I flew Queenair vh ruu and vh fwg on army survey and vh clg working for Union Air on operations in Indonesia and Western Australia Alice Spings and various training and testing trials and oblique photography out of Sydney Brisbane and Edinburgh. All of my flying on these operations were single pilot with army A P R and camera Operators and these guys were always very helpful with navigation and good to work with , I did about 500 hours on these operations and can be hard work especially on spot photography. VH R UU was a nice aeroplane to fly VH FWG was not so ,I had a engine fire in it at Karratha on start up and put us out of action for a week .I also flew A3 CIA in Tonga for about 250 hours for about 3 months helping the Tongans out when Air Chatams left them in the lurch, the whole operation was a bit untidy and they wrote the aircraft off after I returned to Australia ,the pilot forgot to put the undercarriage down going into Eua an airstrip unsuitable for the Queenair due short length high obstacles at each end with no clearway and severe cross wind and sheer ,the aircraft also had a fault in electrical undercarriage switch which engineers were unable to solve ,I assume the pilot was distracted with all of the above and failed to notice undercarriage was not down, I believe his excuse was he knew the undercarriage was not down and decided to guts it at EUA ,the main Tongan aerodrome is 30 miles away with all emergency services and repair services.I hope this brief information is of use. I proberly did in all 750 hours of Queenair flying and a total of 21000 hours and about 4000 hours on Kingair B200.
David
Sorry to tell you that FWG has never had the Excalibur conversion. Only three Excaliburs where registered in Australia. VH-XAE x2 and VH-AEQ. The original VH-XAE crashed in Victoria 9 months after arriving in Australia then a second aircraft came out and to over the same call sign. We sent VH-AEQ to the States and had the conversion done in San Antonio Tx and then flew it back.
Many thanks Jim – you are correct. I checked the engines and they are definitely not the slimmer engines of the Excalibur and the CASA register also confirms this.
Have amended the photo caption.
I flew Queenair vh ruu and vh fwg on army survey and vh clg working for Union Air on operations in Indonesia and Western Australia Alice Spings and various training and testing trials and oblique photography out of Sydney Brisbane and Edinburgh. All of my flying on these operations were single pilot with army A P R and camera Operators and these guys were always very helpful with navigation and good to work with , I did about 500 hours on these operations and can be hard work especially on spot photography. VH R UU was a nice aeroplane to fly VH FWG was not so ,I had a engine fire in it at Karratha on start up and put us out of action for a week .I also flew A3 CIA in Tonga for about 250 hours for about 3 months helping the Tongans out when Air Chatams left them in the lurch, the whole operation was a bit untidy and they wrote the aircraft off after I returned to Australia ,the pilot forgot to put the undercarriage down going into Eua an airstrip unsuitable for the Queenair due short length high obstacles at each end with no clearway and severe cross wind and sheer ,the aircraft also had a fault in electrical undercarriage switch which engineers were unable to solve ,I assume the pilot was distracted with all of the above and failed to notice undercarriage was not down, I believe his excuse was he knew the undercarriage was not down and decided to guts it at EUA ,the main Tongan aerodrome is 30 miles away with all emergency services and repair services.I hope this brief information is of use. I proberly did in all 750 hours of Queenair flying and a total of 21000 hours and about 4000 hours on Kingair B200.
David
Sorry to tell you that FWG has never had the Excalibur conversion. Only three Excaliburs where registered in Australia. VH-XAE x2 and VH-AEQ. The original VH-XAE crashed in Victoria 9 months after arriving in Australia then a second aircraft came out and to over the same call sign. We sent VH-AEQ to the States and had the conversion done in San Antonio Tx and then flew it back.
Many thanks Jim – you are correct. I checked the engines and they are definitely not the slimmer engines of the Excalibur and the CASA register also confirms this.
Have amended the photo caption.