Shorts 360 Ex-Flight Crew Required
 

Hi there,

I'm writing an article looking at the history of the Shorts 360 to mark the 40th anniversary of its first flight.

I was hoping to possibly speak to any ex-360 flight crew to get a pilots eye perspective about what the aircraft was like to fly.

If anyone would be willing to assist please drop me a DM for more info.

Thanks in advance.

Do you need specifically Shorts 360 flight crew - bearing in mind that the 330 was on the same Type Rating ?

Hi
 

PM sent...

Yes, I can understand why the differences course - to prevent all the reports of "one tail is missing" on your walkaround. :O

Nice aeroplane in good weather. Don't even ask about icing!!

Yeah.
Sheds are fine places for the undiscerning to inhabit in summer...

EX Jersey 330 + 360...... PM sent👍

This is not a criticism - I also have always referred to the type as a Shorts 330 or 360, but if you are writing an article about the aircraft, reading the entry on Wikipedia it appears that it should correctly be referred to as a Short 330 or Short 360

Type data sheet says "SHORT SD3-60"

The Irish Concorde.

As always, Wikipedia needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. :O

"Shorts" is/was the usual contraction for the manufacturer Short Brothers (of whom there were 3, hence the plural) or, for a time, Short Brothers and Harland. For example this 1947 ad:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c6892e56f2.jpg

Confusingly, up to the 1960s, its products were usually prefixed by the manufacturer name in the singular (Short Stirling, Short Sunderland, Short Skyvan, etc), with type designations typically starting S/SA/SB/SC.

That continued in the certification designations of the commuter aircraft in the 1970s, hence Short SD3-30 and SD3-60, but for marketing purposes those were considered a bit of a mouthful, hence the more snappy Shorts 330 and Shorts 360 (note the plural in the name). Pretty well all marketing materials used these terms, whereas anything to do with airworthiness used the Type Certificate designations

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ad716c4322.jpg


"Short 330" and "Short 360" are neither one thing nor the other and I've never seen those in any authoritative source.

Short Skyvan? The 330 and 360 were more of a Long Skyvan...

Thanks for that, I will happily go back to referring to them as Shorts🙂

(However, I won’t go as far as referring to a previous employer of mine as “Bristows” - that always grates on my ear, and I was always told that Alan Bristow insisted on it being referred to in the singular)

I often thought "Shorts" referred to the CC who were all of less than average height on every flight I took in them....................

When the first aircraft were delivered to US customers, there was an ad campaign featuring cabin crew wearing t-shirts emblazoned "Come and look inside my Shorts".

Coming back from Belfast to Luton on a Capital 360 back in 1989, the pilot came on the blower to announce "We've got some weather ahead, if we go up you turn blue and I get icing, if we go down we get turbulence and you turn green!". We went down and we did!

Which is why it was known as the Vomit Comet.

360
 

I absolutely loved my time on the Shed.
My first commercial type so nothing to compare it to, but I can categorically say it flew a great deal better than it looked.
My outfit still had one 330 on the fleet but I never had the opportunity to find out how it differed.

Happy times from a different era, sadly.

One (well, two) of the few types where each pilot has his/her own cockpit entry door. :O

Made out of the box the Twin Otter came in.

@ 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.