Piper Cameron…that is exactly the attitude that has undermined production in Australia for decades.
It’s outdated and harms us. ‘Australian cars aren’t any good, can’t compete so let’s stop making them’!
How about making them better so they can compete? Some with political agendas use the outdated argument that unions are too powerful to permit production success in Oz. Really not an issue anymore and further bypassed by production automation improvements.
With that thinking all we are destined to is simply export dirt to make money.
Both the Nomad and the G8 saw a global need (not just Australian) for a simple utility aircraft. And the G8 was/
IS successful globally.
The Nomad apparently suffered from the wrong engine and a couple of design issues but nothing insurmountable. Fix those and it’s a winner. The simple fuselage design, field maintenance abilities and rugged construction aren’t just needed in Australia. US operators love the Airvan and both designs are perfect for Africa, South America, Indonesia and many other locales where complex aircraft are impractical.
Just look at Pilatus as an example of how small, non U.S./UK companies can hit a niche and be very prosperous. There are others (SAAB, Embraer etc).
The Textron SkyCourier sure looks like a specced-up complex Nomad to me. It will be successful because it’s probably a good aircraft. With sensible planning that could easily have been Nomad MkII. However the SkyCourier is expensive. An updated Nomad should be able to fill many of the same mission requirements at a lower cost to the SkyCourier.
But what our aircraft most suffer from is that damned old attitude. If it’s not British or American it’s no good and us colonials could never possibly hope to compete. And why the hell it took Mahindra to invest in GA is beyond me, it was never really a seamless match.
With some savvy backing and committed, intelligent marketing, both aircraft can still be absolute winners. There is a synergy between the designs and a massive emerging market. For a canny investor it’s actually a simple way to enter the market, the bulk of hard work has been done, no need to waste precious resources on design, tooling, testing, government approval etc, it’s all there done and ready to go.
A great example of this is Albatross G-111T being put into production in the NT.
Friggin’ awesome.
They’ve seen a niche, got the rights to a brilliant aircraft and off they go. And the NT Government is helping (not hindering, as governments so often do) which is hopefully a harbinger of change.
https://nt.gov.au/news/2022/new-terr...of-first-plane
Free-trade arrangements Australia has recently organised will also really help from a marketing standpoint.
We have clever and committed folks in the aviation sector here, and with committed and patriotic investors the likes of Twiggy Forrest, Mike Cannon-Brookes etc (who seem to be very ‘buy-local’ oriented) but first we need to lose that damned outdated attitude now.