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Old 26th Feb 2003, 05:24
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Straight Up
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I don't believe the rotors can be folded on the RAF variant.

The RN variant has blade and tail fold 'built in', but this was not put onto the RAF variant. This was probably to save both money and weight, and give less to go wrong.

Dredging through my murky memory, the hubs/blades are the same (blades were all the same colour when I left, looked wrong if it didn't match the a/c colour), but the RAF variant just has the motors and wiring etc not fitted.

As far as I can remember (I haven't seen one for about 3 years) the idea was to take the blades off if you wanted to transport them by air. If memory serves me, the civil variant was delivered on a roll-on-roll-off ship and had the blades re-attached at the other end. After a track and balance ground run it was good to go for the hop to an airfield. The aircraft used for the cold trials must have got to canada somehow, but I can't remember how, it was either air or sea (ferry).

Of course you could always fly them to their destination. if you fancied a days worth of trip and a couple of stop offs. (one was flown to Canada, PP9 I think it was)

This might have changed since I left, if so I welcome any corrections.