The Cessna Caravan Supervan 900

Skydive Hibaldstow is just one of 3 dropzones around Europe and between them, we run a fleet of super-fast skydiving aircraft. In May 2013, we bought our first Cessna Caravan, N208AF, and it was hired out to other dropzones to run skydiving operations.

It wasn’t long before its success was proven and we got our second in January 2016, N105AN. With lots of experience flying Cessna Caravans, we decided we wanted to make them fast – a lot faster!. So approached US company, Texas Turbines Conversions Inc, they’re world leaders in upgrading standard Cessna Caravan’s. In January 2017, they took out the existing Pratt & Whitney 685shp and installed a state of the art Honeywell engine. The complex Supervan 900 conversion project takes months to do and had to be planned in carefully so as not to leave any of the 3 dropzones without lift capacity.

And the great news this year is that the second Cessna Caravan has just been successfully converted too. More capacity, shorter waiting times, what’s not to like!

What Gets Changed?

• Installation of a Honeywell TPE331-12JR engine
• Hartzell 110″ four-blade, reversible, full-feathering propeller
• Engine mount
• Starter/generator
• Engine instruments (except oil press. and fuel flow)
• Engine cowlings
• Concorder RG390 sealed batteries
• Oil cooler
• Electronic generator control unit
• Electronic alternator control unit

Essentially, anything forward of the firewall gets replaced in a complex job which takes a few weeks to do.

What it Means?

• As a skydiver, it means the Supervan 900 can climb to 15,000ft in 14 minutes, pretty fast!
• If you are team training, you can do back-to-backs with the Cessna all day long and finish early.
• Lastly, if you’re part of a national team heading off to Australia this coming October, you can train with us out of the competition aircraft.

Gallery

Thanks to Rob Lloyd for the stunning aircraft pics below:

Other Aircraft

Over the years we’ve had quite a few aircraft which have served us faithfully:

• Piper Cherokee CH6
• Cessna 206
• Piper Lance
• Britten-Norman BN2 Islander
• Turbo Finist SMG-92

Dornier G92

But one of our favourites has to be the Dornier G92 which we had converted from piston to turbine back in the mid-90’s. They have literally helped 100,000’s of skydives reach altitude over the years.

credit: Rob Lloyd