After work today I took a short drive around and took some photos of the Red Deer airport. I am a mechanic for a helicopter company based here, and I grew up hanging around this place.
The airport has an interesting history, during World War II it was a major training base with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Pilots trained here in Airspeed Oxford and Harvards (AT-6). After the war the base remained under Royal Canadian Air Force control as Canadian Forces Base Penhold, since the closest town is Penhold Alberta. It remained an Air Force facility until 1965 it was shut down and in 1966 the airport became the Red Deer Regional Airport. The military still maintained a presence here as a radar and communications facility until 1994. After that the barracks and military community was sold off to private owners.
There are a couple large and we’ll known operators here. The first is Airspray, a fire suppression company. They used to operate a fleet of A-26 Invaders until 2004, and now they have “modernized” their fleet to Lockheed L-188 Electra’s converted to tankers with a retardant tank on the belly. I cut my teeth on the aviation industry working on the A-26’s with Airspray. Fun side note, the silver A-26 in the photos below is the exact aircraft from the movie Always.
The other large operator here some of you may be familiar with. If you’ve ever seen the Discovery Channel show Ice Pilots, you’ll have heard of Buffalo Air. They have quite a collection of old and unusual aircraft. Buffalo has a heavy maintenance facility here, mainly for their CL-215 and Electra fleets. But we quite often see DC-3’s coming and going. They also store a lot of other stuff here.
In addition to all that fun, there are some rather interesting private aircraft. There’s the J-3 that I maintain and fly, a rare Piper J-5, a couple Cessna 140’s and a Stearman, among other antique and homebuilt aircraft.
Here are some photos of some of the interesting hardware sitting around the airport. And just for fun a couple shots of two of the helicopters I maintain for my day job.
The airport has an interesting history, during World War II it was a major training base with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Pilots trained here in Airspeed Oxford and Harvards (AT-6). After the war the base remained under Royal Canadian Air Force control as Canadian Forces Base Penhold, since the closest town is Penhold Alberta. It remained an Air Force facility until 1965 it was shut down and in 1966 the airport became the Red Deer Regional Airport. The military still maintained a presence here as a radar and communications facility until 1994. After that the barracks and military community was sold off to private owners.
There are a couple large and we’ll known operators here. The first is Airspray, a fire suppression company. They used to operate a fleet of A-26 Invaders until 2004, and now they have “modernized” their fleet to Lockheed L-188 Electra’s converted to tankers with a retardant tank on the belly. I cut my teeth on the aviation industry working on the A-26’s with Airspray. Fun side note, the silver A-26 in the photos below is the exact aircraft from the movie Always.
The other large operator here some of you may be familiar with. If you’ve ever seen the Discovery Channel show Ice Pilots, you’ll have heard of Buffalo Air. They have quite a collection of old and unusual aircraft. Buffalo has a heavy maintenance facility here, mainly for their CL-215 and Electra fleets. But we quite often see DC-3’s coming and going. They also store a lot of other stuff here.
In addition to all that fun, there are some rather interesting private aircraft. There’s the J-3 that I maintain and fly, a rare Piper J-5, a couple Cessna 140’s and a Stearman, among other antique and homebuilt aircraft.
Here are some photos of some of the interesting hardware sitting around the airport. And just for fun a couple shots of two of the helicopters I maintain for my day job.
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