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Old 05-06-2009, 01:16 AM
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Marc Marc is offline
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Location: Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, Catalunya
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Well, in my opinion, one point commonly forgotten in the T2K background is the availability of light civilian aircraft. I know that I'm going a little off thread here...but taking as example old and proven planes like the Cessna 152 or 172, series etc. we'll have less electronic devices and less mechanical complexity than in our present-day cars. Airports availability will be a minor problem for this type of planes (one only needs to see some of the air strips used in South America or Africa) and some of them, depending of their prewar role, could be equipped with floating devices or skies.


They would be worth its weight in gold and their owners would use them accordingly, keeping the risks at minimum. That's specially true if taking into account their extreme vulnerability to small arms fire at low altitude. These type of planes, for example, would be key pieces in large territories with low density of military units and isolated population areas. Of course, fuel would be still a problem. But they have a low fuel consumption and less maintenance requirements (and less electronics) than other heavier aircraft. And the basics of flying are easy to learn with these planes, being easier for a pilot to instruct an apprentice. Good reasons to try to keep them flying in the Twilight world.


Among their normal roles, and depending of their load capacity, we could find: the light transport of critical materials (spare parts, medicines...) or people (technicians, doctors, an injured or sick person...), air mail, observation (location of marauder bands or refugees, monitoring the direction of a dangerous forest fire). Although their vulnerability, other, more dangerous roles are possible. Forward observer, target signalling with rockets...the Cessna Skymaster is a good example of these types of mission (do you remember "BAT 21"?) .
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