Attempting to bring some objectivity to what seems to be a discussion of the misinformed/promote own agenda/silo mentality/FW bitch fest. I did a bit of research (as advised) and discovered the following.
“They use relatively ancient piston engines” The Lycoming IO engine designed and flew in 1960's apparently this suggests it is a 'poor performer' and there are better engines. The IO360 engine is built like the proverbial 'brick out-house' it is extremely robust, reliable and fuel-efficient. For comparison the P&W PT6 engine was built around the same time and is widely regarded as amongst the best in class. I have never heard negative comments on this engine; rather that it is amongst the best turbine engine of its category and is used in RW and FW.
It has a limited payload and consequently can only have 2 crew – not true. How does anyone think ‘line checks’ or TFO checks/training flts are carried out? The normal FW crewing is 2. The Observer operates the radios AND the cameras. Whereas RW has 3 crew 1 pilot & 2 Observers 1 operating the radios the other operating the cameras.
The high wing design means that is has small windows; If it was a ‘low wing’ aircraft the wings would obscure the camera and Observer LoS surely
Only operates from limited number of airfields due to AvGas availability – not true see below. Additionally there was also a Value For Money issue by “throwing hard earned public money away” – if anyone wishes to look at the map they could discover that just 1 of those sorties lasted almost 9 hrs yes 9 HOURS covering a vast area of the UK’s policing needs. Therefore it represents excellent Value For Money and also could solve the opinion of never needing to land to refuel with this extremely scarce AvGas.
Purchase costs: 1 x P68 costs approximately £900,000: 1 x H145 costs circa £6million – do the maths
Please look at Twitter at NPAS NorthEast the map is there in all its glory and shows where the P68 has operated from and covered
Good Morning from
NPAS East team. With the help of clever software we've tracked tasking since 2019. The map shows the range of locations in, the majority of deployments are from our base at NPAS Doncaster, however we've utilised numerous airports and smaller airfields
Last edited by black.beard; 27th Jan 2022 at 10:52.