The Hindu : National : Behind the graceful take-off

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 30, 2004

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National

Behind the graceful take-off

By C. Manmohan Reddy

BANGALORE MAY 29. Saras, the light transport aircraft designed by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), made an uneventful maiden flight with a graceful take-off befitting a Saras crane. The resemblance was even more marked since the landing gear was not retracted during flight for safety reasons.

The very uneventfulness of the flight is important considering that the advanced aircraft is the product of a research and development lab with little practical experience of aircraft design and manufacture and considering that even the world-renowned American fighter, the F-14, crashed on its first flight.

The aircraft climbed high, made a dummy circuit of the airfield after slowing down and came back to make an equally graceful landing, 23 minutes after it took off. Pushing the flight envelope out to the over 550 kmph speed and 35,000 feet altitude that it is designed to fly at will be a gradual process over the next two years. Civil certification for the aircraft is expected late in 2006.

The prototype has taken to the air nearly 15 years after Prof. Satish Dhawan, the then chairman of NAL's research council, suggested that the lab needed to show what it was capable of by designing a commercially viable civil aircraft on its own steam. The delay is largely not of NAL's making. The Russian Myasischev research bureau, which wanted to make the development a joint project, fell victim to the disintegrating Soviet Union's financial woes and formally withdrew from the programme in 1997. India's own serious problems in the early 1990s also meant that funding for the Saras project was a trickle until 1997, and it was again hit by the post-Pokhran embargo in 1998.

Going back even further, the broad specifications for the Saras to a large extent evolved out of Raj Mahindra's early 1960s study for a `Hindustan Transport Aircraft.' The HTA was to be an aerial bridge capable of linking virtually every part of India using the shortest and roughest airfields.

The NAL team finally decided on an unusual 14-seat design with rear-mounted, twin Pratt and Whitney Canada turbines driving `pusher' propellers. This configuration in one shot greatly minimises the noise and vibration characteristic of propeller-driven aircraft that today's passengers, spoilt by `pure jets,' find so objectionable. The other objection, concerning the relatively slow speed, is of little importance at short ranges. The point-to-point convenience of smaller aircraft may often actually reduce total travel time.

Rear-mounted engines also ensure `cleaner' wings, which thus become more efficient. A useful comparison is with the German designed Dornier 228s that have been manufactured under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics since the 1980s. The comfortably pressurised Saras will fly three times as high (`above' the weather) and is almost whisper quiet. Its much longer range and higher ground speed is icing on the cake.

The Saras should find favour as an air ambulance, as a reconnaissance platform, for signals intelligence and in its original civil transport role. In the last mentioned role, it could direct connect, for example, many points in Rajasthan and Gujarat with the far corners of the country. Places of pilgrimage such as Tirupati and Shirdi, served by smaller airports, could be connected to major population centres.

All this does not mean that NAL can rest on its laurels. On the contrary, it needs to ensure that the second prototype, scheduled to fly next March, is considerably lighter. NAL also needs to design a larger, 19-seat version to make it more viable as a commuter aircraft.

Simultaneous development of a simulator similar to the one recently installed at the Indian Air Force base at Yelahanka here would also mean that the first six aircraft that the IAF is expected to order will be suitable for training rookie transport pilots soon after the aircraft are delivered. Time and money would probably be saved if the development of the simulator were entrusted to the same Bangalore-based firm that supplied the An-32 simulator to the IAF.

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