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CAV AC11-100
The CAV AC11-100 was the first Venezuelan supersonic transport (SST). After winning a competition for a government-funded contract to build a Venezuelan SST, CAV began development at its facilities in Caracas. The design emerged as a very large aircraft with seating for 220 to 270 passengers and cruise speeds in the range of Mach 2.5. This made it much larger and significantly faster than competing designs like the Concorde, with more than twice the seating capacity.
By mid-1962, it was becoming clear that tentative talks earlier that year between the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation on a merger of their SST projects were more serious than originally thought. In November 1962, still to the surprise of many, the Concorde project was announced. In spite of marginal economics, nationalistic and political arguments had led to wide support for the project, especially from Charles de Gaulle and it looked like the Europeans would start off with a huge lead. As if this weren't enough, it soon became known that the Soviets and americans were also working on a similar designs althought the american design was going to be considerably larger and faster than either concorde or the Tu-144.
Wanting Venezuela to be one of the world's superpowers, the government decided that a national SST was needed and requests for Proposals were sent out to airframe manufacturers CAV, VeneAvia and others for the airframes and Aerotécnica and VeneAvia and for engines. Soon the minor manufacturers abandoned the competition feeling they didnt have the experience or resources to design the aircraft, VeneAvia stayed in the competition to design the aircraft for a year but it later droped out to form a consortium with Aerotécnica to design the massive and complex engines for the aircraft leaving CAV as the only manufacturer willing to design such a complex aircraft.
CAV's first designs were submitted to the Ministry on April 12, 1964. CAV's original designs featured variable geometry wings but this soon proved that althought it was effective it made the aircraft too heavy and apart from that the aircraft suffered from excessive drag, even after the wing design was changed for the conventional delta the drag was still above the requirements, the situation went on for years as more problems were encountered in development as a result the venezuelan government grew impatient and as a result of Avensa's decision to order the Concorde it decided to make an unexpected move. The government decided to contact Lockheed after it had lost the SST contract and arranged for the American company to sell all the data, files, plans and documents regarding the L-2000 to Venezuela.
Having spent so many resources in the SST competition Lockheed executives agreed without hesitation and as a result overnight the Venezuelan aerospace industry had skipped years of development and saved millions development costs. CAV's design team was quick to take advantage of the data acquired and also of some lockheed engineers that were hired to help expedite development.
Construction of the first prototype of what became known as the AC11-100 started in late 1968, the aircraft not surprisingly ended up being very similar to the L-2000 althought there were differences, most notably was the decision to drop the topspeed from Mach 3 to 2.5 this was done as a compromise in order to be able to build the aircraft out of existing materials and therefore reduce the cost of the aircraft.
The first prototype was finished in June with the first flight scheduled for July 5 1971 in order to coincide with Venezuela's independence. By this time the Boeing 2707 had been cancelled by congress leaving only Concorde, the Tu-144 and the AC11 in competition for the supersonic market.
The prototype AC11 named
"El Coloso" performed its first flight in July 5th, as originally intended the aircraft flew for one hour with no mechanical faults reported by the crew, soon after the state tests began with the prototype joined by another five aircraft but it took another five years for the aircraft to enter airline service with Viasa.
Specifications
General characteristics
Capacity: 273 passengers
Length: 273 ft 2 in (83.26 m)
Wingspan: 116 ft (35.36 m)
Height: 50,85 ft (15,50 m)
Wing area: 9,424 ft² (875 m²)
Empty weight: 238,000 lb (107,900 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 590,000 lb (267,600 kg)
Powerplant: 4 × VeneAvia/Aerotécnica TR12-10A Turbojet producing 50,000 lbf (220 kN)
dry, and 65,000 lbf (290 kN) with afterburner.
Performance
Cruise speed: Mach 2.5
Range: 5219,52 mi/4535,64 nmi (8,400 km)
Service ceiling: 76,500 ft (23,317 m)