking plane.”
You’re probably thinking of the Matchbox model. (Revell Germany currently owns the molds.) To my knowledge, Airfix has never issued a Skyservant model. Not saying that they didn’t, but I can’t find any pictures or catalogue entries or other documentation in my own collection or on the ‘net.
Also, that’s one sweet ride! It would be nice if someone would issue a decal sheet in 1/72 scale for the above-mentioned model!
The question about the gear pods reminds me of a story I read in a column by Roy Braybrook – used to work for Hawker Siddeley, British Aerospace, then he became a writer -, which quite amusing:
He usually wrote about some funny events from his past, incidents which occurred with pilots or airplanes, and after he had finished writing there was a cartoonist who would illustrate the column with some image related to it’s content.
The cartoonist usually was given a photo of the airplane in question. He would then draw the airplane flying – say it was a Spitfire -, and of course he would retract the landing gear…
even when it happened to be an airplane which didn’t do it, like the Do128!
Reynard that’s the one, thanks! I totally forgot Matchbox models but those were my favorites because they sold them at the corner shop/post office, and if I recall the plastic itself was colored for the plane so even if you didn’t paint them they were still good looking. Thanks for the reminder, I totally forgot!
Many years ago there was a similar plane flying out out of St Martens. My dad kept saying that the lower wing would tilt and decrease take off run. He called it the TMD( Tilt motor Dornier). I’ll have to show him this comic.Hmmm. Chuck vs the TMD.
Back in 1996 I was 17 y.o. and made 2 jumps at Kurkachi air-club. Now that I became older, I’d be scared and wouldn’t jump even for money!