Topic: Indian Chipmunk (not)

[andrewjherbert]

A recent business trip took me to Bangalore.  Driving to the office past an Indian Airforce base I saw what I thought at first was a Chipmunk gate guardian on a pole.  On second glance the rudder looked wrong.  A bit of searching on the web led me to the history of the HAL HT-2, a Indian designed and built trainer very similar in appearance to the Chipmunk.

There's a short history of the aircraft at http://www.warbirdsofindia.com/karnataka/hal/152-ht2-ix480.html

[Janie]

That is quite interesting - particularly the comment on handling characteristics.  I wonder if the difficulties wereboth on the ground and in the air.

The, main visual difference I can see in the design, from those photographs, is the empennage; not just the fact that the tail appears to have a considerably smaller surface area, but also that the horizontal stabiliser is much further forward and would, therefore blank off part of the rudder in certain attitudes - particularly the spin. 

Thank you for sharing that.