Firecracker

[ex82watcher]

I think I remember seeing a Britten Norman Firecracker in a hangar at Goodwood in the late 70s.Wiki tells me that eventually a total of 4 were built.Does anyone know what happened to them ? Are there any survivors ?

[treadigraph]

That would have been the prototype, G-NDNI, which ended up in the USA as N182FR. The three Turbo Firecrackers built for Specialist Flying Training as G-SFTR, S and T also ended up in the States. They all seemed to be airworthy in 2015.

[chevvron]

In '86 or '87, I met Des Norman at Fairoaks where he had brought the Firecracker for the RAAF to evaluate it, the RAF having already ordered a modified Tucano so as to provide jobs in N Ireland.
Very nice guy to talk to.

[chevvron]

I think I remember seeing a Britten Norman Firecracker in a hangar at Goodwood in the late 70s.Wiki tells me that eventually a total of 4 were built.Does anyone know what happened to them ? Are there any survivors ?
No 'Britten' in the Firecracker; it and the Fieldmaster were both designed by Des on his own and built and test flown from Goodwood.
Don't forget the Firecracker originally had a 6 cyl Lycoming 0-540 piston engine before re-engining with the PT6..

[possel]

I recall the story that on A&AEE evaluation of the Tucano, PC-9 and Firecracker at Boscombe Down, one pilot wrote that "entry to the Firecracker's cockpit was difficult and should be made impossible"!

For the record, there were two rounds of evaluations and that was where Desmond Norman went wrong: the other two aircraft manufacturers had modified their offerings after the first round so that they could actually be tested at the second, whereas Norman had simply produced the paper details of the modifications that could be made.

[Haraka]

"entry to the Firecracker's cockpit was difficult and should be made impossible"!
Allegedly first spoken about the Blackburn Botha and reportedly repeated many times since!

[India Four Two]

I’ve seen the words “ergonomic slum” used a few times, to describe the cockpits of British aircraft!

[chevvron]

I recall the story that on A&AEE evaluation of the Tucano, PC-9 and Firecracker at Boscombe Down, one pilot wrote that "entry to the Firecracker's cockpit was difficult and should be made impossible"!

For the record, there were two rounds of evaluations and that was where Desmond Norman went wrong: the other two aircraft manufacturers had modified their offerings after the first round so that they could actually be tested at the second, whereas Norman had simply produced the paper details of the modifications that could be made.
Des told me the RAF wanted to be able to see 250kt indicated in level flight, so Embraer carried out many 'mods' to the standard production airframe to fit the Garrett TPE 331 to achieve this giving it that ugly bulge under the nose.
Dunno what Pilatus did.

[DaveReidUK]

Des told me the RAF wanted to be able to see 250kt indicated in level flight

Yes, I recall that the Tucanos built by Shorts for the RAF had to be capable of 240 kts.

Apparently RAF single-seat pilots can only navigate when flying at a whole number of nautical miles per minute. :O

[possel]

Yes, I recall that the Tucanos built by Shorts for the RAF had to be capable of 240 kts.

Apparently RAF single-seat pilots can only navigate when flying at a whole number of nautical miles per minute. :O
As in a number divisible by 60, you mean (nm per minute)

It was actually the specification's time to height climb (15,000ft in six minutes IIRC) which was the driving force (no pun intended) behind the TPE331 replacing the PT6 in the Tucano - even then it took 6 mins 40 or something like that. NB The JP took over 15 minutes!

[The AvgasDinosaur]

https://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/315604-ndn-1-firecrackers.html
Some distant background here.
Hope it helps
Be lucky
David

[sycamore]

Possel,slight correction; JP3+TIPS 11-12.5 min.-15K
JP4 7-8,18.5 m-35k
JP5/5A 7-8m..18m-30k
Strikey clean;3.5-15k, 8.5m-30k
All civvy ones,even with lighter nav/radios ,a/c are ballasted due to Cof G limits..

[Mustique]

An extremely nice guy - gave me my first job working on the prototype as a trainee. Someone who had eternal optimism and never seemed to let life get him down.

[Genghis the Engineer]

There is (was?, no longer listed on their website so possibly retired or sold on) a Firecracker, I thought the last remaining airworthy one but could be mistaken, in use at the National Test Pilot School in Mojave as a test pilot training aeroplane.

G

[Dan Dare]

ISTR Air Atlantique optimistically had a number of Firecracker fuselages in a Coventry hangar in the 1990s in quite good condition. I don't suppose any of them will fly.

[treadigraph]

They definitely Firecrackers, Dan? I have a vague memory of somebody holding several incomplete Fieldmasters or NAC1s in a Midlands hangar

[chevvron]

Des wasn't one for 'rushing' things and when he first flew the Fieldmaster from Sandown in December 1981, he had already arranged a 'rollout' ceremony; for Farnborough that same afternoon!
The weather was pretty grotty, cloud about 1,200 ft amd I didn't think he'd make it in to us.
First I heard was a faint burst of carrier wave accompanied by a d/f trace. I didn't think it was him because the d/f trace showed somewhere in the vicinity of Andover rather than from the expected direction of Sandown but I transmitted 'blind' to try to get 2-way with him and ended up getting him to fly along the railway line from Andover towards Farnborough.
I never asked him how he'd got where he was and didn't intend to, but eventually he got the airfield in sight and after landing they put the aircraft in 'A' Shed (which was next to the control tower) so that the groundcrew could 'ceremonialy' open the doors and wheel the aircraft out.
In 1982, or it could have been later, he flew it at the Farnborough Airshow, the one snag being he wasn't allowed to demonstrate it during the display as SBAC didn't want him dumping a load of water on the airfield.

[BEagle]

I was at a mate's wedding on 25th Aug 1984 and was enjoying the reception at the Langdale Chase Hotel on Ambleside. At one point a pair of Firecrappers flew up the lake at low level - I gather they were being used for training Iraqi air force pilots by 'Specialist Flight Training' at Carlisle? "Fly past is on time", I quipped...

Boscombe TPs weren't very impressed by the wretched thing. But the Tucano, PC-9, Turbo Firecracker and the paper Australian proposal were all SO slow compared with good old JP5!!

[stevef]

I had several photos of those airframes in Coventry's AAT/Air Atlantique Hangar 7 in 1999 but they got lost by a second-rate shipping company in one of my moves. :{

[treadigraph]

Definitely incomplete NAC-1 Freenlances at Coventry as in pics on this site:

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/norman-aircraft-corp-nac-1-freelance-britten-norman-bn-3-nymph-query.24773/

[treadigraph]

See the original piston Firecracker met with a landing accident in the US yesterday, gear collapse apparently. Hope it can be repaired.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/277557

Re-reading the above, I also had the pleasure of meeting Desmond Norman, at Goodwood when I was 15; my dad had a short business meeting to explore the possibility of selling the Firecracker to the Kenyan Government I believe - certainly recall him as a very nice bloke, probably a case of "bring the lad along!". The aircraft was hangared at the time and I sat in the cockpit at Des's behest. I think Peter Philips was working for him at the time and I may have met him too, for I recall writing to him at Goodwood later on...

[Thruster763]

Old thread but a trip down memory lane for me. I worked on the Turbo Fircrackers (two, the 3rd was not completed in the UK) At SFT in Carlisle and later worked for NDN at Rhoose as avionics and systems designer on the production FeildMaster / FireMaster.
Couple of little known facts:
The Turbo Firecracker used a Schweppes SodaStream CO2 cylinder for the undercarriage emergency lowering.

The production FieldMaster main spar was different to the prototype and the intended fuel gauging transmitters would not fit. I designed and built a new system from scratch in about 3 months. Did the tank intrinsic safety by design and analysis rather than test (could not get a test slot in the timescale) apparently a first with the CAA.

Desmond was a nice guy. I learnt a lot from working at NDN. Peter Phillips was the test pilot at that time but at least some flights were done by Neville Duke.

[chevvron]

Definitely incomplete NAC-1 Freenlances at Coventry as in pics on this site:

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/norman-aircraft-corp-nac-1-freelance-britten-norman-bn-3-nymph-query.24773/
I heard that there were 5 in the Devonair hangar at Little Rissington recently but presumably the've now gone.

[Phil Morris]

An extremely nice guy - gave me my first job working on the prototype as a trainee. Someone who had eternal optimism and never seemed to let life get him down.
Did you work on the Firecracker at Goodwood?

[Phil Morris]

Did you work on the Firecracker at Goodwood? Would there be anyone on this forum who worked on the Firecracker at Goodwood?