OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums The History Forum The Old Soap Box VH-MVR

Evening Folks,

Been doing some 'accidental' research re: the activities of the Victa Aviation Division. Firstly, my apologies if this is all old news to y'all but it's news to me!

VH-MVR is, according to the CASA website, still held by the one and only airworthy Victa Aircruiser! ........wait, I'll back up a bit.

When Victa Aviation was sold to the kiwis the very successful airtourer was in full production and the organisation was working on a 4 seat variant - the Aircruiser.

My understanding until recently was that when Victa Aviation was sold to the kiwis was that the flying prototype aircruiser (VH-MVR) was sold with the rest of the organisation and that it became the basis of the prototype for the military trainer and thus ceased to exist. Apparently this is only partly true. It was sold to NZ but returned 10 years later to these shores in private hands and was re-registered as VH-MVR! It is still in private hands and is airworthy, I believe. Owned by an older gentleman. The need for this to be in the hands of a museum is obvious!

Second observation is that the mark VH-MVR was previously held but another Victa prototype of which I was not aware - the Victa R2 which was penned by Luigi Pellarini of Tranavia Airtruk fame! The R2 was never produced.

The significance of the R2 for me is that I was not aware that Victa was courting any other designers. I thought Henry Millicer was their one and only designer.

I'm also aware they were playing around with a gyrocopter.

We all know the story that Victa gave up the Aviation division because the Federal Government would not provide tariff protection against the imports from the big US manufacturers. If we consider that the Aviation division had spent the massive amount of capital that must have been required to bring the airtourer to production and to have brought the aircruiser to certification and the R2 to test flight stage and been messing with the gyrocopter, the aviation division must have been bleeding money something senseless and tariff protection or no tariff protection these costs were an unreasonable thing for the poor airtourer to try and absorb.

And what else where they playing around with, I wonder??

I'll post relevant photos soon. I need the daughters computer to do that. This iPad still won't play ball photowise..

Cheers,

Photos attributed per captions. Colour photos of the aircruiser, one in its original colour scheme and the other from more "recent" times.

G'day prd
Many thanks for the research on VH-MVR

I find it amazing that the Victa Group was so diverse.
There is no connection between Victa Red Phones, Victa Homes, Victa Lawnmowers
and Victa aircraft. But Merv did it!

I was not aware of the R2...
I knew about the 'gyroplane' ...



Here's an ad for the Airtourer ...



It is such a shame the AUS Government blundered so badly on this.

Cheers.
----------------
Jack

Hi Jack, if the Aus Government of the time hadn't blundered on it the next one would have, our Governments have a proven track record of failing on this sort of thing

G'day Norm
That's exactly what happened - with the Nomad.



-------------------
Jack

Very interesting and well-researched. As a side note, you wouldn't catch me going up in any of these contraptions even if you paid me.

Evening Folks,

Permit me please to kick the dust around on this one a little......

Victa produced 166 airframes between '62 and '65 and the very large majority of these were sold to the local market. This suggests to me that the local market was very much behind the local product and that the airtourer was making very significant sales here ( remember that sales volumes in aviation are nothing like those in the motor trade of the OPE game!). In fact I'd suggest that if all things remained equal and they kept going the way they were they would have saturated the local market in a very short space of time! To continue sales at a profitable rate they were going to need to export, and do so seriously and there'd be no tariff protection in the export game. If fact they'd have to fight to import against the tariffs of other countries. The Australian aviation industry is not big enough to support any manufacturing based on local sales alone.

Also, the stuff I've been reading lately suggests that Victa had spent WAY too much money on R&D in the early sixties and that the cost of all this R&D was gjoing to take a massive number of aircraft sales to absorb. The poor old airtourer just couldn't do this on its own and even if the aircruiser was put into production and local sales went well it would require the continued long term support of the profit making parts of the Victa organisation for many years to come and the opening up of export sales for the Aviation division to finally show a profit. R&D would also need to be reigned in. R&D and product development is all well and good but in the aviation game it costs a fortune and the sales volume is low.

And that gyrocopter would never make a dime......

Even if the governments of the time had tariff protected the Airtourer, the Nomad, Transavia Airtruk and other, all it would have done is offered short term breathing space while the manufacturers consolidated themselves and prepared to fight it out with the big boys in the export market.

Personal musings offered in the hope they provoke thought and debate!

Cheers,

It is a pity because the Aircruiser was a very smart looking plane and the Nomad was a very good workhorse. Merve was obviously intent on building quality products but as we all know Australia was never going to be able to sustain any manufacturing base once the Button plan was introduced. Australian manufacturing died a slow death from that day forward