N499C Photo Page

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    It was sometime in the period between leaving the Army in 1970 and getting a real job flying that the venerable Twin Beech (BE-18) showed up in my life.    I was working as a shipping clerk and a call came in to see if I was interested in flying on an "Air Mail" contract.    You bet I was.   My first paid flying job out of the service!

   Here it was.    N202LA.
A real multi-engined airplane and a complete piece of junk, but it paid real money and I got to fly it 5 night a week, 5 legs a night and all this for $90 a week.    It started a true love of the big round engines and flying cargo.

(N202LA)

Two big Hamilton Standard props and a take off weight of 10,200 lbs. The Big Time!!

That first Twin Beech led to an eventual job in Indiana flying the personal airplane of the company owner.
That airplane was N499C, a Twin Beech Model BE-18 with serial number BA-33.
(I guess that first big cross wind landing with the boss in Detroit made a big impression!)

One thing leads to another and I'm flying this thing all around the East Coast with executives in the back and me up front but those suits don't want to be seen riding in this relic of the 1960's so they opt to start using the recently acquired King Air and I kind of decide to stay with "The Beech" and we continue to fly together for the next 7 years or so mainly carrying cargo all over the country on an ad-hoc basis. Kind of a "Have Airplane, Will Travel" kind of deal.

If a city had an automotive plant, I was there. As South Bend, Indiana was a major manufacturing plant for the Bendix Corp, I naturally carried a lot of their large hydraulic steering cylinders and other various automotive parts to all corners of the country.

Fast forward 30 years and I'm still flying cargo!
Same job, different machines, 3 decades apart!

1974 2004

Andy (N499C@Comcast.net)