Cherry RipeI was just looking-up the terms of HAL’s Do-228 production license ( seems it covers “Asia region” ) when I found this in Flight archive regarding the Chetak ( SA.316 Alo III ):
More than 250 have been completed in India for civil and military use under the local name of Chetak. In addition to a number of military export customers, the USSR purchased eight Chetaks for civil use.
Aeroflot Alo IIIs?! Anyone seen any photos or info? Thanks!
Edit: through Google Books search I found a footnote reference to Delhi Domestic Service dispatch 10 August 1984: “8 Helicopters Exported to USSR Last Year”. So it did occur…
Edit2: Found a photo! Unfortunately no supporting info, but it is a 316 all right and has the distinctive Chetak blade antenna on the port nose.
Cherry RipeAnd as for the Hawk reaching the end of its development, well hasn’t achieved an awful lot in almost 40 years of flying??? Britains greatest military aviation export perhaps?
The Vampire was pretty popular too. Perhaps we should re-equip the Red Arrows with some of those to celebrate our export success?
Or Meteors; more of those were exported than Hawks have been built in total. So how about a Meteor-Vampire classic pair?
I would also contest that the RAFAT contribute much to RAF recruiting; most of what I have encountered has been at a grass-roots level, through ATC or UAS. And very, very few enlist with the aim of becoming a fast jet pilot ( at Cranwell it was about 2 out of 32 in my group ). Many, many more are interested in “rotary”, to which the RAFAT are irrelevant.
Cherry RipeThere will come a crunch point soon, when the RAFAT are the last unit flying the T. Mk.1 / Series 60 airframe.
That might be an opportune ( from PR perspective ) point to phase them out and replace with alternating display pairs each year.
Nothing wrong with reverting to Tucanos or their successor for a team, either. Esquadrilha da Fumaça put on quite a show.
They have been good ambassadors for BAE and UK plc but the Hawk, too, is coming to the end of its development life.
Cherry RipeWhat about in a 1 on 1 engagement? Is the Tucano more powerfull, engine wise, speedwise than the Spit?
I was trying to cheat 🙂
Dynamic
Don’t have data to hand but I would expect a late-war single seater to eat the Tucano in the horizontal plane. It’s not designed for instantaneous turning and I don’t recall any requirements in the AST spec.
But in the vertical plane. Tucano initial climb-rate is from the mid-2000 to mid-3000 fps in “standard” trim ( 2.5 tonnes, training mission, two crew ). That’s late-1930s fighter performance and on-par with this for a Mk IIA Spit. AST spec was 6 minutes to 15,000 feet and this was achieved.
Power-loading actually favours the Tucano against early-model Spits, particularly at altitude, with 1,110 shp from the TPE331. But I expect that advantage to drop-off as installed power increased in later Marks.
Structural
The Belfast Tucano is stressed to sustain +6 / -3 G every day for its 12,000 hour service life ( at training weights ).
The Spitfire, from what I can see, was specified in the original F7 / 30 for 9 G ultimate load, i.e. structure will likely fail beyond that. Probably still has the edge on paper and no-one really paid attention to G-loadings during wartime unless it came back bent. They didn’t have G-meters fitted… so I don’t know how hard they actually pushed them in combat.
Cherry RipeTom,
You could do worse than take a look at Tangmere’s new website – http://www.tangmere-museum.org.uk/
I hadn’t visited that site before, but it IS a really good design.
The search feature even found results for “transom”, which I had spotted in the Artefacts list. Impressed.
Not being a museum curator I don’t have a concern about “virtual tourists”; many of us won’t be able to visit these museums anyway, so putting as much info as possible online is in my opinion a good thing if it causes the museum’s site to become a reference point.
One other request: as on the Tangmere site, please include public transport directions for visiting.
Cherry RipeIn terms of user interface, perhaps a public-friendly main site but with a really good search function for the enthusiasts to find info. And not something relying on Google search with ads at the top!
Alternatively, a way to quickly navigate to the relevant “category”. Not a museum site, but Cardiff Airport has an interesting use-case based landing page; four big tiles right in the middle make it quick and simple to drill-down.
Something like that might work for a museum site: Visiting Us, What to Do, About the Exhibits, Museum Blog.
Cherry RipeI haven’t found any mention of PC-6s registered in Hawaii in the late 1970s.. which would suggest that it was something they “brought with them”.
Edit: According to this there were no actual PC-6s on Air America’s inventory by 1978. The tail livery doesn’t match AA anyway, nor does it match another known CIA operator of PC-6s, Continental Air Services. So is it a civvie bird on a carrier? Hmm.
Edit2: Oh-hoh! How does this livery look for a match? Bird & Sons, another cover operator.
Cherry RipeCould it be the admiral’s barge? 😀
Funny you ask that; whilst moored at Pearl in late 1978 Admiral Davis succeeded Admiral Hayward as CINCPAC, onboard CV-63… according to this.
And it’s definitely about that date, or at least after October 1977 when VF-213 re-equipped with F-14s; you can see their tail insignia on the port fantail.
Edit: an on a tangent, this is an interesting article on how pressure from Helio lead to the cancellation of a Navy programme to use the Porter to support brown-water ops in Vietnam. Several years later the USAF “discovered” the Porter again for Credible Chase.
Cherry RipeA little off topic but dose anyone know when the RAF E-3’s are due for retirement
Nothing on the cards yet. One of the seven ( “Sneezy” ) was quietly parted-out for the benefit of the other dwarves and the other six appear to be regularly cycled.
Though there was one that hadn’t been seen flying for a couple of years, it went to the USA for work and now appears back in service. Edit: ZH106, fuel tank leak into electronics bay.
A common platform for AWACS / ISAR / ELINT / MPA would be lovely but the MoD have no cash to even start moving in that direction ( edit: except for writing capability assessments ). Make do and mend for now.
Edit: though I do wonder if SATCOM and datalinking means that a future AWACS could be reduced to AEW, with controllers ground-based? Not sure if feasible but would contribute to common platforming and smaller aircraft.
Edit2: Ah, back in the days when Flight included useful information. Design life for the 707 airframe is 60,000 hours.
Cherry RipeCherry Ripe: You are right of course, not all in the MOD are ‘clueless numpties’ (your words not mine).
A lot of them are – my words based on long experience.
🙂 I did choose my words carefully!
The point I was trying to make with the extracts was that people here have been debating about what airframe can do-it-all. The noises coming from MoD are that there is no desire or need to buy a single-airframe-solution.
e.g. Global Hawk for area surveillance, bizjet or Herk for on-demand SAR / EEZ interception, satellites or SOSUS for submarine detection / tracking. How to prosecute an attack? I don’t know.
A comparable mix might be the combined Customs, USCG and US Navy operations in the Caribbean in the 1990s, with AEW for area coverage, modified bizjets ( radar and IIR ) for interception and armed helos and aircraft for prosecution. The expensive stuff is only rolled-out when a weapon needs to be released.
Cherry RipeWhich Aviation Museum websites do you think are best?
Hi Tom,
What’s your target demographic? Casual non-aviation person, informed or aviation nut?
In the first category, I personally find East Fortune’s site awful but a work colleague organising a family trip found it great for hooking-in wife + kids. From their perspective the dynamic layout and lack of airframe info was a positive.
Ulster Aviation site would be aimed at middle category; reasonable amount of info about their exhibits, aimed at groups such as ATC squadrons, ex-servicemen and civic groups; these are the bulk of its organised tours. But is delivered in a terrible Flash interface. Avoid avoid!
Aviation nuts will probably not want any distracting graphics or irrelevant adjectives . RAF Museum site actually has interesting approach; once you push through the glossy, shallow “come visit us” interface there are pages with just lists of documents. Perfect 🙂
Edit: if aiming at the av nut market, do consider adding a list of ancillary / minor exhibits. One of my fondest memories was wandering into a building at Newark ( early 90s ) and discovering all sorts of unlisted goodies like Orange Putter.
Cherry RipeSo, in a dogfight which would win, Tucano or Spitfire? Assuming you fitted some guns to the Tucano of course!
A fully-fueled Tucano has a cruising endurance of a little over six hours. I think it could probably dawdle around at, say, 28,000 feet, and wait for the Spit to return to base 🙂
Cherry Ripe“What do we need the next ‘UK Replacement MPA’ to do, when, and at what level of capability?”
Which prompts a further question:
“Who in government or senior levels of service has any idea how to answer that question?”
There have been at least three MPA capability assessments since October 2011. I’m not privy to their results, but they’re not all clueless numpties in the MoD.
Just checked: AVM Mark Green, Head of Jointivity, has been heading this work. Hope that also addresses general bashing of the RAF for “not playing” in the purple jointness zone.
EDIT: Some general notes from the Defence Committee, Fifth Report of Session:
8. … The study into Wide Area Maritime Underwater Search (WAMUS) concluded that in the near term the most appropriate solution to a potential underwater surveillance requirement was a manned aircraft, but the Department’s longer term objective is to merge as many surveillance requirements as possible into single equipment builds
16. We note that the Minister does not think it is an essential prerequisite for maritime surveillance and the attack prosecution capability to be delivered by the same asset. In response to our Report the MoD should set out the supporting evidence and likely costs of this split assets approach
18. … We agree that in the longer term unmanned systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and lighter-than-air vehicles may well be a way forward, but also note the reported concerns regarding the limitations of using satellite technology.
Cherry RipeThat’s an AN-12, mate.
Ah yes I see the two props to starboard now. Cheers.
The “trainer” could be an SU-25?
Good fit! Matches with Google Maps too, now that I though to have a look.
And this on Maps suggests that the two “DC-4s” are actually DC-6s. Nacelles over-wing are almost identical in length, whereas the inboard on DC-4 are much abbreviated.
Amazing how much smaller the KC-135 is compared to the Il-76 in the Maps photo.
Cherry RipeSecond picture is from here, bunch of interesting stuff at N’Djamena. Is that a pair of DC-4s on the left, then under the port wing of the An-124 there is a Mi-8 or 17, a jet trainer I haven’t identified and an An-8.
Later in the video is a quick shot of a PC-12 and a Gulfstream II ( TT-AAI ). Plus lots of lovely, lovely French Transalls.
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