Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1718978
Thoughts.

I worked on the Tucano in "Whitehall" (actually a building just off Oxford Street), then Boscombe Down, on quite a few aspects of its introduction to service. It was not a brilliant aeroplane on numerous levels, and very clearly a political purchase as all expert opinion preferred the PC9 or even the PC7.

Nobody rated the Firecracker, but incidentally that aeroplane's still in service at the National Test Pilot School in Mojave, where student test pilots use it to develop their aeroplane assessment skills.

The task of getting a civil Permit to Fly (I think you can probably discount a CofA) on it won't be trivial, but we did document the aeroplane well at Boscombe, as presumably did our colleagues in Farnborough on the structural aspects - so the data should be there to do the job: probably with a slightly restricted envelope compared to the military one (I'm thinking particularly of spinning). I do recall reports: almost certainly lost in some tidy up over the years, showing that the maintenance man-hours on the aeroplane was considerably greater than predicted [somewhere around 10 man-hours/flying hour rings a bell], so the running costs are unlikely to be low. It's also got two live seats, and the overheads on those won't be trivial either.

The general understanding was that Shorts built the aeroplanes "to fit" so interchangeability of parts between airframes may be hit-and-miss at best. That will have a significant impact on the ability to keep some going. At one point we had some airframes which rolled inverted if you stalled them in the landing configuration - a problem eventually solved by randomly swapping tail/front fuselage combinations until they stopped doing it. At Cranwell they found that the range of airframe nose-to-tail lengths was around 10", and the two airframes I back-seated at Boscombe had around 3" difference between them in seat base-to-canopy height. That's a lot of variation.

The task of getting it onto a civil Permit would be rather interesting - if anybody is serious, I doubt I have the capital to invest, but I do have most of the skills and would be interested to at least have a chat about it. Any excuse to look at increasing my long-static ejection seat hours is worth talking about!

G
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By ozplane
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1719053
Daft thing is the Texan is the Pilatus PC-9 built by Beechcraft, which is what the RAF wanted in the first place. Speaking to an eminent RAF instructor yesterday he didn't see the need for the Texan as the new Grob Prefect was turning out to be a very capable machine.
By chevvron
#1719227
Cardinal Sin wrote:I sat in the Prefect at RIAT. Rather impressive on a range of different levels.

But a bit complicated for ab initios; do they still keep a fleet of Tutors for these?
(Thinks :Bloody cheek, stealing the name of my favourite glider) :twisted:
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By Ophelia Gently
#1719249
kanga wrote:
allout wrote:Please, how do the Texan and Tucano compare?


The Tucano was chosen by the RAF, the Texan was chosen by the outsourced contractors ? :)


The Tucano was chosen by the MoD, the Texan was chosen by the outsourced contractors? There, fixed that for you Kanga old chap! :-) (The RAF really wanted the PC-9)
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By Dominie
#1719293
The T-6 Texan is "based on" the PC-9, rather than being a PC-9. According to Wikipedia, "Additional requirements and conflicts between the Air Force and the Navy resulted in delays, cost increases (from initial estimates of $3.9 to roughly $6 million per aircraft), and a completely new aircraft that is 22% or 1,100 lbs heavier than the Pilatus."

Sounds a bit like the EMB-312 and the Shorts Tucano, especially the bit about "additional requirements"!! 8)
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By chevvron
#1719363
Dominie wrote:The T-6 Texan is "based on" the PC-9, rather than being a PC-9. According to Wikipedia, "Additional requirements and conflicts between the Air Force and the Navy resulted in delays, cost increases (from initial estimates of $3.9 to roughly $6 million per aircraft), and a completely new aircraft that is 22% or 1,100 lbs heavier than the Pilatus."

Sounds a bit like the EMB-312 and the Shorts Tucano, especially the bit about "additional requirements"!! 8)

Precisely. The basic 'standard' Embraer Tucano had to be re-designed to instal the Garrett TPE 331 in place of the P & W PT6, all for the sake of a few extra knots cruising speed.
By Dominie
#1719426
chevvron wrote:Precisely. The basic 'standard' Embraer Tucano had to be re-designed to instal the Garrett TPE 331 in place of the P & W PT6, all for the sake of a few extra knots cruising speed.

Actually it was all for the sake of achieving the 6 minute climb to 15,000ft that the specification required. Even with it, the Tucano took 6 min 40sec (IIRC) but that was a huge improvement on the JP which was 14 minutes or something like that (a large part of a one hour sortie).
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1719446
It seems unlikely that a new Pilatus PC9 nine now is all that similar to the PC9 that competed against the Tucano in the late 1980s, so whether you buy a PC9, or a Texan , it's a reasonable statement that it's a much developed aeroplane compared to the one seen last time.

G
By chevvron
#1719447
Genghis the Engineer wrote:It seems unlikely that a new Pilatus PC9 nine now is all that similar to the PC9 that competed against the Tucano in the late 1980s, so whether you buy a PC9, or a Texan , it's a reasonable statement that it's a much developed aeroplane compared to the one seen last time.

G

Why not call it another number like err PC21? :twisted: