Oshkosh Company Retrofits Planes for Niche Markets

June 21, 2010
At Basler Turbo Conversions, DC-3s get a new lease on life before starting second or third careers with air forces in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mauritania and Mali.

Oshkosh — Inside a large hangar, three plane fuselages were lined up like husked corn, their wings removed, bundles of wires snaking through holes where the noses had been pulled off.

They're not new planes. Far from it. These aircraft rolled off assembly lines along with more than 16,000 others generations ago. And yet the venerable DC-3 is alive and well and celebrating its 75th birthday this year.

They're still dropping smokejumpers and skydivers, dumping dispersant over the Gulf oil disaster, seeding rain clouds in Thailand, landing scientists in the Arctic and carrying cargo and passengers to all compass points.

At Basler Turbo Conversions, DC-3s get a new lease on life before starting second or third careers with air forces in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mauritania and Mali, geophysical surveyors in Antarctica and Canada, Germany-based environmental researchers and forest firefighters in Montana and Utah.

"We've been able to keep the product going. It's a good product," said Basler Turbo Conversions president Thomas R. Weigt.

The company was started by Warren Basler, who wanted to create a more efficient version of the DC-3, a plane known for its speed and the distance it could travel. Production began in 1990 at the 75,000-square-foot facility on the eastern side of Wittman Field in Oshkosh, where today a dozen DC-3s are parked outside waiting for refurbishing.

The DC-3 "was such a good combination of range and payload and volume. Every time (Warren Basler) looked for a replacement, he couldn't find one," Weigt said.

Transformation

To turn a DC-3 into a Basler BT-67, workers install two Pratt & Whitney turboprop engines and new propellers and lengthen the fuselage by 40 inches - the added length means ice, mud and dirt aren't kicked up from the propellers into the sides of the cockpit windows. The plane's interior is gutted, new wiring and avionics are installed, most of the skin is replaced inside and outside and the wings are retrofitted and strengthened.

With Basler's customers ranging from the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Forest Service to the Colombian National Police and Royal Thai Air Force, each DC-3 is specially configured. Planes destined for ice core surveys in the Arctic are fitted with skis on the landing gear. Aircraft for paratrooper training and smoke jumpers are outfitted with static line jump systems and are lighter so they can fly slow at low altitudes. DC-3s to be used for environmental surveys are outfitted with brackets and other necessary gear to lock down scientific equipment on wings and inside the fuselage.

"We sell the aircraft as if it's a new airplane because it is a new one. We say, 'You tell us how you want it,' and we configure and deliver it," Weigt said.

Weigt started as president with Basler Turbo Conversions in 1990. Founder and company CEO Warren Basler was killed in a plane crash in 1997 on a picture-taking excursion of one of the company's planes, which also killed three other employees.

"He was the face of the business. It was a huge loss, but our clients stayed with us," Weigt said.

It takes about half a year to rebuild and refurbish each plane, although it can take a year or more to work with customers on engineering plans and getting necessary Federal Aviation Administration approvals.

The original price of a DC-3 was roughly $60,000. Purchasing a Basler BT-67 costs around $6.5 million, although the final price depends on how the customer wants it configured.

"It's not an impulse buy," said Weigt.

Historic aircraft

Even though the DC-3 - also known by its equivalent military designations of C-47 for the Army Air Force and R4-D for the Navy - was last manufactured in 1945, there's no shortage of air frames, Weigt said. With few companies performing this kind of work, Basler is known worldwide, and DC-3 owners contact the company when they want to get rid of a plane.

Basler Turbo procured a DC-3 from Canada this month and is checking out the condition of one DC-3 in Spain and two in Africa.

After the first flight in December 1935, the Douglas Aircraft-built plane revolutionized aviation in the 1930s and '40s. The DC-3 was much faster and more comfortable than passenger aircraft such as the Ford Tri-Motor and other bumpy, relatively uncomfortable planes. It could land on small airstrips and grass fields.

"When it was introduced, it was a quantum leap ahead of what people had been exposed to in transcontinental air travel," said H.G. Frautschy, executive director of EAA's Vintage Aircraft Association.

As a military aircraft employed by all branches, the DC-3 was used in the D-Day invasion to airlift paratroopers into France and the Netherlands for Operation Market Garden. They were used to haul cargo, including Jeeps driven up ramps into the back. The U.S. government continued using them into the 1950s and '60s, and a significant number were sold as surplus to commercial airlines and to foreign allies.

"They're a durable aircraft, fairly cost effective to operate with their large capacity," said Bill Fischer, executive director of EAA Warbirds of America. "It's a testament to the workmanship, the design and the engineering."

Durability and stability

Turning an old workhorse into a new, revamped flying machine takes a work crew of 60 at Basler Turbo Conversions. Aside from the engines and propellers, just about everything else must be made by hand. With only a handful of planes refurbished each year, no outside company could make the relatively small number of parts and materials at a competitive cost.

Aric Anonich, electronics-avionics supervisor, said that although the DC-3 was known mostly as a cargo carrier in recent decades, it's now used for many tasks.

"That's our niche: specialty aircraft. Back in the day it was freight and now it's pretty much everything," said Anonich, who wore a head lamp while installing colorful wiring bundles inside a fuselage. "Everything in here is new - not just replaced, but new."

Inside the hangar, extra fuel tanks sat on sawhorses waiting to be installed to double the fuel capacity from 1,000 nautical miles to 2,000. Sometimes Basler technicians will see graffiti inside the wings left behind by workers who built them during World War II. Occasionally they find the initials "R.R." which could stand for Rosie the Riveter.

"You can see Pepsi-can repairs," said Rick Larson, a mechanic who works on the wings, which can take as many hours - 5,000 - as the fuselage because it is held together by thousands of rivets and screws.

Some countries send aircraft maintenance workers to Basler for classes. Basler's pilots usually fly the completed planes to customers on other continents; most BT-67 purchasers in North America come to Oskhosh to pick up their aircraft.

Bell Geospace, a Houston-based geophysical survey company, has bought two Basler BT-67s, with the second one due to be finished later this year. The company uses the plane to search for minerals, oil and gas around the globe by measuring gravity while flying very low and at a constant speed so on-board sensors and computers can get accurate readings.

Since power to sensitive subsurface mapping equipment is important to Bell Geospace, Basler engineers and mechanics have configured the plane to ensure the cockpit crew can modify power flowing into the geophysical sensors and have built in redundancies for air conditioning to keep the temperature constant regardless of whether they're flying in Africa or Siberia, said Bell Geospace CEO Scott Hammond.

The company, which took possession of its first BT-67 in March 2008, chose Basler because of the plane's durability and the long distances it can travel.

"It gives us a much more stable flight, a smoother flight than other planes we've used," said Hammond. "We work all over the world, and it's got a great range. It's well known so you can easily find spare parts, and it can work on short runways."

DC-3 Celebration

The 75th anniversary of the DC-3 will be celebrated at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh this year with a mass arrival of an expected 40 planes. Fifty or more of the planes, including their military counterparts the C-47 and R4-D, are expected to fly to Oshkosh for the weeklong event that starts on July 26.