The way it was

I’d like to thank Brian Camphaug, Bill McKeever, Rick Tyefisher and Al Nelson for providing some of the photos. If anyone would like to provide additional images, send me an email. You’ll get full attribution.

Due to the tremendous popularity of this site, it would be beneficial to my bandwidth if many of you would not download, day after day, multiple copies of the same image. One copy should be sufficient. I’m more than happy to be able to contribute watermarked and copyrighted images from this site for personal use. Thanks.

Thanks to Brian Camphaug for two of the early pictures, one from N.A.S. Lakehurst (1951), and another floor shot of Spartan Air Services in Uplands (year unknown). The barn was our first hanger, east of Ottawa near Orleans (early 1969). It was just a stone’s throw from the old schoolhouse, which was our component shop and office. Peter C. Hill was kind enough to capture the image of Viking’s former Bells Corners facility as it appears in 2010.

Bill McKeever has submitted images from his collection taken over the many years he flew for the company. Thanks, Bill!

Starting in the early to mid-’70s, Viking had a tremendous amount of equipment in Africa, working for World Health in the west…

and Conoco Oil in the east, with plenty in between. Here’s a link to a satellite shot of our 1975 campsite. It’s recognizable for the hill that overlooked the site. We used that hill as the camp landmark, since it was visible from almost anywhere we worked. Jean-Marc Pigeon got caught out in the dark one night, and we lit up camp for him to find us in the blackest night. The Conoco strip is to the north-east. All of Conoco’s wells came up dry. Oil exploration in the same area continues (article temporarily unavailable) but I doubt that anything substantial will be found.

Meanwhile, back in 1969 when men were landing on the moon, Lorne and the author landed in Newfoundland with an expense account and a G2.

Rick Tyefisher, a young apprentice with Lambair Ltd. in 1974, has provided the images he captured while working with all of us on Dryden-18. For many, this was our first time at the big show, and to this day remains in my memory as a pretty good experience. Many new techniques for aircraft management and use on large fires were experimented with and adopted in later years.

Thanks to Al Nelson for providing access to some of his images of Midwest Helicopters. If anyone would like to provide more Midwest photographs, send me an email. You’ll get full attribution.