As many readers will know, Australia's Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) designed and built a number of different airframes based upon the North American Aviation NA-16, a trainer which eventually evolved into the legendary T-6 Texan/Harvard. The Wirraway was one of CAC's more successful designs. A number of different Wirraway variants evolved, some of them armed, but the type primarily served in the training role within Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a function which it performed admirably between 1939 and 1959. While CAC built more than 750 Wirraways at their factory in Fisherman's Bend, near Melbourne, Victoria, the type is pretty rare today, with fewer than two dozen survivors in any recognizable form today, and of these, just a handful are presently capable of flight. This is why the recent news of Rodney Knights' expedition to recover the substantial remains of a Wirraway from Lake Corangamite near Melbourne, Victoria is such welcome news. The aircra
written by Hannah Dowling
|
July 28, 2021
A total of $1.34 million has been awarded across four regional airports in the second round of the federal government’s Regional Airports Program, specifically to improve their aerial firefighting capabilities.
The federal government has just released the airports that have been awarded grant funding for upgrades in the second round of the $100 million Regional Airports Program (RAP).
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Under the RAP’s second round of grant offerings, nearly $30 million was provided to a total of 89 regional airports and their operators for necessary repairs and upgrades.
Of the 89, four in particular have been granted funding in order to better support local firefighting efforts, after Australia last year saw its worst bushfire season in recent history.