Saw the NASA super guppy flying today near JSC

Always cool to see this thing in the air.

https://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/guppy/index.html

 

Saw one of those at the Tucson international airport back 25 years ago when I was visiting. They did the Boeing 377 Super Guppy conversions there back in the 1970's and sold most of them to Airbus Last 377 pax Stratocruiser was scrapped there in the 1980's.

 

Wonder how many parts are still from the 50's.... originally developed from the B-29 / B-50....
377 was the first double decker commercial airliner... sort of.

 

They are crazy looking in person. I saw one visit Andrews AFB for an airshow and they opened it up and I saw another in Tucson last June. It's amazing something with that size of a cross section can fly like it does.

 

A friend of mine used to own the Mini Guppy. It ended up needing too much money to keep airworthy, and now it's on display at Tillamook Air Museum.

He bought it to fly S-64 Sky Cranes around in-- and they actually could fit one!

 

The Boeing Dreamlifter flies over my house about every morning on its arrival from SC.

 

I live in Charleston and see the Dreamlifters all the time. Occasionally, there will be three or four (which, I believe is all of them) at the airport at the same time.

 

El Paso is the home base for the super guppy but I have yet to see her fly since I am inside most of the day ....... On the bright side being indoors I don't have to breathe in all the rancid pollution coming up from Mexico.

 

I used to see these all the time getting serviced at Tracor at SBA. It was right next to my Civil Air Patrol squadron building, so hard to miss. That was late '70s.

 

I spent a month at Tracor in the late '80s. We (Grumman) had contracted with them for a conversion of the S-2 Tracker to turboprops for Taiwan. Our management had evidently not realized that Tracor had laid off their experienced engineering staff after the development of the Guppies and were ill-equipped to design the modifications needed on the S-2. I was part of a team sent out there to help out their young engineers, but after a month the company deemed it hopeless, cancelled Tracor's contract, and transferred the aircraft (and us) back to Bethpage to finish the re-design. Still, it was a nice month in Santa Barbara (March, if I recall correctly).