After a long and troubled development history, reaching back to 1982, the A400M has received a European type certificate, which makes it legal to sell it and fly it. They program manager feels good enough about the aircraft to let journalists fly it. Aviation Week liked it. Easy to fly, quieter than existing transports even at takeoff power, big, fast as a jet liner, decent short field landings. It's bigger than the C-130 (which makes it a BIG airplane) but not as big as a C-17.
Thing that caught my eye was the high propeller RPM's. The old C-133 kept prop revs down to 100-200 RPM even at takeoff power. A400M has odd looking props (lots of short scimitar shaped blades) that rev up to 850 RPM. This probably eases the load on the gearboxes. The engines rev up to 10,000 RPM and the gear boxes have to stand up to 11,000 horsepower without breaking. The A400M gearboxes only need a 10:1 gear ratio. The old C-133 gearboxes, which gave a lot trouble, had to have a 100:1 gear reduction which is harder to do.
The Europeans are committed to buying A400Ms. The maker, Airbus, is naturally hoping for more export sales to cover the staggering development costs. According to Aviation Week, if you divide total program costs by the number of firm orders, it comes out to $170 million per aircraft, twice the cost of a C130.
No comments:
Post a Comment