Aircraft Engineering

The hangar is where all Super Air’s fleet of 18 aircraft are serviced and maintained. Phil Goudie is Engineering Manager and Phil leads a team of 10 aircraft engineers. Each aircraft is flown in from their operational locations every 100 hours for regular service. The pilot hands over to the engineers who work on the aircraft solidly for about 40 man hours. The plane is then ready for its flight home. “Safety is priority no 1- Super Air has a no-compromise attitude to safety with all its engineering work. Pilot safety is always the principle consideration with the hangar team” says Phil.

Super Air Aircraft Innovations

When asked about engineering innovations since Super Air’s inception, Phil says ‘’Lets start with Methanol’’. ‘’In 1989, we did some trials over a two year period on the use of Methanol as a substitute for Avgas in our Lycoming 400 HP engines. We started the process looking for a cheaper fuel without compromising horse power. Methanol at that time was plentiful and cost about 5cents/litre. We stopped because Methanol suddenly became hard to get and it was dangerous to handle. However it did produce some grunt in the engines – we got 480 horsepower out of our standard Lycoming 400 horsepower engine’’ says Phil.

‘’We are still working on our V8 Aero engine when time permits. To date it has flown 70 hours. Phils says “For ‘petrol heads’, its vitals are based on a 460 Big Block Ford engine, bored and stroked to 640 cubic inches, 10.6 litre producing 550 horsepower at 4400 rpm, with a locally built and designed reduction gearbox to reduce the propeller rpm to half that of the engine’’. ‘’The driving force behind the V8 project was to give us turbine horsepower at car engine prices’’ says Phil. ‘’Did you know that a crankcase for the Lycoming engine is about $30,000 compared to $4,000 for the equivalent Ford engine part. The Lycoming crankshaft is $20,000 and you can buy the Ford part for $3,500. The first team to succeed in developing a sustainable auto engine for an aircraft stands to win the aircraft engineering version of the Nobel Prize”. “There are some engine modifications which we now need to make and test in a ‘dyno’ (an engine jig) before we put it back into an aircraft again”.

With the end of the Cold War, turbine engines from Eastern
Europe became available in 1998 from the Czech Republic, in the form of the Walter engine. “Mike Keen took a long hard look at these engines and was convinced that we had a tiger by the tail’’ says Phil. ‘’The Walter offered similar performance to the Pratt and Whitney for a fraction of the price. The Walter is derated to 550 HP (from 750 HP) as we are only permitted to use 89% of its torque. The derating of the horsepower is a CAA requirement based on the Fletcher airframe structural limitations” says Phil. Super Air together with another two parties formed Turbine Conversions Limited to invest in the development and testing of the Walter turbine in a Fletcher airframe replacing the Lycoming 400 engine. ‘’ Our first conversion was done in April 1998 and since then we have done 21 altogether, including 3 parachute aircraft.’’ ‘’It has provided a new lease on life for the Fletcher which was first built back in 1954 – it has literally taken the Fletcher into the 21st Century’’ says Phil. ‘’Of course, it’s not just about taking out one engine and replacing it with the Walter turbine. Life’s not that simple. We have to make modifications to the airframe and instrument panel but we can do a conversion now in 6 weeks from start to finish”. ‘’What rolls out of the hangar is a jet fuelled aircraft with 20% more productivity, a higher payload, more environmentally friendly because of less noise and the use of non leaded fuel.’’ “The Walter turbine is removed and sent back to the Czech Republic for reconditioning every 1,800 hours or 5,300 cycles. This doesn’t mean we wait for it to come back to fly the aircraft. We simply replace it with another Walter engine which takes about a day’’.

Super Air is the only licensed Walter conversion engineering facility in New Zealand.

Another aircraft innovation arose from the increasing use of Urea and High analysis fertilisers.
‘’The nitrogen based fertilisers are much less dense than superphosphate so the aircraft hopper gets full at about 900 kgs which is about 400kgs less than the legal limit’’. ‘’To overcome this the Super Air team increased the hopper size from 43 cubic feet, to 63 cubic feet so that it could carry the legal limit of nitrogenous fertilisers - 1.25 tonnes’’. ‘’This was achieved by 'stretching' the fuselage by 18 inches and putting a Pratt and Whitney PT6-11AG, 550 horse power engine turbine up front. We’ve done two of these aircraft to date and the pilots are very pleased with their performance. They handle superbly’’. ‘’Remember that every time we want to introduce a modification to any part of the aircraft, we have to rigorously test it to comply with CAA regulations.”

Are there any other Fletcher modifications on the drawing board Phil? “Yes, but you’ll have to wait and see”. ‘’We’re a bit like rust… we never sit still and our guys are always thinking of new innovations to improve productivity and safety’’. A visit to the Super Air hangar is a visit to a very busy workplace. However, nobody is too busy to enjoy a good story or provide a ready smile.

For all your Aerial Spreading needs phone
0800 SUPERAIR (0800 787372)