Design and Development
Development of the Nomad began in 1965 at GAF as Project N. The Australian government funded two prototypes in January 1970 for the twin engined, multi-purpose transport. The government was keen to build an aircraft in order to maintain aircraft production at GAF after the end of Mirage III production. The first prototype (registered VH-SUP) flew for the first time on 23 July 1971. The aircraft was now known as the N2 and was aimed at the military and civilian markets. The designation N22 was to be used for military aircraft (becoming N22B in production) and N24 was to be used for the lengthened civilian version.
The original design intention was that the entire empennage would be hinged, such that it could be swung open providing rear loading access (the target payload was a small vehicle). This necessitated the raised cruciform tail.
The Nomad design was considered problematic and early Royal Australian Air Force evaluations were critical of the design. An early, stretched-fuselage variant crashed, killing GAF's chief test pilot Stuart Pearce (father of actor Guy Pearce), and the assistant head designer. The Nomad has been involved in a total of 32 total hull-loss accidents, which have resulted in 76 fatalities.
Only 172 Nomads (including the two prototypes) were manufactured, due to the limited foreign sales achieved by GAF. In 1986, GAF was incorporated into Aerospace Technologies of Australia.
In June 2008 Gippsland Aeronautics (now GippsAero) announced it had won bidding to take over the Nomad's type certificate and would probably be restarting production. Some of the GippsAero design and testing engineers, including co-founder George Morgan, worked on Nomad development at GAF. The N24-based GA18 will be re-engineered with new powerplants, propellers, glass cockpit and weight-saving measures. It is planned to bring it into service after the development and certification of the new 10-seat GA10, due to be complete in March 2013.
As of December 2009 only one Nomad is still flying in Australia, with another four in New Zealand.
Read more about this topic: GAF Nomad
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