[QUOTE=Alice Kiwican;10847988]
Originally Posted by
beached az
Out of curiosity, who operates TSI these days?
She used to be based in TSV with Inland Pacific back in the day.
Not a bad balus by all accounts. Sad to see how she's ended up.
TSI was a pretty good bus when Hinterland operated her out of Cairns around 10 years ago. A shame to see how she’s ended up.
I first came across TSI in Kununurra in 1996 when owned by Skywest Aviation. She had a Robinson STOL kit fitted with adjustable C of G, upgraded brakes and 4 stages of flaps. She was HORRIBLE. We all hated flying her. Best memories was over the top in the Otter waiting for John ? to land in TSI. Heard an “oh ****” over the radio. ( this is memories here so give. me some latitude if I’m not technically 100%) After landing it expired that the flap cable tensions were all wrong, one of cables either snapped or a pulley pulled out. Either way he ended up with 40 flap on the right and SFA on the left, short finals at night. He did a great job and got it in. Poor bugger was fairly white from memory. His reward was having his name put on the CARTON-PENALTY-LIST for Friday night beer for nearly getting killed.
TSI followed me to Darwin after that. We had 2 C402 and they only needed one, so they asked me to write a report on which one should go. Needless to say we did not keep TSI.
I was always surprised at how badly that STOL kit screwed up a good aircraft. It didn’t add much TKOF/ LDG benefit and the brakes were absolutely awful. Leather pads on a wagon would have been better..
RIP.