So how many know about this??

[Garry Russell]

The thread about AIrbus undercarriage got me thinkng out another aeroplane many may not know about

Here's a fogotten protoype

It was not put into production as it was a little underpowered and so modified this same airframe yet again,kept the extra two seat rear fuse mod, swapped the two seat forward extention for a four seat extention and added an extra engine....


http://www.airliners.net/photo/Britten- ... 0845601/L/

[DaveB]

It's a shame they didn't get a few more horses out of those engines and no aircraft in it's right mind would want to end up looking like a Trislander

ATB

DaveB

[Garry Russell]

It was also a lot to do with also making it up to the max 18 seat for single pilot ops.

Funnily enough, although the fuse extention never went into production, it does sort of live on as the fuse extetion in the Defender 4000 is very similar.perhaps even essentially the same........although I don't think the internal stretch is there at the back

The extra two seats at the rear was an option on the Islander but I don't know of any takers......the long nose was also an option for the Islander and was useful when the rear hold was compromised for the extra seats but apart from a demo Islander for Farnborough that did have the extra two seats at the back I can't think of any long nose Islanders. The Long nose became standard from that point on the Trislander and made an interesting looking type butt ugly.

G-BAAE at Farnborough

http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1034401/

[FlyTexas]

Ahhh, this just proves that the engine on the tail was an afterthought...just like the one on the DC-10.

Brian

[Garry Russell]

The reason they did that was that they could use 70 percent Islander structure 'Off the shelf' and 98 percent common operational spares
The fuse extention in the Trislader is an Islander centre section with an extra window each side replacing the small forward Islander fuse section

So in effect The Trislander fuse is a nose section then a modified Islander centre section followed by a standard Islander centre section followed by a optional Isalnder rear section followed by a new tail cone.

The larger span wing and larger tyres are Islander options.

The rear engine is standard Islander with only the empenage, rear nacelle and tail cone new with a bit of local strengthening here and there.

It only took a couple of months to design and knock up the first Trislander which was named appartently after someone cracked a joke at Farnborough about the so called, at the time, Three Engingined Islander....."Wot, ya mean a Trislander "......or so the story went at the time

I always though the DC 10 a very clever design...surely......no one could build such an ugly aeroplane by accident, it must have involved very carefull planning. Then it was, of course, followed by the improved (that is, even more ugly) MD-11.