First flight of the final year: Smokejumpers' last DC-3 gets ready to work

[Ptah]

Ebiner checks out the window while the retrofitted turbine engines rev up
before the plane's first flight of 2015 last week.

Just shy of her 70th birthday, Jump-15 can still spool up faster than
the smokejumpers she carries.

The young men and women going to fight wildfires have 10 minutes to
get dressed out, briefed and loaded.

The old DC-3 needed just eight minutes to rev her engines and quit the
Earth on the first shakedown flight of 2015.

But to the dismay of many of her pilots and passengers, this will be
Jump-15’s last firefighting season.

“It has been flying since my grandpa was in the Army Air Corps,” smokejumper
Colby Jackson said as the big plane’s engines howled through a pre-season
test run. “He always gets a kick seeing pictures of us with the DC-3. He was
stationed with them in Africa, when they were C-47s.”

http://missoulian.com/news/local/first-flight-of-the-final-year-smokejumpers-last-dc-/article_d7c4bf60-a5a9-5045-b6ac-116201cefc03.html