A whiff that actually exists

[maxmwill]

I'm not sure if anyone has seen this, or even heard of this, but here goes, because this is a design that I happen to personally enjoy, if only because I had some contact(working at an FBO) with its precursor.

I'm sure that everyone is aware of the Piaggio P180 Avanti.

To me, this is one of the sexiest business twins ever built.

While another business twin, the Aero Commander 680 is readily identifiable when it comes in for a landing and is taxying(it howls with a banshee wail), the Avanti tends to purr with a growl, and, like the B26 when it was first unveiled. looks like it is going a hundred miles and hour just sitting there.

O, and before I leave the subject, if you need a possible idea for a flying boat, the Aero Commander has that look about it, because with the high mounted wings, the prop tips don't even come close to the bottom of the fuselage(hull?), so if a keel is added, and a planing hull, with stabilizing floats(or even little sub wings, as on the Martin Clipper, or any of the old German flying boats), possibilities............

Anyway, the Avanti.

Recently, Piaggio has started marketing a UAV they have dubbed the Hammerhead.

It is an unmanned Avanti, with mods, and looks pretty good(scratch that, she is gorgeous, but then, I guess I'm prejudiced).

I'm not sure if there are any plans for this to be kitted(like a lot of other UAVs have been recently), but there is a scale model of the Avanti, with which it might be possible to bash this out.

http://p1hh.piaggioaero.com/

I'm not sure, but I've been wondering if this came about late one night, a bunch of Piaggio engineers were gathered together, perhaps celebrating something at the local tavern, and one of them began doodling on a cocktail napkin, and the Hammerhead was born. 

[maxmwill]

Yeah, the 680 has a pair of Garretts motivating it.

I suspect that PT6s would be a bit much for it.

Well, I may have implied that there wouldn't be any need for changes, but, as with any major mod like this, changes would be a natural course of events.

Now, on the subject of major changes, in some aircraft, such as the Ayres S2 Thrush, I was involved in an annual on one. When it taxied up to the hangar, not only did the engine sound off, but it didn't look like a 1340. Turned out, there was an STC on the Thrush, in which the Pratt is taken off, and an 1820 mounted, with no changes. Now, I'm sure you know that a 1340 is a nominal 600 horse engine, and the 1820 is close to a thousand horses, and yet, after looking up the STC just to see what the design mechanic did, that was just it, yard off the old engine, and mount the new.

There are a few problems, however, with putting something like around a thousand horses on an airframe designed for around 600, and after we removed the wings, and took panels off, the problems started to show. Had the pilot who brought this gal in had landed any harder than he did, both plane and pilot wouldn't have survived, because there was very little that the landing gear struts were attached to; a lot of  vibrations had basically shattered that area. And the tube structure around the tail wheel had to be re-welded something fierce.

Still, an annual is an annual, and after a lot of phone calls to Ayres, I was able to help figure out some fixes, which consisted of 3/8" thick gusset plates around the area of the mains, and some quarter inch gusset plates around the tail wheel strut mount.

But a 680 converted to a flying boat? Yeah, that'd take some work, but the end product would look nifty, and painted as, perhaps, part of the JNSDF, along side a(possibly) amphibious MU2(yes, the Japanese used the MU2 as a patrol bird).