AH the Nomad.
Back in the 80's I was flying both Nomads and the Twin Otter.
As I pilot I loved the Twotter and Nomad was an utter piece of Crap.
Yes it would land shorter than an Otter, but not by much, but it needed far more distance for Takeoff.
At anything near max weight whilst taxing the Nomad would lean in a turn and once straitened up it would stay leaned. You would have to turn the other way to get the wings level again.
EVERY landing on a muddy runway (a design feature) you would spend about 30 minutes cleaning the mud off the landing gear micro switches so they would work again.
At least once a day the chip light would go off and you would have to take it out, clean it and put it back in again. Every Nomad pilot had a grease stain on the right shoulder of his shirts!
In turbulence the fuselage would stay perfectly still and the control column would violently go into your stomach and then go into the instrument panel. No other aircraft I have flown does this.
On the N22 the seat was bolted in its most forward position to remain 5 degrees in front of the prop meaning once you where in there was no way of moving, especially if you left your wallet in your rear pocked. There was no way of removing it in flight! This also meant you could not move the ailerons full deflection with both hands remaining on the control column, your knees got in the road!
After landing on a bush strip, you would have to go down the cabin putting all the overhead panelling back in place.
The N22 had a design feature of automatic flap retraction from full flap to half flap or go-round position. Some designer thought this was a good idea. It was the most dangerous feature of the aircraft. In the tropics in gusty wind situations and wind sheer there was so much drag with full flaps that large power inputs where sometimes necessary resulting in the flaps coming up close to the ground.
When training you could not cycle the gear and the flaps more than 6 times in 30 minutes (limitation from memory) or you would burn out the electric motor driving it all.
I can go on but you get the idea.
In principle it was a good aircraft but it was still a prototype when it was produced and was never developed from prototype. It needed more development, and then produced, maybe the new one will get the development it needs, but I doubt it.
