RAAF's New Toy

[Hans Tucker]

The RAAF has received the first of ten new Spartan C-27J aircraft to compliment the Airlift capability....essentially it looks like a scaled down C130J Hercules.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/06/30/spartan-be-humanitarian-workhorse-raaf

[mental4astro]

The Spartan is the much needed replacement for the old Caribou. The Caribou could take off and land on a dime. The article link below has a mistake in the minimum runway length the Spartan requires, 500m take-off at full load, 300m to land. The Spartan looks to be just the right replacement.

The RAAF has recently been up to Katoomba Airfield to start negotiations on doing exercises with the new Spartan as the runways are dirt and 600m & 900m in length and encircled by trees. The old Caribou were regular visitors to Katoomba Airfield for exercises. There is a great photo in the Airfield's office of half a dozen Caribou lined up and taking off down the longer runway.

[goober]

Nice!

My grandfather was in the RAAF and often traveled to the US on aircraft procurement trips. I have a lovely model of a Neptune P2V-7 that was presented to him by Lockheed after one of his trips in the early 60's.

[MichaelSW]

I got this story in 1988 from a civvy volunteer at the Townsville RAAF Museum who had the nick-name, John The Spy. (He always seemed to know what visiting foreign military aircraft were up to).

British Aerospace brought out one of their military BAe146 aircraft for the Bicentennial Airshow at RAAF Richmond to demonstrate its capabilities to the RAAF. (Caribou replacements have been talked about for a long time). On the way, the aircraft went through RAAF Townsville - the home of No. 35 Squadron, Wallaby Airlines - operators of the DHC-4 Caribou.

Story goes that the Brits took off from Garbutt and headed to The Stockyard Strip up in the High Range training area North-West of Townsville. The RAAF Officer said to the British pilot, "Just put it down there." The pilot replied that he couldn't land on a strip like that - it was too short and rough.

To this the RAAF Officer said, "Well if you can't land down there, you won't be able to sell us your aeroplane".

Maybe its just an Urban Myth.

[LewisM]

VEry fond memories of the Caribous.

When I was learning to fly all those moons ago, the 'Bous used to come into YBMC a LOT, and they really would show off (considering back then, YBMC was a major training airport, which sadly it no longer is unless you like wok-woks). Saw MANY wheelbarrow departures,many extreme STOL takeoffs.

The crews used to taxi them down to the civvy bowsers and fill up - quite the sight. They'd let us crawl all over them. But what I enjoyed always so much was when they were done, they'd go into Beta thrust (reverse pitch), and power-back :) Always a good laff.

We also used to get the Army guys in the Pilatus Porter a fair bit. Intersection departure, off in around 20 metres, or less in a good headwind.

And also the BLOODY RAN HS-748 used to come in fairly regularly. Be doing a commercial navigation exam, and that damned thing with screaming Rolls Royce Darts would arrive and depart (although not as bad as East West's flamin' Fokker F28's with the obscenely loud RR 183's. SCREECH!!!)

Shame the RAAF never bought the Buffalo as a Caribou replacement - might still be in service if they had. I saw 1.5 Caribou today down at the Queensland Air Museum (a near complete airframe and a nose section from the wing leading edge forward). The Spartan is probably a good choice. Time will tell (the parent G.222 was never a great success)