Re: Hughes 369 question
I'd take a slightly different line than that. The 269/369 names were the internal model numbers which appeared on the certification paperwork and thus is the type description which appears on the FAA/CAA/etc registers. However, these numbers were considered "not good enough" by the marketing department at Culver City (at the time, prior to Mesa) and hence the 300 and 500 names appeared on all the brochures and the sides of the aircraft as being more "marketing focussed"
Similar problems exist with the likes of the "MD902" not being a name that MDHI would like heard because it's different from the (FAA certified) MD900 and "MD902" would thus need a new certificate in the FAA's eyes (ie loadsa money etc etc). Thus they should be referred to as "MD Explorer" only, even if we all know what "MD902" really refers to.
IanC, nit picking, perhaps, but MDHC (and later MDHI but not MDHS) never marketed any of these things prior to the 369E/500E and thus all the earlier models (and the 269A, 269B which you rightly omitted from the second list) were always "Hughes" 500 or 300 and never MD500s. Some early 500Es were Hughes aircraft, but the majority have been MD500Es. The NOTAR lines have always carried MD names like MD520, MD600 etc as the only (albeit significant in technical terms) involvement Hughes had were the prototypes and MD owned the outfit by the time marketing of those lines started.
Now, is a Lama
- Sud Aviation SA315B Lama (hence the SA part of the title), or
- Aerospatiale SA315B Lama (eg. one built after Sud Aviation merged into Aerospatiale), or
- Eurocopter SA315B Lama (eg. an older SE313B Sud-Est Alouette II converted in the last 10 years) ??
And is an EC130 really an AS350B4?
And an EC145 really a BK117C2?
pp