The CAC Wirraway turns 75! NA-16 derivitive/ T6 older cousin

[Mark_Pilkington]

The CAC Wirraway, a direct descendent of the North American NA-16, and older cousin of the NA T6, SNJ and Harvard, turned 75 yesterday with the event celebrated at the Australian National Aviation Museum where the 8th production and oldest surviving CAC Wirraway A20-10 was unveiled after a recent intense spruise up having been returned to her original 1939 pre-war delivery silver colour scheme, and fired back to life after @25 years indoor display.

This aircraft is the oldest surviving Wirraway, and perhaps other than an NA-16-2A/NA-20 surviving in South America, is likely to be one the oldest NA-16 descendents surviving in the world, and retains the straight trailing edge wing outer panels, corrugated fin skins, and rear steel tube fuselage frame of that earlier NA Design that persisted into the BC-1, SNJ-1, Harvard I and BT-9 but were lost in the later designs of the Yale and SNJ-2, and the even later T-6 / Harvard Series.

The CA-1 model of Wirraway is effectively a licence built NA-16-2K / NA-33, and I believe it is both older physically, and in design, than any of the NA related types now preserved in the USA, but am happy to be corrected?



























More info at the museums facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/moorabbinairmuseum


Regards

Mark Pilkington

Last edited by Mark_Pilkington on Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:07 am, edited 3 times in total.

[Ewan]

To put this into context for those not on social media - this was done over the last 10 weeks with around 2,500 hours of volunteer time helping to get us over the line. And yes, it's live too, first time in over 25 years.

Photos and video will be added in the next few days on the website

Cheers

[TAdan]

Very impressive effort and results. Nicely done.

[Invader26]

Wonderful effort and a great piece of Australian aviation history. It's amazing that she survived WW2 being a trainer from 1939-45 inclusive!

PS: where are the gear doors?

[Ewan]

Think we may have to make the gear doors, they got lent to someone a long while back and vanished. Word is they are now on another aircraft

No matter, we have the skills and the right people to do up another set, but will tackle that in the not too distant future, for now, we are having a few days off. The whole day was a bit of a blur after the week leading into it

Cheers

[Invader26]

Tks for the update and congratulations on the Birthday...

[Ewan]

Just got emailed the engine run vid, here's the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYxK2rdd3A

[Ewan]

We can go one better now with a mini featurette of the whole day - yep we were cutting it pretty fine with the cowling going on and being fastened as the doors were opened !

http://vimeo.com/105601214