The DHC-6 in my humble opinion is a truely remarkable A/C from the point of view of its robustness, and ease of field maintainence.
It is a machine that I am pleased to say I am very fond of.
It is used in many area's around the globe, from Water/Floats, Coral, Stone, Sand, Grass, Gypsum, and Paved surfaces.
Alot of these sufaces have vibration frequencie's that cause the instrument panel to shake somewhat, and this frequecy varies hugely dependant upon the condition of the strip, and its surface.
Last week a brand new machine ( of another type) was grounded becuse of a failure of a PFD screen, due to the failure of a cooling fan.
The replacement part was only available ex USA, and only then after 3 days, the wrong part arrived? another few days and another was located from another source.
These parts apparently were very pricey indeed for what they were.
Now I understand that the NEW VIKING TWIN OTTER is being built to save weight with PFD screens and going away from the Analog instrumentation that alot of these countries in very remote locations operate.
I wonder if this will detract from its robustness and ease of maintainence in these locations, IE in the pacific attracting experianced engineer's has always been an issue, and always will be.
What will this mean to spares, engineering skill, down time "COSTS", and spares carried at what cost? in comparisim to Analog?
Engineers opinions please.
Chr's
H/Snort.
