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New British jet trainer design revealed

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New British jet trainer design revealed

Old 17th Jun 2015, 13:36
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Build quality on the initial Tucano deliveries reflected a decision to re-employ some dockyard mateys who were checked out on building ships and therefore available for work. Apparently, if you can weld and rivet steel plates, you can do aircraft work as well.
There was the (apocryphal?) story of the seats being unable to be removed for servicing too, as the top of the cockpit fuselage was too narrow to get them out, which begged the question of how they were installed initially
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 14:04
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When I arrived at Boscombe Down in 87 it was said that the techies apparently loved the Tucano - for all the overtime it gave them. It was also said that a Turnround servicing required the rear seat to be removed to allow access to some piece of kit located beneath it.
To be fair to the Tucano it must have one of the lowest loss rates for any RAF trainer.
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 15:23
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I appreciate that the Tucano is now 20+ years old but given the numbers we have, and the required numbers in the future, is it actually necessary to replace the Tucano?

Naive question, maybe, but I just dont know how worn out they are and whether it would have been cheaper to gift them to MFTS for use until they can be demonstrated as being not fit for purpose.
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 15:26
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Trumpet_trousers wrote:
There was the (apocryphal?) story of the seats being unable to be removed for servicing too, as the top of the cockpit fuselage was too narrow to get them out, which begged the question of how they were installed initially
I'd heard that too. I presume they used some form of spreading tool such as a sash cramp working in reverse, plus an FBA adjustment?
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 15:27
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"It was also said that a Turnround servicing required the rear seat to be removed to allow access to some piece of kit located beneath it."

sounds like an MG.........................
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 16:04
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The early days of the Jet Provost threw up an interesting anomaly.

1.Final action on replacing the ejection seat was mandated as to " carry out a full loose article check".


2.First action in carrying out a full loose article check .


" Remove the ejection seat".

Last edited by Haraka; 18th Jun 2015 at 08:16.
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 16:32
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andyy

Bearing in mind where Ascent plan to base BFJT the fact that I alluded to earlier may have played a major part in the decision making process. Unless we just made it a May-Nov operation?!

Also the Tucanos as they currently are can hardly be said to be a 21st century training platform. They would need at least a cockpit upgrade to look the part. I'm not saying the T6 is exactly an X-Wing fighter but it is at least a little more modern. Whether the planned quantity will be enough remains to be seen!

BV
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 16:49
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Thanks for the reply BV
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 22:38
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In my youth I worked on the AST412 project at Brough. We started out with the the P164 - side by side (well if you ask JP QFIs what they would replace a JP with) high wing, and very short. Unusually a tunnel model was made and tested and the drag was pretty awful - even after they eventually corrected for the tares. About the only useful thing I learnt from it was the drag hole effect on the tailplane and the fin - it's fuselage drag was that bad.

Finally someone saw sense and some more elegant mini Hawks were drawn but never tested. From the outset we were trying to keep the speed up to avoid the transition to Hawk speeds being too much, hence the initial designs were jets. The economy of turboprops came to the fore and we then drew aircraft not unlike the PC-9.

The PC-9 and Tucano flew in for evaluation, the Tucano clearly displayed it's Piper origins and we realized it would need an awful lot of rework structurally and a bigger engine to get a useful level speed whereas the PC-9 sold itself by taking off in about the length of the piano keys and went straight into a vertical 8.

We even had help. Looking at the fatigue requirements we wondered what sort of loadings occurred in tail chases. A quick call to a nearby base and our PC-9 met up with a JP and flew a full sortie tail chasing, performed half an hour of aerobatics over the airfield whilst the JP landed and refueled and then a second sortie with the gloves off.

When the winner was announced we were all stunned.

A couple of years later we hosted 20 Saudi PC-9s for training and delivery (they let us stick the transfers on them) that went and beat up a Tucano-less Scampton on the day they were handed over.

I know t' Baron and his minions come in for a lot of stick but some of us really wanted our Armed Forces to have the best kit bought in or even designed by ourselves.

Silly us.
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Old 17th Jun 2015, 23:14
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I seen the original Tucano arrive at Belfast \ Sydenham!

It must have been around summer 1983 & when I was at Palace Barrack's gates in Holywood,NI. (It involved sausages, burgers etc & I suspect most of the British Army in NI ate them at some point in their time here).

I heard an unusual aircraft engine noise, looked up too see what I now know to be an Embraer Xingu & a Tucano landing.

Strangely, I never seen a single production model over Belfast.

I think they made the right decision to build them in the UK.


Carl
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Old 18th Jun 2015, 06:35
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83-90 I was stationed in Holywood mostly on VIP security duties , watched the Tucanos virtually evey day, on day one was used as a chase plane for a short haul flight going into city with undercarriage problems , also saw the Kenyan ? ones with weapons fitted going out to play occasionally . Remember Alan Deacon being drowned in the North Channel following his ejection ,I believe he was doing stores jettison tests when one of them hit the tail-plane causing the aircraft to go out of control.
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Old 18th Jun 2015, 06:57
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"Dart trainer eh? How fast does it go?"
"One Hundred and Eighty...."

*Sorry.
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Old 18th Jun 2015, 14:43
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83-90 I was stationed in Holywood
"Bloody L, you lucky get" I thought when I first read that.
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Old 18th Jun 2015, 14:55
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Trumpet_trousers wrote: Quote:
There was the (apocryphal?) story of the seats being unable to be removed for servicing too, as the top of the cockpit fuselage was too narrow to get them out, which begged the question of how they were installed initially
Beagle: I'd heard that too. I presume they used some form of spreading tool such as a sash cramp working in reverse, plus an FBA adjustment? 17th Jun 2015 13:23
Must be one of those stories that grows over time, as the best stories usually have some level of truth- perhaps difficult to remove, but surely they can be removed- and the yellow and black handle has "removed" the seat on occasion, so obvioulsy the seat can fit between the frame. "Elbows In!"
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