Philippine Mars is set to stay in Patricia Bay for Christmas, its trip to an American aviation museum likely delayed to the second or third week of January.
The hulking vintage aircraft took off last Sunday from its Sproat Lake base for the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona — where it is set to become an exhibit — but had to reverse course due to an engine problem that turned out be a blown cylinder.
It was flown to Patricia Bay for repairs, but the decision was made to keep it there for now. Crews will be working on it in the new year, Wayne Coulson, chief executive of plane owner Coulson Aviation, said Friday evening.
The idea is to give the retired water bomber one last mechanical overview by Coulson Aviation engineers before another attempt to make the trip to Arizona, Coulson said.
“We want to go through the engines again and make sure all the valves are dialed in on the other motors,” he said.
Coulson said another consideration was that the aircraft would face 30- to 40-knot headwinds along the way, which would require burning a lot of fuel.
“Then we were going to have to fuel up in San Francisco.”
Last summer, another aircraft from the Martin Mars line, Hawaii Mars, was flown from Coulson Aviation to the capital region to become an exhibit at the B.C. Aviation Museum at the Victoria International Airport.
The flight included an escort from the Snowbirds.
Only seven Martin Mars planes were built, all in the 1940s, and used for ocean patrol and long-range transport by the U.S. navy.
Four of them, including Philippine Mars and Hawaii Mars, were converted to water bombers and used to fight wildfires in B.C. for more than 50 years.
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