Dick Smith To Challenge Antarctic

Registered, appropriately, VH-SHW, the international orange and white aircraft will be fitted with board skis on arrival at Casey base. Wheel skis imported from Norway at a cost of A$60,000 will be fitted for other planned operations outside· Antarctica. Other modifications will include special down-slide windows for inflight film work, the latest King Bendix Radar, VLF Omega, Magnavox SatNav, VHF DF, Astro Compass and Antarctic survival equipment as standard. With the ‘wet’ wing, there is no doubt that it will be the best equipped Twin Otter in the world.

‘Wilkins’, as the Twin Otter is named, will be capable of the first ever air communication between the Australian bases (all aircraft currently used in the Australian Antarctic Territories are rotary wing with a limited range) and could fly scientists from base to base as required. It would also be able to provide our own search and rescue service and be able to ferry sick or injured Australians to McMurdo without the need for the expense of the Americans having to come to us.

When I caught up with Dick at Bankstown Airport, he was deep in conversation with Ian Allison from the Antarctic Division and Hawker Pacific personnel over the addition of an ice radar antenna beneath the starboard wing. This radar is used to gauge the depth of ice formations in the region and is currently in use with the Division’s helicopters. These aircraft are limited to an 80nm survey range which can be immensely increased by the Twin Otter.

Dick was very enthusiastic about the project, saying, “I can see the Division being able to use at least two of these aircraft in their operations. If they can ferry the aircraft to Casey direct from Australia then the enormous expense of disassembly, shipping and reassembly can be avoided. With the DHC approved 40% ferry overload, the aircraft has a nil reserve endurance of 2,600nm, so the 1,850nm to Casey from Hobart is quite practical. Giles Kershaw and I will be taking SHW on this route in November; we fly direct to Antarctica and then turn and follow the coast to Casey. In the event of poor weather we can put down almost anywhere with this aircraft. ”

By December 1989, Dick hopes that he will have completed a re-enactment of Sir Hubert Wilkins flights (which were in a Lockheed Vega in 1928) from Deception Island and in 1990 follow this up with another re-enactment of the Vega flight across the Arctic from Point Barrow in Alaska to Spitzbergen. Despite the advances of modern science, Dick will not be able to make this in one hop as the Vega did, but will have to land and refuel at the North Pole.

Final plans for the Twin Otter include a flight over Mt Everest with sensitive measuring equipment and flights into Tibet and the USSR. When asked why he had gone to the trouble of registering the aircraft in Australia when it was going to operate out of Australia for most of its life, Dick replied, “I am very patriotically Australian and Airworthiness have assured me that I will not be disadvantaged by this. Only time will tell; but I have confidence that it is the right thing to do! I see the aeroplane as the aerial equivalent of Costeau’s ‘Calypso”‘.

It seems that Dick will always find some new way of celebrating our pioneer aviation heritage but with his own individual touch at the same time.