DHC-6 Twin Otter

[Plane Fixer]

I was asked to go to Lubango (Angola) as a Twotter had hit a tree on takeoff from a village strip. They continued 1hour 20 minute flight with 10 passengers so we assumed the damage was not too bad.
I took some sheetmetal, drill, some pop rivets and a few rolls of heavy duct tape, and with the senior pilot we were going to fly it back to Luanda after my repair.
When I looked at the damaged wing I was amazed that the damaged part did not break as the main spar caps top and bottom were severed and the upper skin was torn for two thirds of the chord.
The wing was removed from the aircraft and put in a Russian AN12 freighter and flown back to our hangar in Luanda for repair.
The pilot simply lost control of the aircraft on take off due simply that they were taught to use the steering tiller instead of using power and rudder.
He tried to blame many factors, including nose wheel shimmy, and trying to avoid a hole in the runway. This was disproved by walking the entire takeoff roll. The nosewheel shimmy was also eliminated by high speed taxi to the point of lift off with full nose down trim, neutral trim and full nose up trim and bouncing the nose wheel on and off during all of this. No shimmy and the captain lost his command.

[superquag]

evilBay has a well-priced 'group buy' going at the moment, -

- Cheap insurance and maybe some Captains would like to carry one as standard equipment...

eBay Group Deal Products

[Plane Fixer]

Would certainly fix the tree problem...I am sure it would sort some of the captains too

[Narangga]

Excellent piloting skills. Not another tree in sight but he got it nicely.

[Rolly]

Four years in PNG... Twotter is a cracking aircraft! Only outdone by Do228. As a mixup if I could have a Doorknob with twin Otter tyres ....heaven!

[AndyG]

Or an Otter with banderanti donks

Aka Talair

[Rolly]

Yees, however from memoru Talair only had the -200 Twotters, the-300 is a much better beast!

[Plane Fixer]

Yes, a -400 has-34 PT6.

[AndyG]

Talair did an experiment with the mix, as they had both types, and about 50 others, documentation may have been ah incomplete
An attempt to improve payload at altitude I think.

[Rolly]

Sorry........is there a -400 twotter or is that the Bandit engine?
I'm reluctant to compare a bandit to a twotter, many of the real highland strips would not be handled well by the bandit.
Also the radius of turn of bandit would preclude it from a lot of the highland flying.
Don't get me wrong, however the bandit is great on Hoskins or Goroka but not so good on Ludesa,Fogoma'iu,kopiago,Oksapmin,Telefomin,kafa,e rave etc, etc,etc