The first of deHavilland Canada's "bushplanes," the DHC-2 Beaver was developed in 1947 as a rugged, highly-versatile aerial truck which could take off and land almost anywhere, carry a large load, and be very reliable. It succeeded in all these areas in the civilian sector, so it was almost inevitable that, in 1951, the Beaver would be selected by the US Air Force and Army as a new liaison aircraft. In the nine years that followed, 968 L-20As were delivered to the armed forces, most going to the Army. They served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, hauling freight and personnel around the battlefields, mapping enemy troop positions, leading search/rescue missions, and relaying radio traffic, among other missions.

In 1962, the L-20 was re-designated the U-6A, and many remaining examples remained in service well into the 1970s. Civilian Beavers have served in over 50 countries, and many still continue to fly all around the world, with a small number restored and flown as warbirds.

When in 1903 Wilber and Orville Wright succeeded in getting a heavier-than-air vehicle off the ground in North Carolina, they invented a device that seemed custom-made for Alaska. Ten years later, the first airplane to reach Alaska made its way to the territory packed in a wooden crate that traveled by steamship and paddle wheeler from Seattle to Skagway to Whitehorse to Tanana to Fairbanks. During an exhibition flight on the outskirts of town on July 4, 1913, entrepreneur and pilot James Martin circled his biplane over muskeg and boreal forest for nine minutes. The hundreds of Alaskans watching from rooftops and woodpiles saw the state's future banking overhead at 70 miles per hour.

Billy Mitchell, an adventurer who learned the boggy and buggy reality of ground travel in the territory while helping string a telegraph wire from Valdez to Eagle in 1903, promoted the second appearance of aircraft in Alaska in 1920. Four Army de Havilland biplanes flew from New York to Nome and back.

At the time the de Havillands roared over Alaska's quiet forests and mountains, Alaskans in the Bush received their U.S. mail by boat in the summer and dog team after the rivers froze. That began to change in February 1924, when a schoolteacher pilot named Carl Ben Eielson flew 164 pounds of mail from Fairbanks to McGrath and returned intact on the same day.

Eiclson, flying in an open-cockpit de Havilland DH-4 biplane, waved with his bearskin mittens as he passed over a dog musher named Fred Milligan, who had carried mail by dog sled for more than 20 years. Milligan was mushing on the cold flats between the Kuskokwim Mountains and the Alaska Range. "I decided then and there that Alaska was no country for dogs," Milligan told Jean Potter, author of The Flying North. The musher later took a job with Pan American Airways.

The skies over Alaska soon hummed with activity. Among the many feats that Joe Crosson squeezed into 15 years of flying in Alaska was his hurdling of Mount McKinley in 1931, when he fixed its approximate elevation of 20,000 feet with his altimeter; Crosson later became the first pilot to land on the mountain, in 1932 ferrying climbers and equipment onto the Muldrow Glacier with a Fairchild 71 on skis. The trip, in support of a mission to set up a cosmic ray observatory on Mount McKinley, also marked the first aircraft support of scientists in Alaska, now a daily practice in summer.

z Crosson's friend Noel Wien was the first to fly from Anchorage to Fairbanks, making the trip in 3 hours, 45 minutes in 1924 by following the railroad track north in a de Havilland biplane. By the late 1930s, Fairbanks had 3,000 people and about 50 airplanes, a ratio far above most towns in the Lower 48 states and one of the highest in the world.

Small planes are still the number-one choice of Alaskans who want or need to reach remote villages, coastal towns, or "off airstrip" gravel bars or hilltops. Though Alaska's population has increased tenfold since the first plane appeared, it is still the only state in which residents can't jump in the car and drive to the capital.

Live in Alaska for more than one year, and you will know at least one pilot. According to statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration, as of January 2001, there were 8,053 registered aircraft in Alaska and 10,016 Alaskans with a pilot's license. When you divide that into the state's 626,932 residents, one out of 63 people here have the ability to fly and a certificate to back it up. More than half of those pilots live in Southcentral Alaska; the rest are scattered to the farthest corners of the state.

Alaskans favor single- and twin-engine planes fit with landing gear that suits the landscape-floats are a favorite for salt-water landings in Southeast and for the millions of lakes throughout the state. While straight skis are a favorite after the snow flies, pilots also use ski/wheel combinations when taking off from gravel or paved airstrips and landing on glaciers high in the mountains. Thirty-inch tundra tires are a favorite of pilots who bounce to a landing on gravel bars, alpine hilltops, and other improvised airstrips. Amphibious planes, such as the Grumman Goose, give pilots the option to land either belly-down in water or on land with the help of retractable gear. Pilots who land on tundra and gravel bars prefer "tail dragger," aircraft with a pivoting wheel under the tail. "Nose-wheel" planes are often limited to improved airstrips because their propellers are more vulnerable to dipping down into gravel or other obstructions upon landing.

Pilots of Alaska's small planes carry mail, groceries, and passengers to Bush villages and ferry hikers, hunters, and fishermen to some of the prime spots in North America. They often need to carry items that don't fit in the airplane, such as canoes that ride like lampreys on the bellies of planes, or 60-inch moose antlers tied to struts.

Pilots sometimes modify their aircraft to help them do their jobs. Wildlife biologists at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game attach radio-tracking antennas to the wing struts of their agency's Bellanca Scouts to track sheep, moose, and wolves; a glaciologist at the University of Alaska installed a laser-altimetry system in the belly of his Super Cub so he can measure the precise height of glaciers. Other pilots use planes to get a seagull's view for commercial fishermen, spotting fish from the air, and many tourists are getting their most memorable views of Alaska from the seats of small aircraft.

Although this is NOT a Beaver, (it's a Cessna 185 Skywagon), it shows how easy it is to haul a canoe lashed to the pontoon struts.

Pilots face occasional crummy weather all over the state, from the thick fogs where the warm waters of the Japanese current meet the cold Bering Sea to the dense, frigid air over the Interior, where a thermometer at Prospect Creek once dropped to 80 below. Add to the mix the zero hours of direct sunshine north of the Arctic Circle.

Many of Alaska's most experienced pilots fly for a living as air-taxi pilots or carrying mail and passengers on short hops between villages. Pilots in Talkeetna make thousands of flights to Mount McKinley's Kahiltna Glacier, ferrying tons of

gear, food and climbers attempting North America's highest peak or the other impressive mountains that surround it. Southeast pilots flying turbo Super Otters use the planes' power to carry more than one ton of cargo to remote bays popular with hunters, fishermen, climbers, and scientists. Workhorse Piper Cherokees deliver mail and passengers throughout the expanse of Alaska's Interior, which is larger than some Lower 48 states.

A delightful little canoe is included for you to strap to your Beaver's float struts and get outta Nome to where the bass are.

In a scenario somewhat unique to Alaska, pilots in the urban centers of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau often change clothes on Friday afternoons before jumping into their Maules, Citabrias, and Cessnas and heading for quiet country. Many of those planes are older than the men and women who fly them. A typical Piper Super Cub perhaps Alaska's most popular Bush plane -came off the assembly line in the 1950s. Most of Alaska's beloved small planes have had their fabric skin replaced several times and their engines rebuilt almost as often. Because many Bush planes, such as the sleek Hello Courier, have gone out of production, pilots often have trouble finding parts; resourceful mechanics are often the best friends of the Alaska Bush pilot.

The enduring usefulness of Bush planes says a lot about the people who fly them, and it says even more about Alaska, which has remained in effect roadless since it became a state in 1959. With much of the state either too rugged or too politically protected for the construction of new roads, Bush planes will buzz the skies over Alaska for many years to come.

Early purchases of the Beaver were made by various Canadian provincial governments, and by mining companies and charter operators. Russ Bannock demonstrated the Beaver and its capabilities to the US Air Force in Alaska and to the US Army and this resulted in an order for 978 Beavers. They carried the designation of L-20 and later U-6A during their military life. Most were used by the U.S.Army, but more than 200 U-6As went into USAF inventory and were flown in utility transport and liaison roles. The principal mission of the USAF U-6A was aerial evacuation of litter and ambulatory patients. Other missions included courier service, passenger transport, light cargo hauling, reconnaissance, rescue, and aerial photography. The U-6A saw USAF service in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Many of the military Beavers were sold to private owners at the end of their military service, and most of these are still in operation throughout the world. Beavers are currently registered in some 60 countries, with more than 400 still living in Canada.

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The natural progression of design lead the Beaver to be "stretched" into the radial engined Otter (at one time known as the "King Beaver") and the turbine engined Otter, each with an 11 passenger capacity and the Twin Otter, a turbine engined aircraft with 20 seats.

General Characteristics * Crew: one pilot * Capacity: 7 passengers * Length:30 ft 3 in * Wingspan:48 ft 0 in * Height:9 ft 0 in * Wing area: 250 ft sq * Empty: 3,000 lb * Loaded: 5,100 lb * Useful load: 2,100 lb * Powerplant: 1 Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Jr. radial engine, 450 hp * Maximum speed:158 mph * Range:455 miles * Service ceiling: 18,000 ft * Rate of climb: 1,020 ft/min

A total of 1,692 Beavers were built during the production run from 1948 to 1968. Many of the original Beavers are still flying and there are a companies in that regard is Kenmore Air, of Kenmore, Washington. Kenmore Air is a scheduled float plane airline that flies a year 'round schedule of flights between Seattle and many destinations in the Puget Sound region and southern British Columbia. Known as "the Boater's Airline," Kenmore also flies cargo such as repair parts to remote locations to get disabled boats back in operation.

Kenmore has complete capabilities for full restoration of Beavers, for its own use and for contracted customers. Kenmore owns many supplemental type certificates (STC) for modifications to the standard airframe and are so well known that advertisements for Beavers for sale usually list them as "Kenmore Beavers." Beavers that originally sold for $50,000 in 1950 are bringing $300,000 on the market.

In Canada, Viking Air also rebuilds Beavers and now owns the rights to manufacture parts for them. The only major revision to the Beaver design during its production run was the introduction of a turbine engined version in 1963. The Pratt and Whitney PT6A6 turboprop engine gave the airplane a lower empty weight, higher take off weight and improved short take-off and land (STOL) capability. The appearance is quite different also, with a longer, reshaped nose and a higher, angular vertical stabilizer and rudder. There have been sixty factory built turbo Beavers as well as several conversions done by others.

The Beaver was so successful that it was recognized in 1987 as one of the 10 most outstanding engineering feats in Canada in the Twentieth Century. Actor Harrison Ford owns a Beaver and considers it his favorite aircraft of the small fleet he currently owns. The Beaver was featured prominently in his motion picture "Six Days Seven Nights."

I just wanted to show off a bit so I am attaching a few pics of my latest build. I have built so many white beavers that I finally had had enough and I printed one in red and one in mustard. While I was building the mustard beaver, I took my red sharpie and you can see the results. I am still working on a B&W model that I will send for your approval before I get serious about putting any real color to the model. ..Am still unhappy with the profile of the nose on the beaver and I need to get that right before I get all of the details and notes for the model page.

This is about Jim Gausman, the designer..and how his Beaver evolved.

The region between the Alaska Range and the Gulf of Alaska is home to more than half of Alaska's population-and more than half of its registered pilots. Anchorage's Lake Hood is the largest floatplane base in the world with 1,000-plus takeoffs on the busiest summer day. Merrill Field, named for pioneer aviator Rossel Merrill, covers 436 acres near downtown Anchorage and buzzes with activity at all hours in summer.

Southccntral has a milder climate than the Interior but features more rugged flying conditions in and around the Chugach Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. Southcentral also encompasses Talkeetna, the gateway to Mount McKinley for hundreds of mountain climbers each year. Air taxis out of the small Alaska town ferry hundreds of climbers to the Southeast Fork of Kahiltna Glacier each year, landing on a runway of snow and ice. Cessna 206s equipped with wheel/skis are a favorite of the Denali flyers.

Southcentral Alaska features a bit of everything for a pilot:
The ocean, countless lakes, rivers large enough to use as a runway with floats, the Harding Icefield and hundreds of other glaciers, and plenty of air traffic.The Southeast panhandle, extending for about 500 miles from Malaspina Glacier to the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island, is Alaska's wettest region, with up to 200 inches of precipitation each year. While sparse in roads, Southeast is lavish in rainforest spruce, hemlock, and cedar, fords, the largest icefields in North America, and thousands of islands.

Floats are a favorite landing gear in Southeast, where rugged coastline and hills limit the availability of airstrips. Pilots in Southeast encounter some of the cloudiest weather in Alaska outside the Aleutians, and floats enable ocean landings in times of trouble or as a routine method of hopping from town to town.
Pilots landing on the region's many glaciers prefer wheel/skis, which enable travel from downtown Juneau to the magnificent ice fields nearby in minutes. The mountains of the Saint Elias, Fairweather, and Coast ranges often discourage flights inland because of the clouds stacked around them. Navigation can also be a challenge for pilots new to the area because of the many fords and islands that resemble one another.

The Interior is an Iowa-size region of boreal forest and muskeg lowlands spreading between the Alaska Range and the Brooks Range. Its distance from the sea makes the Interior Alaska's hottest place in the summer (the all time high of 100° F was measured at Fort Yukon) and also the state's coldest place (the all-time low of 80º below zero occurred at Prospect Creek off the Dalton Highway).

Mark Fisher made this Beaver out of aluminum soda cans

The extreme cold of the region is a unique challenge. Pilots flying at temperatures lower than minus 10° F must preheat their engines before flying. A favorite method of one Super Cub pilot is to fire up a couple of camp stoves, and then cover the flames with stovepipes that extend into the engine compartment. Through trial and error, pilots using this method learn how much heat they can apply without melting wire bundles inside.