Dauphins
 

Replacing A109s 'acquired' circa 1982 per chance?

Curious to know the role for them.

Those useful ones used by them?

UK Airshow Review - UK Airshow Review Message Board

Look for a post in the 'Aviation Waffle' Thread called 'When serials surprise' and another called something like 'Today at Boscombe'

Guys,

This is old news - ask the TPs at Boscombe and they will tell you! QinetiQ is tryin g its hardest to keep up with the likes of Robenexport (recently won large contract in Saudia Arabia) etc and therefore wants to have a good look at the 'technology' involved which is resulting in these contracts going the Russian way.

Tie this in with ETPS requiring a different platform than a western design aircraft to allow its students to learn from and critique then I am sure that no one is surprised to find out that this is a purely a commercial venture.

Nothing to see here....move along

Thanks XV :ok:

So why the DA42 then? I doubt this is for Afghanistan. Put it this way, you can't operate UAVs over British airspace yet.

I suppose that partially explains the ETPS Gripen.

"Put it this way, you can't operate UAVs over British airspace yet. "


The one's I've seen and worked with must have been figments of my imagination then!

The USCG has retrofitted its entire fleet with new donks (Arriel 2C2): +30% power over the old HH-65A, and +13% over the vanilla AS365N3. Enough of an improvement that the service is now using the platform for armed use of force ops in the Caribbean and the D.C. region (160+ kts even with a .50Cal sticking out of the cabin :E).

I/C

Ranger703... Sorry, I meant generally. Certain areas of the UK yes, but not anywhere. Hence why I thought that a manned platform like the DA42 might not be as restricted as using a UAV would.

DA42
 

The DA42's are registered to DO SYSTEMS LTD.

If you do search for it you will come up with the following

http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets...rveillance.pdf

The DA42Ms are on the mil register also as ZA179 and ZA180. I'd guess they are for Iraq. Possibly to free up some of the Defenders for Afghanistan.

Some pics of them here:
UK Airshow Review - iB::Topic::When Serials Surprise...
Pics obviously taken pre-conversion to the spec described in the RUSI article.

I reckon they'd be pretty useful in ISTAR role. You could have line of sight video transmission to guys on ground, and also via satellite uplink back to ops. Dirt cheap too (militarily speaking) - you could buy dozens of them and give every ground patrol permanent overhead video cover.

Christ guys, I dont even fly anymore and work in the City and even I know what they are there for!
But very interesting all the different ideas and reasons, some very valid!
Surely its obvious.... Putin is buying Westlands!

Diamond recently signed a deal with General Atomics to convert DA42s to UAVs. The manned DA42Ms can fly for over thirteen hours without refuelling, but that is a bit of a marathon for the pilot. Hence the interest in unmanned versions. Presumably with some extra internal tankage you could increase the autonomy even further.

When I meant restricted, I didn't mean by capability. I meant that there would not be the kind of restrictions using the DA42 that would be found operating a UAV over British airspace (eg. a UAV cannot currently operated over the whole of UK airspace but only certain restricted areas) if they have been acquired for some reason to be used over the UK rather than in Afghanistan or Iraq. It's a pity that there doesn't seem to be any recent photos yet of the post-configuration since they went over to the military register that would give a better idea of what they might be used for.

I'd agree that there are occasions where a "manned UAV" is a lot better than a UAV. The accident rates for UAVs are still higher than for manned aircraft, which offsets their cost-savings. I'm not entirely convinced by the advantage of a DA42 UAV. As you say, there are airspace restrictions on UAVs in most countries, so whereas you could just fly a manned DA42M to theatre, and once in theatre would have more diversion options as you could go to any airfield you like. Getting a UAV DA42 to theatre would be logistically more difficult, then you would be much more restricted in where you could divert the aircraft too partly because of airspace restrictions and partly because (presumably) you would need a pilot on the ground at the diversion to handle the landing (I doubt that could be done remotely).

Also, I'm not convinced that the DA42 is necessarily a good platform for conversion to UAV. Those long, low wings would be a bit vulnerable when trying to land one remotely in a cross-wind (even with a pilot controlling it locally), and detecting then handling an engine failure remotely would be a challenge. However, the surveillance and observation flights I've done mostly involve really chucking the aircraft about to stay in the right location and I can imagine it would be difficult to convert a DA42 to fly (say) low-level steep turns automatically. It would only be worth converting DA42 to UAV if you really had an operational requirement for very long endurance flights, all of which were conducted at mid-level (F150-F180).

aah so M17 back on track. Hot n High? Doesn't look a ch47? Good job no UK aircrew already trained on them....

Winch control

Defence Helicopter article in one of their 2004 issues said that RAF crews had been sent to Gremenchko Academy out East (sorry please forgive my poor spelling of that facility) to train on MI-8/17 along with USAF crews :)