| Fieldmaster | |
|---|---|
| Role | Agricultural Aircraft |
| National origin | United Kingdom |
| Manufacturer | NDN Aircraft |
| First flight | 17 December 1981 |
The NAC Fieldmaster was a British agricultural aircraft of the 1980s. A turboprop powered single-engined monoplane, it was built in small numbers and used both as a cropsprayer and a firefighting aircraft.
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NDN Aircraft, which was set up in 1976 by Desmond Norman, one of the founders of Britten-Norman, the manufacturers of the Islander, to build the Firecracker trainer, designed a new agricultural aircraft. The resulting aircraft, the NDN-6 Fieldmaster was a large single-engined low-winged monoplane with a fixed nosewheel undercarriage, powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop engine, the first western-built agricultural aircraft to be designed for turboprop power.[1] Novel features included an integral hopper made of Titanium to carry its chemical payload, which was dispersed via spray nozzles built into the flaps under the aircraft's wings.[2]
The first prototype flew on 17 December 1981 at NDN's airfield at Sandown, Isle of Wight. TNDN moved premises to Cardiff, Wales in 1985, renaming itself the Norman Aeroplane Company (NAC). Production finally started in 1987.[3] It was intended that parts would be produced by UTVA in Pančevo, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia) to be assembled at Cardiff.[4]
NAC went into receivership in 1988, after the production of six Fieldmasters, including the prototype.[5] Brooklands Aerospace attempted to continue production, rebuilding one of the Fieldmasters with a more powerful engine as a specialised fire-fighting aircraft as the Firemaster 65,[6] but these attempts were stopped by the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia.[7]
A final attempt at production was made by the Turkish Aeronautical Association (Türk Hava Kurumu - THK) who started license production in 1997. This ended in 1999 after completion of two complete aircraft and a further two airframes lacking engines.[8]
Data from Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1988-89 [9]
General characteristics
Performance
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