Nomad

There are now more than 60 Nomads on the order book. Three times that number must be sold before the project breaks even. Five times 60 would make Project Nomad a truly°leaders. Can Nomad’s salesmen, headed by th. e very ex­ perienced Mr Eric Morris, manage this? I think they can but I have always been pro-Nomad.

The first big break the Nomad had came in April this year, when the US granted civil certification – Nomad is the first all-Australian designed aircraft to achieve this. That one act opened the big doors to world sales, for many countries regard US certification as the big test.

Nomad has had its troubles. The RAAF did not like it and as the RAAF is the authority which orders aircraft of this size for the Army, this situation did not help to speed up Nomad development in the early stages. It is still a factor in the Army orders.

Nomad has also been troubled by the fact it is a Govern­ ment project. Civil servants find it hard to realise that Nomads must be sold to private enterprise firms – military orders can­ not get the project into the black.

And there are many operators abroad and at home who do not like the idea of Government-produced aircraft, often for very good reasons. They point to the labour troubles which have beset the GAF over the past few years. Nobody can argue that the project has not been helped by its Govern­ ment association.

On the other·hand. Nomads have been given away to In­ donesia and other countries as overseas aid, which are orders for the GAF regardless of their origin. This has helped to es­ tablish the Nomad as a military aircraft in the world’s eye.

The problem now is civil sales. The Nomad labours under the handicap that no Australian operator has ordered one. The stories spread last year about sales to operators in NSW and Tasmania, based on what seemed to be fact at the time, raised great hopes. But the frank truth is that it is harder to convince a foreign firm to buy Nomad when no Australians have bought it – this is obvious.

With the extended and fully civilian-orientated N-2’4 ver­ sion now available and flying, the civil sales campaign can get under way with a bite. And it is under way – the Polish transport authorities may use Nomads to transform their domestic transport problems. The Poles have good mainline transport systems but very poor secondary transport facilities. A good STOL aeroplane is what they need. Mr Morris has been in Warsaw twice this year and the N-22 was demonstrated to the Poles after the Paris Air Show.

The Poles would buy a smallish number to start with and then go into production with Nomad under licence. The financial rewards for the GAF of licensed production would be minimal compared with full direct orders, of course, but production in Poland could well, andprobably would, go into hundreds. For Poland would have in mind a market all through the Communist world. That is a very big market. The Australian Government is known to be keen, as Nomad would spearhead a market drive for other Australian manufactures in the red areas.

Australia has been discussing a similar deal with Peking for the past couple of years. It is quite possible the Chinese would first order a few Nomads for such duties as aerial sur­ vey, but the Canadian Twin Otter has been first to succeed in this area. The big drives are in the Americas and emerging nations. With FAA approval in hand, North American sales dealerships can now be arranged. The GAF very sensibly held up any ap­ pointments until certification was granted.

A fascinating development in the USA has been the pro­ ject to provide a floatplane version of Nomad for the Amazon Basin region of South America and for the Canadian/US lakes and rivers country. The floats have been designed, and will be made, by an American firm. To meet floatplane orders, GAF would export aircraft to the US firm which would fit the floats as needed.

Another project under way now is to secure approved anti-icing standards and equ_ipment for Nomad. It is easy to forget here that in the Northern Hemisphere winter operations demand full anti-icing. A Nomad will be flight­ tested under very icv conditions indeed this Northern winter – some was done last Northern winter but owing to cir­ cumstances affecting the actual aircraft they were in-• complete.

Nomad also needs a British CofA. A problem was that the British CAA charges the world for certification and at onestage the Australians just retused to consider it. Thanks to an article I wrote on this in AVIATION NEWS the British decided to come to the party and a compromise was reached. There are places like Fiji which need a UK CofA.

There are problems: the Treasury is not the sort of finan­ cial authority that likes the idea of trading-in a secondhand aircraft for a nice new Nomad, particularly when the buyer wants a good credit entry and low interest. This is one of the arguments for hiving off the Nomad project as a separate Government-owned corporation on TAA lines.

There is also the official clamp on sales to countries which the United Nations does not like, like Rhodesia (which would have bought dozens a year or two ago), or which are concerned in the Israel/Arab conflict – Nomads could have been sold in the Middle East several years back but for this clamp.

But with all these problems, the fact that Nomad is a good ae·roplane and could be called unique in itsclass does lead Mr Dolphin and other Nomad fans to believe the market is there.

What would be the greatest tonic for the GAF would be a good local civil order.