@ SFCC, ditto :ok:

My favourite trick was telling the Captain that the coffee was just arriving - if you were flying you could feel the change of CG when the CC walked along from the rear to the cockpit.

My EASA Part 66 type rating reads " Shorts SD3-30/SD3-60(PWC PT6) "

Many years ago, I was walking alongside a Gill Air captain from the security post to the apron one morning. The based aircraft he drove was a 360 but he was confronted with the sight of a 330 as we walked round the corner. His jaw dropped a mile as the words "You have got to be effing joking!' echoed all around.

I will echo that as I have no idea how it even got airborne. The fins were in the prop wash so any alteration of power required re trimming in all three axis. There was no flight director on the right hand side and in the one I flew the artificial horizon appeared not to have been mounted correctly or was something else twisted?

How it every got a CofA beats me.

Suffice to say they were great fun days and if you offered my a trip tomorrow I would jump at it.

Back before the ending of the cold war, I used to work C23As in and out of Greenham Common every day; what happened to them, were they sold off or are they parked 'somewhere in Arizona'?

Wikipedia is quite clear about the history of the Sherpa’s after the Cold War.
After some work back in the States and a bit in Iraq most of them are sold of.
According Aironline.nl one was now doing jail house rock as Con Air 2.0.

Built in the mid-1980s, military version of the 330, quite a few are still active, some having been passed to the US Forestry Service and are used during the fire season by the smoke jumpers. Others have gone to minor freight operators. Here's one in Arkansas still running a fleet which is ex-USAF :

Shorts 330 (mcneelycharter.com)

I believe some civi 360s were converted to twin tail and freight to become extra C23As for the USAF .
Used to hear them down at the bottom of Green 1 as we staggered upstairs on an Istanbul or such like . Short conversation wondering 'wot it was ... we then were a bit mean giving USAF the nicknames , of which they'd not heard .

rgds dave f.

condor17

"I believe some civi 360s were converted to twin tail and freight to become extra C23As for the USAF"

Yes, although the converted 360s were designated C-23B+ (some subsequently converted to C-23C).

I never quite understood why they took a 330 and a 360, sawed both in half, and put the 330 tail onto the 360 front bits. What did that achieve ?

When passing through Belfast City from time to time I would always look across the runway to see if there were any Shorts parked at their old factory there. Last must have been about 10 years ago. And probably 20 years for the last Skyvan (the only Shorts I have been in; I did the takeoffs but didn't land in it. You can probably guess the rest).

If only it had been that simple. :O

The conversion involved cutting off both the front and back end of a 360, then reattaching the front end with a frame removed (presumably for C of G reasons).

The back ends of the converted aircraft weren't from retired 330s, bearing in mind that the 330 didn't have the rear loading ramp, so easier to manufacture a new back end from scratch.

As for why the 360 was used as a basis, I assume it was to take advantage of the 360's higher AUW, even allowing for the added complication of shortening the forward fuselage.

Don't forget after the Skyvan and before the '330 there was the 'Skyliner', basically a Skvan without the rear loading ramp.
BEA replaced their Heron Mk 1s (fixed undercarriages) at Glasgow with these (probably having seen the performance of the Loganair Skyvan at Glasgow which, on the run to Stornoway, would reach FL90 - its cruising level - just north of Glasgow if given continuous climb) but I think their service was comparatively short lived.

BEA/BA's two Skyvans were gone by mid 1975.

Many moons ago I had a very pleasant enforced night stop at Islay after the BEA Skyvan went tech. Had a very good flight in it back to Glasgow the next day.

One of the few BEA types (perhaps the only) where passengers were routinely offered earplugs, though regular passengers tended to bring their own. I can vouch for the fact that those Garretts were extremely noisy!

My abiding memory of the Skyvan was sitting in the RHS alongside Shorts' chief test pilot, who demonstrated a steep approach and tooth-rattling short field landing at GLA. The landing on the next leg, at Aldergrove, was a greaser - probably because the back of the aircraft was by then loaded with missile rocket motors destined for Blowpipes/Javelins, whose transport by overland/ferry was considered too risky in those troubled days.

The 360 was modified with the twin tail and loading ramp for the USAF and called Sherpas.

The 360 fuselage was a bit longer than 330 fuselage, and could carry missiles from one base to another.

There was a number of Sherpas based at Guam in the mid 90’s.

In Australia the 330 was operated by Sunstate Queensland, Sunstate Mildura, Pelair and Airnorth.
Likewise the 360 was operated by Sunstate Queensland, Sunstate Mildura, Murray Valley Airlines, Hazeltons,
Airlines of Tasmania and Commodore Airlines.

The correct designation for the Short/Shorts 330/360, is "Shed" :ok:

Happy times, although the cockpit pre-flight test and set-up, (performed by the F/O of course), was a bit of a chore. We got it down to a minute or so though :)

Uplinker: The 330 was the "Shed". The 3-60 was the "Super-Shed".

The 360 was of course longer than the 330 (the clue's in the name), but all the C-23 variants, including those converted from 360s, had the same dimensions (identical to the 330). See my earlier post about the conversions.

Re missiles, you may be thinking of the four second-hand SD3-30s bought for the US Army in FY85 which, as former civilian aircraft, lacked the rear loading ramp and therefore couldn't accommodate the outsize loads that the C-23 could.

When they flew in for the Farnborough Airshow, we always said they bringing their chalet with them.