A Fugly Cute One

[Mark Nankivil]

My friend Bob Burgess took a business trip to New Zealand in '87 and while there, shot a number of photos of aircraft including this Transavia Skyfarmer (a variant of the more commonly known Skytruck). Anyone on WIX fly one and if so, would care to comment on the experience?

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[retroaviation]

Ahhhh, the AirTruk......that was definitely on my "Most Wanted" list for a while! I, too, saw a few of them in New Zealand. I even had some discussion about purchasing one from the Ardmore Airport, but the deal just never got worked out. Unfortunately, since I can no longer fly, I have lost any interest in obtaining one.

There is supposedly one here in the U.S........around the Oshkosh area, if I remember correctly. I'm told that they fly fairly nice, but are often "pranged" in on landings. Not sure why, but a theory I kept hearing was how high the pilot sat and the fairly high wing loading on the portly beast.

What's interesting, is the very first AirTruk was (very) loosely based on a Harvard MkIV fuselage. I could never see the resemblence, but it apparently used the center fuselage tubing from the Harvard as the structure. Oh, and did I mention that it also had the 1340 up front? If you think the beast is fugly with the IO-520 on it, you should see it with the R-1340!

Thanks for posting the picture.

Gary

[Mark Nankivil]

Gee Gary, just what you needed to patrol the ranch

I'll check with Zack and see if he knows where up his way that Airtruk resides.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[GARY HILTON]

I saw the one at Oshkosh '06....Mad Max material for sure...

[tom d. friedman]

pass the barf medication........ looks like 1 i made in high school!!

[rossjools]

,
A little bit of extra info on the AirTruk. These were built at the Transfield plant at Seven Hills in the outer western suburbs of Sydney. The manufacturer was a division of the Italian heavy rigging and engineering company Transfield and the designer was an Italian by the name of Luigi Pellarini. As a young airman doing my tech training at RAAF Wagga in southern NSW in the early 1970s I often used to see these aircraft at work on the farms around the area. There were also a couple based at Wagga as well as a couple of CAC Ceres's.

Later during 2 postings to Richmond I used to see these aircraft being test flown out of Transavia's 800' strip at Seven Hills as I passed by in the train to or from Sydney. Later, as regulations became tighter and neighbours became spooked by certain elements in the press the aircraft were trucked out to Bankstown and assembled and test flown there.

At the Fighter World Museum at Williamtown there is a display case of 1/72 models of aircraft hand carved mainly from wood but also with other materials used, which runs virtually all the way down one wall of the main hangar. The modeller is a local professional artist who took about 45 years of his life to build the 350 or so models on display.

He used no plastic kits but some small plastic parts from kits. Next time I get up there I'll take some more photos of these truly beautiful models, especially the AirTruk and its predecessor which used an Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah engine.

[Mark Nankivil]

Interesting rossjools - thanks! I was down under in '88 and remember seeing the Ceres over at Bankstown along with a few Twin Pioneers and some other aircraft types not normally seen in the US. Hhhmm, need to dig up that photo album and do a bit of scanning.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[rossjools]

,
G'day Mark,
I'll sure look forward to seeing your photos. I've seen one of the Twin Pioneers flying over Newcastle once. I don't know if there are any still in airworthy condition though. Bankstown has changed a lot in the last 20 years with a lot of commercial and housing development going on on what used to be airport land.

I don't know if you're aware but back in 1988 all main capital city and regional airports except those owned by aeroclubs were owned by the Federal Government. The Government then got this bright idea of selling them all off either to local Councils or to private enterprise. Bankstown was bought by a private consortium.

Personally, I think that what is happening at Bankstown, Moorabbin and other places like Archerfield in Brisbane and Jandakot in Perth is an extremely dangerous criminal misuse of secondary airfields. Already we have had an incident at Bankstown where a Cessna 210 had an engine failure on take off and crashed into one of the factories that have been built on what used to be airfield land killing the six people on board and two working in the factory. The poor bugger had nowhere to go. This is lunacy. Anyway, I'd best step down from my soapbox before I say something I'll regret.


Cheers,
Ross.

[Mark Nankivil]

Hi Ross -

A sign of the times for sure - seems to be a worldwide thing based on what I am reading in Great Britain and here in the States. People moving in next to an airport then suing due to the noise and overflights. What did you think you were hearing mosquitoes?! Argh....

I'll scan the photos this weekend and post them shortly afterwards. I was down there for a month in '88 and loved every second of it save for the walk back onto the plane to fly home.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

[rossjools]

G'day again Mark,
Yes, it's sad but true. There is even a family up near Williatown, our main fighter base that are stirring the pot to get the RAAF base moved further out west because they reckon it lowers the tone of Port Stephens. The real reason is it has had some effect on their oyster barn business (sort of an oyster restaurant).

They argue that they have been there since 1954. Sorry folks, if we are arguing precedents the RAAF have been at Willytown since 1941. Williamtown is a shared runway, the RAAF one side and Newcastle regional airport the other. There are even business people involved with the airport who also want the RAAF to move although the airport terminal itself is owned jointly by Newcastle City and Port Stephens Shire Councils and both Boeing and BAe Systems have maintenance facilities on that side. After all the money the Federal Government have spent on the RAAF base it just isn't going to happen, never, not ever.

,
Cheers,
Ross.

[Canso42]

See what happens when you let someone root about in the storage hangar unsupervised.

[rossjools]

, G'day Mark,
I have gotten to Williamtown and taken some pics of both the Kingsford-Smith PL-7 Tanker and Airtruk models in the fighter world museum but there is at the moment over at Aircraft Resource Center a 1/72 model of the PL-7 that was scratchbuilt by Gabriel Stern, (the greater majority of Gabriel's models are scratch built and all are 1/72 scale.) It's on the main page for Thursday April 30th and includes a full build article.

Retroaviation,
Are you sure you're not confusing the Airtruk with the CAC Ceres? The Ceres was a converted Wirraway (similar to a Mark I Harvard but entirely built in Australia) with fabric covered steel tube fuselage and the R-1340 engine. There were some changes over the Wirraway, fixed undercarriage and fixed wing slats and other changes. I know the PL-7 had a 400 hp Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah engine which I believe was taken from an Airspeed Oxford and modified to give 400 hp instead of the 360 hp of the standard engine.

cheers,
Ross.

[retroaviation]

Retroaviation,
Are you sure you're not confusing the Airtruk with the CAC Ceres? The Ceres was a converted Wirraway (similar to a Mark I Harvard but entirely built in Australia) with fabric covered steel tube fuselage and the R-1340 engine. There were some changes over the Wirraway, fixed undercarriage and fixed wing slats and other changes. I know the PL-7 had a 400 hp Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah engine which I believe was taken from an Airspeed Oxford and modified to give 400 hp instead of the 360 hp of the standard engine.

cheers,
Ross.

I could be wrong, probably am, but I was just thinking that I read about the Harvard conversion on a sign that was in front of one of the AirTruks on display in one of the New Zealand museums. I took a picture of that sign, so I'll see if I can dig it up and post it here. Either way, it sure made for an interesting lookin' airplane.

Gary

[retroaviation]

Here's the sign I saw that gave me the info about the Harvard conversion. I know the quality of the picture isn't great as it's posted here, so this is what it says...

"This unusual Australian built agricultural aircraft followed two earlier designs by Luigi Pellarini. These were the PL-7 "Tanker," made by Kingsford Smith Aviation Service (also an Australian company), and the Waitamo Aircraft Ltd's PL-11 "Air Truck," which was built in New Zealand using war surplus RNZAF Harvards.

The Transavia AirTruk first flew in 1965 and in 1984 110 had been built and the type was still in production.

This example, ZK-DMZ, was imported in 1974 and after 20 years of flying in the topdressing and spraying roles with various New Zealand companies, was withdrawn from service in 1994."

<Remainder of text unreadable due to glare from camera flash>






I can't remember which museum this was in, but here's the airplane it was in front of, just in case anyone here recognizes it.......




Gary

[rossjools]

, G'day Gary,
I like to learn something new every day, it's a good habit I learned from an old apple farmer who lived in the Blue Mountains foothills. When I met him 26 years ago he was 98 and still had the inquiring mind of a teenager but with the maturity of great age. Thank you for being my dominie (Scottish word for teacher) today. Also the RAF name of two De Havilland designed aeroplanes the DH-89 and the HS-125 (originally a DH design.)

That R-1340 powered PL-11 Airtruk must have been quite a beast in its day with about twice the power of the later PL-12. She would have had some get up and go, but was probably also very thirsty working down in the weeds all the time. Perhaps that's why the PL-12 had a 300 hp O-540 or one of the injected variants. From memory I think the customer could have his/her choice of carburettor or fuel injection.

An ex RAAF mate of mine virtually rebuilt one of these from scratch at Orange in western NSW. He was working at a local aircraft maintenance company at the time and I just happened to run into him one night while I was also working in Orange. I was at the airport there one Friday night with the Australian Air League and he had just arrived back from doing a job on a farm plane somewhere further out west. He made a great job of rebuilding the engine and airframe, for an eleco and he reckoned it was one of the best toughest designed and easy to maintain aircraft he'd ever had the pleasure to work on.

Cheers,
Ross.