COP Outcome development and evaluation

Mr Polley says one of the first things the design team did was start working on a physical mock-up made of wood. "You can do as many drawings as you like but there are some practical issues that you can only understand by physically climbing in and out of a mock-up to get an idea of what those numbers actually mean", he says. The mock-ups also became the focus for the manufacturing team to become involved in the design process. "It's easy to get a situation where the manufacturing guys criticise the design guys ideas, so I threw it open to the manufacturing team to have some input into the design and we got some very good input from them." Mr Polley says.

Having wrestled with the physical dimensions of the aircraft the designers, a team of two engineers and highly experienced draughters, fired up their AutoCAD stations and tried to find components from the CRESCO that could be pressed into service on the 750XL. While 25 percent could be reapplied this was less than had originally been anticipated.

COP Planning for practice

Part of the reason for this is that the 750XL will be one of the first aircraft in the world to be built to the FAA's Amendment 53 rules. PAC obviously needs to build an aircraft it can export and to get an aircraft accepted into the American market it needs to meet the requirements of the United States Federal Aviation Administration. When they approached the FAA, PAC was told that if it built its aircraft to the latest amendment it would have no problem obtaining approval. The only snag was not all the component manufacturers are up to Amendment 53 standards and so long as they are manufacturing for earlier aircraft they don't need to be. This can create problems. For example the fuel valves in an aircraft only permit fuel to flow in one direction. The new rules say it must be impossible to mount the valve the wrong way around but the manufacturers are building to the old rules which allowed the same connectors at both ends. Result: PAC has to develop a mount which meets the requirements of the new rules while using components made for a mass-market of old-rule aircraft.