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1990 Picacho C-54 airtanker

Picacho
Picacho

Any of our resident aviation experts have details on this?  IMWTK.

The Army National Guard heliport?

From: Iain Mackenzie <iainamac@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Tanker aircraft at Picacho Az.

Message Body:
Looking for info.
In 1990 during a photo-tour of Arizona, I came upon a C54 tanker sitting on what I thought was a random field near Picacho. We were told it was on standby or stored for the quiet season. Later years I
see that there used to be an auxiliary airfield there, and it's now a U.S. Army helo training field. Can anyone confirm this is indeed where the aircraft was parked,and the reason?
Thanks and Happy New Year from Scotland!

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Comments

20 Comments

  1. COOL, Wally, thanks!

    • Wally, Thank you too for your input to help me. Much appreciated.
      Iain

  2. Air tankers weren’t at PCA, the former Marana AAF Aux field, now Picacho Army Heliport. Prior to being built into the Army heliport that is now, the field sat as an abandoned square with nothing going on for many decades. The tanker aircraft were nearby though. Single engine air tankers and the occasional multiengine air tankers, including a C-54 or two at the time, were parked at the former Ed’s airfield, located about 2 miles north-northwest of Picacho heliport, just up the road on Picacho Highway Rd, on the west side of the road and just north of the Central Arizona Project canal. You can still see the remnants of the two parallel north-south runways, one shorter than the other. Ed’s had a small crop dusting operation at that time, and a few air tankers would also park there, I believe in the off season. Ed’s airfield has been closed for over 20-25 years, but I remember seeing tanker and cropduster aircraft there back in the day. Ed’s used to be known as 20AZ for its airport identifier, but that has been reallocated to Grand Canyon heliport. Hope this helps.

    • Mike,

      Thanks so much for this information.
      I have looked at Google Maps, and it all makes more sense. From memory we parked at the side of the road and just walked over the field a couple of hundred yards to get our pics.
      I have still to scan the slides, but I will send an image when I do.
      I wish you a Happy New Year.
      Iain

      • Happy to help! Growing up north of there in the 1980s and going off road driving in the area, I remember the oddities in the area, such as large aircraft parked at what was a small dirt airfield at the time right next to the road. And the older cropduster planes that used to be based there too. Your question dug up some old, long forgotten memories of the area there. Happy new year!

    • THANKS MIKE!

      • Kelly and All,
        I managed to find my slides from this trip and to my surprise discovered that there were three C54s on this field.

        All are ex Central Air Service and, according the site of the late Geoff Goodall, which has a fantastic list and history of all airtanker companies, these aircraft were withdrawn from use and sent to Arizona during April 1991. These all ended up at Avra Valley airport.
        Iain

        • C-54 fans: I’ve got Iain’s photos in my email inbox and I’ll get them converted and posted by tomorrow. You will love this!

    • Thanks for pointing out this site. Absolute treasure trove of information.
      I’ve spend hours now reading up on a lot of the areas I toured, when Young, Free and Single!!!

  4. When I was in college, I worked for a company named Central Air Service from October 1977 to May 1979. It was owned by a man named Bill Dempsay. I worked at the home base which was in Rantoul, Kansas, although no aircraft were based there during the fire season.
    At that time, Central Air Service’s fleet included 6 Douglas R5-Ds, the Navy version of the C-54 aka DC-4. Central Air also had planes based at Coolidge, AZ, which is a few miles from Picacho.
    Could the aircraft you saw have been one of Central Air’s R5s?

    • Correction: Picacho is more than ‘a few miles’ from Coolidge. More like 25.

    • Charles, Thanks for your input. I now have the scans of the aircraft and they are indeed ex- Central Air Service aircraft. I actually shot 3 of them at Eds Field. We did visit Coolidge but no airtankers there, just skydiving aircraft.
      My log book shows we saw at least one other Central C54 at Avra valley as well, that day.
      Iain

  5. These are photos I took in 1990. This one is Ed’s air park.

      • This is what the now-Picacho Army Heliport used to look like when it was an empty former airfield, before it became the army heliport it is today.
        Picacho

        • In the pictures above, you can see the small building that was at Ed’s Airpark. The picture is looking to the northeast, so the road east of and parallel to Ed’s runways is south Picacho Rd, with the Central Arizona Project canal running east to northeast, south of the airfield.

          The picture of what later became Picacho Army Heliport, used to just be the old square with two old perpendicular dirt runways, as can be seen. In that picture, looking north east also, you can see south Picacho Rd just west of the field, and the same CAP canal to the north, running northeast also. These pics were taken late 1989 to early 1990.

          Being from the area just north of there and living there at the time. I knew exactly what Iain was talking about, but was slightly off about geographically, but I definitely remember the planes there before they moved to Avra Valley airport. I’d completely forgotten that I had my own aerial photos of those two exact places that I’d taken while flying over, that I had just randomly decided to photograph. What you see of Ed’s airfield now, you can barely make out as it’s grown over and deteriorated, whereas in my old pic, it was still open as a small agricultural airfield. I’ve got some more pics of planes that were temporarily stored there, before they were moved to Avra Valley Airport (E14), that is now known as Marana Regional Airport (AVQ).

          • Mike, Amazing. I have vague memory of seeing what i thought was a trailer or RV and thats when a guy came out to see what we were doing!! he was happy when we held up our cameras to indicate what we were doing. I have shots of your planes but all taken at Avra valley!!

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