Established by Mike Beachy Head in 1998, the Thunder City collection has grown to comprise four English Electric Lightnings, three Blackburn Buccaneers and seven Hawker Hunters. Famously, they offer flights in these aircraft to those who can afford them, as well as promotional and TV work. The aircraft are kept in a dedicated hangar at Cape Town International Airport and comprise Mike's personal collection - he remains the CEO of Thunder City.
Initially designed by Sud Aviation (later to become part of Aerospatiale) in France, and entering service in the late 1960s, the SA-330 Puma has earned a reputation as a rugged and capable support helicopter, and remains in service in significant numbers with a large number of operators throughout the world. Many users are finding that the best replacement for a Puma is a new Puma, and in fact Eurocopter still produce the larger, more capable AS332 Super Puma. However, acquiring a new helicopter requires significant investment on the part of an operator, so a more cost effective solution can be to update an existing airframe, to extend its useful life.
The Puma was selected by the South African Air Force as a support helicopter with the first examples being delivered in 1969 and the fleet had a long service life, being retired in 1997. Many examples found their way on to new operators, including the UK Royal Air Force, which acquired several aircraft as attrition replacements for its original fleet. These aircraft were refurbished and entered service with 33 Sqn between 2006 and 2008. The Puma’s replacement in SAAF service was the Atlas Oryx, itself a derivative of the original Puma design, broadly equivalent to the Eurocopter AS332.
Thunder City acquired their first Puma for upgrade around four years ago, with the aircraft concerned being an ex-South African Air Force SA-330L. The helicopter was stripped down and completely rebuilt, with the airframe and components being thoroughly overhauled and reworked.
The first product of the upgrade program was Puma ZU-PUM, which has been retained at Cape Town as Mike’s personal transport and demonstrator aircraft. In addition to the airframe and engine work, this aircraft also received a comprehensive avionics upgrade, including a glass cockpit and full EFIS system. The system chosen was the Cobham Glass Cockpit system, which offers lower maintenance costs, but more importantly provides additional information to the pilot and enhances the safety of the aircraft.
The age of the aircraft and its analogue systems presented some challenges to the upgrade team. “The integration of the new digital system with an analogue aircraft was certainly the most challenging aspect of the program,” says Thunder City’s Maintenance Director, Danie Swart. For this reason, the “off the shelf” Cobham system was chosen, as it has already been certified by the FAA, and rated for Instrument Flying Rules (IFR).
The new cockpit is dramatically different to the original layout, with the analogue instruments being removed and replaced by new LCD displays. Each pilot is provided with a Primary Flying Display (PFD) and a Navigation Display (ND). The PFD is the familiar artificial horizon, with integrated speed, altitude and heading information, but also features a 3D synthetic projection of the terrain up ahead. The lower ND display provides a full colour map, again enhancing terrain awareness, and enabling precision navigation. The navigation system allows “Highway In The Sky” (HITS) navigation, and also provides a precision Hover Vector. The Hover Vector gives details of airspeed, altitude and drift in the hover, and allows precision landings to be made on a pre-programmed point, which is especially useful at night and in adverse weather.
Since making its first post upgrade flight, ZU-PUM has been used to demonstrate the capabilities of the upgraded aircraft, and recently starred in a forthcoming film, “The Human Factor”. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood and set for release in December 2009, centres around the life of Nelson Mandela, after his release from prison. Morgan Freeman takes on the role of the great man himself, with the Puma representing a helicopter transporting him to a meeting with the Springboks rugby team.
Nearing completion in Thunder City’s facility at Cape Town is the second upgraded Puma. This is another ex-SAAF machine, which will be rebuilt and refurbished, but will not receive the full avionics upgrade that the first aircraft got. This aircraft is scheduled to fly by July this year, and will be followed by two further aircraft, which are currently stored in a semi-dismantled state.
The aim is to offer upgraded helicopters to both civil and military operators. The original Puma remains a very capable helicopter and is still in service throughout Africa and the rest of the world. Substantial numbers of Puma airframes are in storage in the region, including aircraft formerly used by the armed forces in Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Replacing these aircraft with new build airframes is prohibitively expensive, so upgrading the existing airframes represents a cost effective solution. The program proposed by Thunder City offers a method of extending the life of the Pumas in service, and also provides spares and technical support for the aircraft, giving the Puma a new lease of life, and ensuring that it will remain in service for many years to come.