Profile – GAF Nomad

Nomad – Victor Or Vanquished

No other Australian aircraft has been the centre of as much attention as the Nomad. There have been those who vehemently declared that the aircraft should never have been built, and there are those equally certain that the aircraft would have blossomed had it not been the victim of bureaucratic irrationality. Perhaps the fact that history will record 170 Nomads as having been built testifies that although not the most successful type ever built, it certainly wasn’t one of the greatest failures.

The project which was eventually to become Nomad started in 1965 when preliminary work began at Government Aircraft Factories on Project N. The N1 aircraft was a high-wing fixed undercarriage monoplane to be powered by a single turboprop engine mounted in the nose below a high-set cockpit of exceptional all-around visibility. Work on Project N had been initiated after the Australian Army had unofficially expressed a future requirement for a replacement for the Cessna 180, then serving with the Light Aircraft Flight at Amberley.

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