New Royal Navy trainers
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Tourist,
The 'Beechcraft Comparison' you recommended shows that the ER (Extended range) version has a range of 2806nm, with a payload of 1 crew & 1 passenger - more than enough for any SAR scenario I can contemplate.....
So, looking at 45(R) Sqn, the only comparable King Air driving outfit in the RAF, it's clearly vastly undermanned, with only a Sqn Ldr in charge. I'll get onto Manning at once....
The 'Beechcraft Comparison' you recommended shows that the ER (Extended range) version has a range of 2806nm, with a payload of 1 crew & 1 passenger - more than enough for any SAR scenario I can contemplate.....
Because for the Crabs to operate a four aircraft training Sqn, they will need Wg Cdr to command it, with around 300 officers and airmen below him (of which 250 would be engineers and around 40 MT Drivers. The remaining 10 would be RAF Coppers - one of which will be a Sqn Ldr, the other 9 would be Cpl's to push the button on the electric barrier into/out of the base). They would need to reopen St Mawgan and then retire the Tutors, Shadow's and Sentinels.
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"The 'Beechcraft Comparison' you recommended shows that the ER (Extended range) version has a range of 2806nm, with a payload of 1 crew & 1 passenger - more than enough for any SAR scenario I can contemplate....."
I think you are taking this thought experiment a little too seriously.
In the unlikely event that they start using them for long range SAR, what would any other crew members extra to the pilot +1 do except look out the window?
One can fly it and look out whilst the other looks at the radar/does radios etc. It's not like they are going to be dropping difars or liferafts is it?
I think you are taking this thought experiment a little too seriously.
In the unlikely event that they start using them for long range SAR, what would any other crew members extra to the pilot +1 do except look out the window?
One can fly it and look out whilst the other looks at the radar/does radios etc. It's not like they are going to be dropping difars or liferafts is it?
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The TBF Grumman Avenger, a carrier-based torpedo bomber, was built to avenge the devastated American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
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With King Airs operated at Cranwell with 45(R) Sqn on the civvy register, Shadows with 5(AC) Sqn at Waddington and now the Avenger with 750 Sqn at Culdrose you'd have thought that it would justify one support organisation for them all, or at least those on the military register, and maybe just one name rather than three!
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However, the 45 sqn Kingair 200s are I believe SERCO owned?
The 5 sqn ones are wierd, and the 750 ones are militaryish.
I'm sure they are on the same IPT, but they do very different things, and in the case of the 200 vs 350 are very different, hence the separate type ratings.
ps I don't think anyone had to pay for the names, so it isnt too extravagant.
Having said that, I will probably find out that they funded at working group to think up names.
I do like the fact that 2 of the punchiest names we currently have are for puddlejumpers!
The 5 sqn ones are wierd, and the 750 ones are militaryish.
I'm sure they are on the same IPT, but they do very different things, and in the case of the 200 vs 350 are very different, hence the separate type ratings.
ps I don't think anyone had to pay for the names, so it isnt too extravagant.
Having said that, I will probably find out that they funded at working group to think up names.
I do like the fact that 2 of the punchiest names we currently have are for puddlejumpers!
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So, looking at 45(R) Sqn, the only comparable King Air driving outfit in the RAF, it's clearly vastly undermanned, with only a Sqn Ldr in charge. I'll get onto Manning at once...
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I do like the fact that 2 of the punchiest names we currently have are for puddlejumpers!
I give it a week.
Victory is an historic relic of incalculable value that reminds us, as a nation, of a time when the fleet was all that stood between us and funny foreign food.
As for the Avengers, if the RN has a need to train rear crew and this aeroplane meets that requirement, WTF are you lot arguing about?
I'm not convinced that the Avenger is the right platform for the turbulent, low level environment, but if the RN finds that it meets their essential training needs, so be it. End of - as they say in yoofspeak.
"With King Airs operated at Cranwell with 45(R) Sqn on the civvy register, Shadows with 5(AC) Sqn at Waddington and now the Avenger with 750 Sqn at Culdrose you'd have thought that it would justify one support organisation for them all, or at least those on the military register, and maybe just one name rather than three!"
Don't know about these new Fishy ones - but I believe the Light Blue ones are all operated to EASA rules and have OEM support (Beechcraft) and, I suppose, a figurehead of a PT being told what to sign.
...and I wonder if Hillman Motors (A Routes/GM Company) think theirs was capable of "Avenging" too?
Don't know about these new Fishy ones - but I believe the Light Blue ones are all operated to EASA rules and have OEM support (Beechcraft) and, I suppose, a figurehead of a PT being told what to sign.
...and I wonder if Hillman Motors (A Routes/GM Company) think theirs was capable of "Avenging" too?
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I'm not convinced that the Avenger is the right platform for the turbulent, low level environment
25 years ago...mmm. That would have been about 7 or 8 years or so after the RN binned the Sea Prince in favour of the Jetstream for Observer training in '79, which they got on the cheap from the crabs* and in which the crew flew in shirtsleeves. The back of the Sea Prince on the other hand was a dead ringer for the black hole occupied by the Observer in the ASW Wx I,III, and SK. ISTR there was another stupidly expensive study about that time trying to establish why, of the 7000 observers interviewed, only 22 had wanted to be Observers when they applied.
As an aside, I still haven't worked out the value to RN Observers of low level over land nav in their curriculum, and also continental landaways involving a stupidly high instructor/student ratio
*that's another story involving the venerable Pig (Varsity), RAF Oakington, the mid 70's defence cuts and of course BEagle will remember that debacle fondly!
As an aside, I still haven't worked out the value to RN Observers of low level over land nav in their curriculum, and also continental landaways involving a stupidly high instructor/student ratio
*that's another story involving the venerable Pig (Varsity), RAF Oakington, the mid 70's defence cuts and of course BEagle will remember that debacle fondly!
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"As an aside, I still haven't worked out the value to RN Observers of low level over land nav in their curriculum, and also continental landaways involving a stupidly high instructor/student ratio"
Simple;
it all helps in the transition to the LH seat of a Commercial Jet later in life!!!!
Simple;
it all helps in the transition to the LH seat of a Commercial Jet later in life!!!!
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"As an aside, I still haven't worked out the value to RN Observers of low level over land nav in their curriculum, and also continental landaways involving a stupidly high instructor/student ratio"
Training is never wasted. Who would have thought we would find observers operating on NVGs over Afghan. Without a very basic grounding in low level nav, the NVG course would have been a lot bigger challenge for them. They are also taught DR Nav even though we have GPS.
One foreign landaway per course is not too extravagant, especially when the Dominie used to fly to Portugal to make one radio call!
Training is never wasted. Who would have thought we would find observers operating on NVGs over Afghan. Without a very basic grounding in low level nav, the NVG course would have been a lot bigger challenge for them. They are also taught DR Nav even though we have GPS.
One foreign landaway per course is not too extravagant, especially when the Dominie used to fly to Portugal to make one radio call!
*that's another story involving the venerable Pig (Varsity), RAF Oakington, the mid 70's defence cuts and of course BEagle will remember that debacle fondly!
The worthless piece of junk known as the Scottish Aviation Jetstream T Mk 1 made a brief and expensive appearance at RAF Oakington when you and I were still enjoying life at RAFC. If memory serves, half the course flew the good old Pig, the other half the Jetstream. The Jetstream people hated the thing and it had a design fault (electrically actuated fuel cocks?) which caused a few engines to stop without being so ordered. For some reason, the Jetstream's electrical system used every method of generating electricity known to man short of the Wimshurst Machine and its vagaries could, it seems, cause things to go unexpectedly quiet.
Scottish Aviation denied that there was a problem until they had a double hush whilst doing a compass swing.... But the final straw was a double engine failure on take-off at CFS Little Rissington in Nov 1974, fortunately without fatalities, whereupon the wretched things were taken out of service.
ME flying training continued on the much-loved Pig, until the defence cuts...sorry, 'review', which ordained that ME training was no longer needed, so the Pigs were finally pensioned off 1976. What little ME refresher training was needed was conducted on the Beech Baron with ba at Hamble; other folk flew a few hours on the Andover or, for those who just needed some asymmetric time, on the Canberra T4. All rather ad hoc though.
By the time the RAF started ME flying training again, the Jetstreams had been modified to eliminate the double hush problem and some had been palmed off onto the Navy as the Jetstream T Mk 2 with a radar pimple on the snout (and perhaps a boathook, aldis lamp and big brass bell), to replace the elderly Sea Prince for looker training.
A miserable, poorly harmonised abortion, the Jetstream T Mk 1 was an abysmal contraption. One ETPS preview assessment concluded that the C-130 would make a good lead-in trainer for the Jetstream; perhaps the words of a legendary test pilot should have been included: "Access to the cockpit is difficult; it should be made impossible!".