BIK_116.80
My recollection was that the US operator was rather happy with the Nomad .. no matter, we can continue to agree to disagree.
I am probably a little confused .. where did Hudson and Centaurus come into the picture ? Neither has posted on this thread ? .. or am I missing something here ?
By civil standards, the Nomad has a very good landing performance .. I can recall being rather terrified on my first exposure to the aircraft during a maximum effort landing and stop .. I have never experienced anything that comes close to it before or since, except for the Caribou during STOL operations. If, indeed, one considers the rather sophisticated lateral control system on the aircraft and the comparatively low stall speed, the figures are pretty good for its class.
I am not aware of this turbulent airflow problem associated with flap to which you refer. Perhaps you might care to elaborate for the benefit of all ?
There has been, to my knowledge, only one tailplane failure on the Type. That was a tailplane which had an extremely unusual and, as subsequent investigation showed, fatigue critical operating history which was quite outside the original fatigue envelope. This one failure was particularly sad in that it took the life of an Army pilot. However, it is not at all reasonable to paint the aircraft bad on the basis of that quite unique set of circumstances. I am surprised that you would make such a potentially actionable, ill-conceived, and apparently false statement.
More to the point, were such a situation to be the case, the Type Certificate would have come under some scrutiny .. one should keep in mind that a TC can be suspended or cancelled if the design is shown to be other than in compliance with the Design Standards, although this extreme situation usually is avoided by reassessment and redesign where this is found to be appropriate.
Such a review has occurred at least once with respect to another perceived problem on the Nomad. In that latter case, the TC holder spent a LOT of money to demonstrate that the problem was, in fact, more a concern than a reality.
You are quite correct that the original intention was to use the Nomad to provide fill-in work (between two large military projects) for the then GAF organisation. That ought not to detract from the Type's good points.
While the Twin Otter is a very versatile machine, it is considerably larger than the Nomad .. one really ought to compare apples with apples.
Chuck,
With an operator's hat on I, too, would prefer the Twin Otter for remote operations associated with difficult support and variable maintenance.
One has to keep in mind that the original Nomad design scenario was for a close support military aircraft able to be supported appropriately. The aircraft was never intended to be a Twin Otter competitor.
If the Nomad is not looked after it will present problems .. no-one disputes that. Similarly it was intended to be flown by experienced crews.
Comparing it to other designs which had a longer developmental history misses the point that the Type design never really had a chance to evolve to a point where the field experience was able to be incorporated into design upgrades. This was a consequence of the then Government's decision to scrap the project at the time it did. In the view of many in the manufacturing and design side that was a great pity.
It is a matter of great sadness and loss to Australia that various Governments have seen fit not to support a serious civil aircraft industry in this country .. witness the Nomad and the Victa Airtourer just as two examples.
The Nomad doesn't have a particularly generous CG envelope, agreed. That, of course, imposes a higher workload on the operator's control systems.
So far as damage tolerance is concerned, there have been some Nomad incidents of which I am aware where the aircraft has RTB with structural damage that would open your eyes considerably more than the shrapnel damage described in your mate's case in the Twotter ...
Your comment about the Government department scenario may have some merit in the eyes of some people. However, you would need to know a lot more of the corporate history to be able to arrive at a rather more balanced view. And the fact does remain that some, but certainly not all, of the Type's operators have been very happy with its role in their operations. For some niche operations it has been a case of the only suitable replacement being another Nomad. I concede that the Cessna Caravan may prove to be a useful Nomad replacement in some respects for routine civil operations.
Certainly, the aircraft is not the bees' knees for everyone. However, for appropriate operations, it is a good little machine, works well, and makes money. If the particular operation is not well suited to the Nomad, then it follows that the commercial selection of the Type for the job was flawed by inadequate homework.
[ 07 January 2002: Message edited by: john_tullamarine ]</p>