Ready for Take-off
Marketing
Great lake skydive centre's PAC 750XL
(click to enlarge)
The military too are another potential market. Cheaper than a helicopter and able to land and take off again on very short strips Mr Polley says the 750XL would be ideal for quietly inserting troops on patrol in East Timor without the racket of an Iroquois. He also sees the the 750XL being useful to forces in any mountainous country from Papua New Guinea to Vietnam.
But what of the competition? Well, at the moment there isn't much. The 750XL is designed to be a fairly rugged aeroplane in a very specific market segment. While the Russians certainly make aircraft of this kind Mr Polley says they are very definitely Russian which often means they are hard to fly and use techniques and controls that are not familiar to American-oriented pilots and service mechanics. Mr Polley says PAC designs like an American company, right the way down to using Imperial measurements because that is the way the market works.
COP Outcome development and evaluation
But this is all a little premature. After all the aircraft hasn't even flown yet. As this article goes to print PAC will begin working through a three-inch thick stack of flight tests overseen by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority. In a novel arrangement brokered by PAC the CAA will be administering tests not only for itself but also for the FAA. This means that the 750XL is being tested for certification in both the United States and New Zealand simultaneously. When the flight test programme is complete the aircraft will be certifiable in just about every market that matters and while the flight tests are expected to result in some modifications Mr Polley is confident that there will be no serious surprises.
The PAC 750XL is ready to take off but where it will take PAC nobody can be sure.
