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RAF to retire Tucano

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RAF to retire Tucano

Old 24th Oct 2019, 16:14
  #101 (permalink)  
 
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SWB

A few years back 1 FTS consisted of 1 Sqn and 2 Sqn (not real Sqns but FTS Sqns). 2 Sqn are the blue badges. I was in 1 Sqn and the badges (not shown) were blue/red/yellow.

Sometime in the 2000s these because 72 and 207 Sqns. The red and yellow badges are 207. 72 will shortly reform at Valley.

BV
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Old 24th Oct 2019, 18:10
  #102 (permalink)  
 
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Wot he said, thanks BV, sorry SWB. I’d left before they got Sqn numbers. That explains the blue badges I remember being on the same board as the red ones then, and I think Keren being on both.
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Old 24th Oct 2019, 21:53
  #103 (permalink)  
 
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A couple of things from a retired Tucano EDIT Technician (the RAF's Engineering Development Team at Scampton in the early 90's). Some things only become apparent from the perspective of a new career:

The Embraer Tucano's wing and main gear were taken directly from the Piper Navajo. Embraer produced the Navajo Chieftain under licence in Brazil. (Embraer had obviously built too many Navajo wings).

More significantly; like most of the aircraft systems, Shorts undertook a complete re-design of the Tucano's hydraulic system (for some reason) using components of their own choosing. None of we technicians could ever understand why they installed a hydraulic reservoir vertically with its "suction" port at the top; it guarantees that, if there is any air in the system, that will be drawn into the pump in preference to hydraulic fluid. And why was it so big? Years later, I'm a Licensed Engineer learning the ropes on my then (Scotland's) airline's Shorts 360. I'm inspecting the hydraulic system, and there's the same reservoir, but in its intended, horizontal, orientation with the suction port at the bottom. (Shorts had obviously made too many 360 reservoirs. And it wouldn't fit in the Tucano's hole the right way up).
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Old 24th Oct 2019, 22:42
  #104 (permalink)  
 
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IRA, Shorts
The point I was trying to make was that the aircraft were parked up for 24 hrs only on the assumption that the IRA wouldn't use a longer fuse as they would believe that the RAF would have done an inspection and discovered the bomb in that time. That was the theory anyway, seemed clear enough to me!
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Old 25th Oct 2019, 08:30
  #105 (permalink)  
 
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DD's comments re the Tucano are certainly interesting and news to many I suspect. . Those of us who left the Service and worked in Industry could doubtless also make similar observations along the lines of the philosophy of " We make aeroplanes,only in order to make a profit" .
I suspected that a compendium of these tales would fill a very substantial book and raised this topic years ago with a now deceased well known test pilot.
He agreed totally and added that the subsequent series of court cases brought against the author would also make fascinating reading.
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Old 25th Oct 2019, 12:29
  #106 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by Ken Scott


The point I was trying to make was...
Sorry, I wasn't clear. Shorts, along with many other NI companies, was well known for its employment of predominantly non-republican staff.

EAP
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Old 25th Oct 2019, 19:39
  #107 (permalink)  
 
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Tucano ; gone but not forgotten....

Well this was the day the RAF retired it's Tucano fleet and the four final Tucano students of 274 BFJT course were awarded their wings by ACM Mike Wigston CAS .
Quite a bit about the day has appeared on social media and also featured on BBC Look North from Leeds again and is available to view on the BBC iPlayer from 09:20 ;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...-news-25102019
and Linton's Twitter feed ;
https://twitter.com/RAFLintonOnOuse
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Old 25th Oct 2019, 21:13
  #108 (permalink)  

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I couldn’t help thinking that OC 72 Sqn would be really impressed to be captioned, as he was, merely as “Flying instructor”.
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Old 26th Oct 2019, 00:23
  #109 (permalink)  
 
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Last man down. ZF135 taxying in to a wet welcome.
A good, if somewhat sad, day.




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Old 26th Oct 2019, 14:16
  #110 (permalink)  
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Good old ZF135 - "T1", the first of 130!

It hardly seems like 30 years ago that the Tucano entered service but, apart from the BBMF's Chipmunk(s?), that's the last aircraft out of service that I ever had my hands on. It does still amuse me that, as an engineer, I wrote a good chunk of the CA Release. It also still annoys me that the first aircraft lost was due to runaway trim at high speed, and a certain Wg Cdr had previously refused my suggestion to put a note in the Aircrew Manual (Topic 15?) recommending to reduce speed at once if that occurred, on the grounds that "every pilot knows that"!

One lovely argument with Shorts was about sealing the airframe against water ingress. They originally used some blue compound (PX24, IIRC) which was a permanent one-time use sealant. After dowsing the aircraft with water they removed all the panels (breaking the seal) to check that no water had got in. Satisfied, they then replaced all the panels and couldn't understand why it leaked the next time it was left in the rain...
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Old 26th Oct 2019, 14:40
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Originally Posted by possel
It also still annoys me that the first aircraft lost was due to runaway trim at high speed, and a certain Wg Cdr had previously refused my suggestion to put a note in the Aircrew Manual (Topic 15?) recommending to reduce speed at once if that occurred, on the grounds that "every pilot knows that"!
If I may make a slight correction, it was actually an inadvertent full nose down trim application during an inverted spin and not a trim runaway at high speed (I did the ADR analysis for the BOI). The aircraft was recovered from the spin but was not pulled out of the dive. It bunted to the inverted at which point the crew rolled erect and it bunted down again; they ejected on about the down vertical at, from memory, about 380 KIAS.

I once made the same inadvertent trim input during the CA Release trials and I wrote it up saying that ".. if it happened in service it would not be a problem as you would notice the higher pull force during the dive pull out and all you had to do was to retrim nose up". How wrong I was! We continued to see it happening occasionally during inverted spins and it became a big pre-flight briefing point.
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 17:33
  #112 (permalink)  
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Thanks LOMCEVAK, that's very interesting. 380 KIAS must have made their eyes water!!
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 17:57
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I see a few rather senior Officers have been quite sad about the Tincan retiring.

Yeah, at least they got to the frontline in 4 years. Some of them are responsible for screwing over my generation, and most of the next, by not speaking up about UKMFTS.

Cheers "Sirs."
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Old 29th Oct 2019, 13:47
  #114 (permalink)  
 
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Now Tuesday; just taken t'dog for walk. Eerily quiet in Nth Yorkshire's airspace - can't get used to it!! Would the Lakenheath wing like to re-commence their ACM/ACT activities over the Linton bullseye please?
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Old 30th Oct 2019, 13:03
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Originally Posted by Downwind.Maddl-Land
Now Tuesday; just taken t'dog for walk. Eerily quiet in Nth Yorkshire's airspace - can't get used to it!! Would the Lakenheath wing like to re-commence their ACM/ACT activities over the Linton bullseye please?
When I controlled in the NJRSA from Lindholme in '73, we were always getting 'incursions' (well not really incursions but training traffic wasn't 'supposed' to operate there) from the V of Y training area, but now all the training units seem to have gone in fact, is it even called the V of Y training area nowadays?.
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Old 30th Oct 2019, 16:24
  #116 (permalink)  
 
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Chev,

No, just checked. All the AIAAs appear to have been disestablished; dunno when that was from though. Hardly surprising when you recall that all the FTS have gone from the VoY: CF - closed as an FTS/RLG, FY - closed as a FTS, LO - closed as an FTS, TP - closed as a RLG, DH closed as a RLG, LI no longer a FTS/home of CFS. The Yorkshire (esp North) economy has really taken a hammering in realising the so-called 'peace dividend'.
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Old 3rd Nov 2019, 18:59
  #117 (permalink)  
 
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Nice touch that the last Tucano down was the first production aircraft. Whatever the pros and cons of the aircraft, it gave good service for 30 years and was fun to fly. Let’s hope that the Texan gives similar service. Good luck to 72 Sqn for their future.
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Old 3rd Nov 2019, 19:14
  #118 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by bloodaxe
Nice touch that the last Tucano down was the first production aircraft. Whatever the pros and cons of the aircraft, it gave good service for 30 years and was fun to fly. Let’s hope that the Texan gives similar service. Good luck to 72 Sqn for their future.
And moreover I am sure that the RAF never lost a pilot in a Tucano - pretty good for any aircraft, far less a trainer!
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Old 4th Nov 2019, 11:44
  #119 (permalink)  
 
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One other interesting aspect of the Tucano is that it was cleared in service for intentional inverted spinning. No type currently in UK military service is and I am not sure which the previous type was, perhaps the Vampire T11 or Piston Provost? The reason why it was cleared was because it was considered that if an inadvertent spin occurred during aerobatics there was a relatively high probability that it would be inverted.
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Old 4th Nov 2019, 12:25
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IIRC from the documentary "Test Pilot" it was the Hunter.
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