A few years ago, during one of my MANY fruitless journeys to skydive froim a Connie, I drove to the drop zone at California City Airport, near Mojave CA. Sure enough, the Camarillo Connie C 121C was there, having arrived in the stillness of the early morning, but the winds were now gale force and blowing directly across the runway so nobody was flying or jumping. I spent a good part of the day hanging out in the Connie with a flight manual, exploring every detail, then I went looking around the airport. I saw a Convair Twin (240, 340 440?) essentially complete with a large section of the (left?) fuselage side carefully cut out, almost looked like the hole would fit a PBY observation blister. Does anyone have any details about this aircraft?

Mark,

I remember photographing that Convair some years ago. With thanks to Oldprops, it is a former US Coasties HC-131A:

N54215 HC131A 53-4 California Museum of Air and Space, California City

There is a picture of it on airliners.net, albeit at Mojave, presumably before it moved to California City:

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/014698/L/

Now, if memory serves me right (and it may not do), the reason for the strange appendage / hole in the side was that the Convair was used for some sort of egression testing / training as part of the Shuttle program! Someone will undoubtedly know more, or will correct me.

Andy

Picture on this page (click the thumbnail):
http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/STS26/10062753.htm
Can't quite make out the N-number, but it looks like 54125. Certainly a USCG paint job, titles removed.

Amazing, I just give one or two tidbits on this Convair and you guys locate the plane and explain the mod. What a great website/message board this is. Now lets see...
there was a Lockheed Lodestar (perhaps a Howard mod) with Nazi swastikas on it at Chino in the early nineties. Anyone know info on that plane? At the time it was rumored that the young owner had been arrested and the plane might be seized and sold.

I don't know about a Loadstar with Nazi...or finnish swastikas....but the last time I was up at chino visiting the Planes of Fame museum there were several Loadstars sitting around up there in various conditions. There was also one located in the area of the Yankee Airplane museum across the field. That was about two years ago.

I thought that hatch had the looks of an airlock type mechanism.

Douglas,

Yes, I believe that was the point - trials for some sort of system for eggression testing for astronauts on the Shuttle, or so I was told.

Andy

Good to see an old bird like this being used for a really up to date purpose.