DELIVERY OF Schweizer Aircraft's RU-38A Twin Condor surveillance aircraft to the US Coast Guard (USCG) has been delayed by between six and eight months because of design flaws discovered during flight-testing of the twin-boom aircraft, says Paul Schweizer, the firm's president.
The first of three low-cost, long-range RU-38As, is now scheduled to be delivered to the USCG late this year. All three aircraft were to have become operational in February. Two of them are heavily modified single-engined RG-8A Condors previously operated by the USCG. The third will be built around a spare RG-8A wing set, which has been in storage.
The Twin Condor, which the USCG will use for low-level day/night patrol missions, is powered by two Teledyne Continental GIO-550 air-cooled piston engines mounted in a tandem configuration with the pusher engine aft of the two-man cockpit. A three-seat variant of the aircraft (with a payload operator behind a two-pilot cockpit) is envisaged.
"We needed to change certain things, including the horizontal stabiliser and engine-cooling system. Not everything works perfectly with a brand-new aircraft design," says Schweizer.
"Our focus has been on the flight-tests and debugging the first aircraft...The changes have put us back six to eight months from where we wanted to be. The problems are not critical. They are just taking more time to resolve than we thought," he adds.
He says that the second RG-8A should be flying within two months. The third aircraft is still in assembly
The US firm hopes to sell the aircraft to other US Government agencies, but Schweizer believes that it may be too expensive for commercial operators. International marketing efforts have yet to get off the ground.
Source: Flight International
