Development
The RU-38 was intended to fulfill both the low altitude, quiet, over water/hostile terrain reconnaissance role and also the high altitude standoff surveillance role.
The design missions for the RU-23A were:
- Border integrity
- Counter-terrorism surveillance
- Drug enforcement
- Electronic intelligence
- Fishery patrols
- Illegal alien surveillance
- Intelligence collection
- Maritime patrol
- Pollution patrol & environmental monitoring
- Search and Rescue
In converting to the new RU-38A configuration, the conventional RG-8A airframe was greatly modified by:
- Removing the single 235 hp (175 kW) Lycoming O-540-B powerplant
- Installing two Teledyne Continental Motors GIO-550A engines with a 3:2 gear reduction to 2267 operating rpm. The engines are mounted one in the nose and the other in the rear of the fuselage.
- Enlarging the crew compartment
- Improving the engine mufflers
- Increasing the wingspan from 56.5 ft (18.14 m) to 84.13 ft (25.65 m)
- Changing the single tail fin to a twin-boom configuration with two fins
- Greatly enlarged sensor bays
- Improved noise signature reduction
- Tricycle landing gear replacing the conventional landing gear
Read more about this topic: Schweizer RU-38 Twin Condor
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The highest form of development is to govern one’s self.”
—Zerelda G. Wallace (1817–1901)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)