Fabulous View Of A Fokker 50 Takeoff In Iceland - mmm... Nice!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013 at 07:46PM
The journey to finding this Fokker 50 takeoff video with the awesome perspective started with a desire to find a great video that showcased the sound of the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop engine. The Dart was a mainstay of many mid-sized prop airliners from the 1950's thru the 1980's... four of them powered the Vickers Viscount, and both the Hawker Siddeley HS748 and the Fokker F-27 were powered by two Darts, and both aircraft were built in rather large numbers back in the day. The Grumman Gulfstream 1 also had a pair of Darts. I was fortunate to get quite a bit of exposure to the G1 back in the 80's and that's where I really learned that the Darts had an awesome ear-piercing sound that I'm sure many people hated. I loved it. A lot!
But interestingly, this sweet video of the Fokker 50 departing Ísafjörður Airport in northwest Iceland (shot from up on a hill looking down) doesn't have any Rolls Royce Dart engines in it! The Fokker 50 was a 1980's updated version of the F-27 and one of the big updates was to replace the Darts with Pratt & Whitney Canada PW125B turboprops that put out 2,500 hp each. However, the engines aren't really the point of this 58 second video... it the amazing mountain and waterway setting along with the beautiful view looking down as the airplane makes a gentle turn immediately after takeoff as the gear comes up. Wow!
Seeing a view like this is exactly the kind of thing that keeps my fire for flying burning nice and bright! And stay tuned, I'll keep looking for the perfect ear-piercing Dart video : )
This screenshot doesn't do this fabulous takeoff video justice... watch the video!
Reader Comments (2)
Fantastic! I was lucky enough to experience this in a Fokker 50 at Isafjordur when I visited Iceland in 2008. The landing is just as spectacular as you hug the mountains and make a last minute turn. It's like the old Hong Kong airport!
Matt Falcus- Thanx for sharing your experience at the unique Isafjordur airport! I did a quick check on Google Earth and using the measuring tool it looks like the end of that runway is just over 4,000 from that rather large mountain face! It certainly does seem as tho it would be quite the challenging approach in an airplane as large as the Fokker 50 : )