How does the Porter compare to a Van for meat bombing? Is the Van more efficient?
I never flew the Caravan and don't know enough about them so perhaps a Van driver can jump in with some comments.
For the Porter we were dropping 10 skydivers to 12,000ft in 20 to 25 mins wheels off to landing depending on temperature , the -20 in the B1-H2 was severely temp limited in temps over 40deg C and would really struggle to get airborne with a full load , from memory you were lucky to get 28psi of torque in hot weather compared to 38.5psi torque limit . I can only remember a couple of cold days where were torque limited .
[Note : limits per the book are 705 climb , 750 deg TIT / 42.5psi max power , we had operator set limits of 680 deg (top of the green arc) and 38.5psi , on a really hot day we'd bump it up to 705 and then back off to 680 once established on climb ]
For me it really gets back to what you pay for the aircraft , the ex Oz Army Porters were super bargains (A$300,000 to $350,000) compared to a Caravan at around $900k to $1 million so in that situation the Porter would win. If you were paying the same money as a Caravan I think the Caravan would be a better proposition as I think they can carry more skydivers.
As I mentioned before the Porter was extremely reliable with only avionics problems and a battery as unscheduled maintenace and again I don't know enough about the Caravan but it's more complex and has electric flaps compared to the Porters manual crank out flaps.
Caravan guys , how do the numbers compare ?