The Genius Behind This Ugly Duckling 

Got any stories or anecdotes on the Transavia Airtruk? Drop them in the comments!

I grew up in New Zealand and we had 3 or 4 of these on the airstrip down the road from our home. They were used for top dressing/crop dusting. Very maneuverable and the pilots loved throwing them around. But a number of them crashed into hills or power lines. When I was in high school in the 70's we had a major forest fire and the whole town was out fighting it for a couple of weeks. I had this opportunity to ride in one as it waterbombed the fire. They put plastic in the bottom of the hopper and filled it with water. The pilot was up the front and the passenger, me was facing backward at the back in a very small space. Taking off looking backward is one thing, but getting tossed around by the heat from the fires and then diving down over the fire and letting the water go was unbelievable. Was glad to be back on the ground. Never forget it. I lived in Dargaville and the company was Thames Aerial Topdressing.

I am an airplane nut. When I saw that plane on Mad Max I thought it was fictional because I never saw one before. I grew up in an area of the world with no highways or roads. It was by air, boat or snow-mobile.

There is an Airtruk here in the San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by a rancher in the foothills that uses it to hop down in the valley and when needed, it is filled with water and used for putting out fires since he has the crop dusting hardware. Can't miss it, it's painted day glo yellow with day glo orange stripes.

I'm so glad to see this plane get some love and attention!

The Australian Government has always been notorious for not supporting a local product

That was brilliant for the guy in the movie to use this because it looks like he developed it saved a ton of money and it got some oddball aircraft some notoriety

That's my footage at 6.21 taken at the 1988 Bicentennial Airshow at Richmond in NSW. Note that the nose gear is now on an oleo whereas previously it had been the trailing link on rubber donuts (as was the main gear). Watch more of the Airtruk (along with a CAC Ceres handling display at Tyabb here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BaJKx8TLP3Q.html You can see the different nose gear there. I do have an original brochure tucked away somewhere.

6:37 Wings tips and horizontal stabilizer tips (and to a lesser degree vertical stabilizer tips) produce vortices and the Airtruk’s design has twice as many vortex generating tips as a conventional airplane - vortices within vortices. Vortices are normally bad because they create drag by stirring up the air, but for the Airtruk, because it stirred up the air so much, it made for a simple hopper and dispersal system for the product being sprayed.

I love how simple it's design is, just parts directly bolted onto an engine! A true work of genius.

I love the Airtruk. It's great to see an American review an Australian oddball aircraft. Thanks for taking the time and effort to make this video. I really enjoyed it.

I used to watch the Airtruk at its little factory near Plumpton and it flew from a paddock next door and off the Richmond road. The brothers made their money from powerline structure …hence Transfield and then Transavia. My mate Ian Martin crashed one into a railway cutting near Tamworth in nsw and he survived. It is unlikely he would have survived in any other aircraft. The pilot area was a cage.

My log book shows around 700 glider launches in one between 1980 and 1983 in NZ. A lot of fun to fly with a 3 blade constant speed propellor & a 300 Continental fuel injected motor. Wearing a bone dome was a necessity as the cockpit from seat level to the roof narrowed considerably so that in turbulence your head would bang against the sides of the cockpit. When launching into strong wave conditions sometimes the best 'get down quick' manoeuvre was a half roll and a 4g pull through...if you had someone in the back 'loader' seats along for the ride you could hear the screams through all the noise...

I've been in the back of an Airtruk. My dad used to fly VH-TRJ back when it was with Hazair. It was a very weird feeling flying backwards. There was no lining inside the compartment and the seat was nothing more than a simple poorly padded bench. And after years of carrying chemicals, that's all the compartment smelled like, chemicals.

When I was younger, my father worked for Transfield and I visited the TransAvia factory a couple of times. That was quite a while ago. I remember taking home some scrap pieces of duralmin and aluminium sheets, just big enough for me to build a case for my electronics project at the time. The planes were in various stages of construction. I so wish I could have taken some photos! Thanks for making this video, now I can reminisce in style!

My late father flew one of these in NZ! I believe he did some firefighting in one at some point (early 70s).

This is a very good and fair overview of Transavia¨s Airtruk origin, development and evolution. Other modest designers have developed aircraft that many ignore, in Brasil, South Afrika, Australia, Japan, Poland, and others. Thanks for the ride!

Great video! Thanks for taking the time. I have seen a pair flying recently in Temora, NSW, Australia. Strange looking things, but always make you smile.

I recall at least two of them regularly parked at the Rotorua airport in the late 70’s. I was always fascinated by them was just thinking about them recently as they were so unique. Thanks for the video!

When I was a child I once enjoyed a ride in the back of one of these near Holbrook. I had no idea how rare these birds were.

I've loved these aircraft since I first saw one in Beyond Thunderdome. So cool!

Transfeld PTY. 220 Airtruks were built. Despite the wingtip appearance, an Airtruk had a lifty flat bottom airfoil with a sharp leading edge. The landing gear and nosegear were excellent. The Airtruck was not short coupled because the wing and tail had short chords. The landing gear helped with the topheaviness.

Yep I remember them well one operated out of Kaipara Flats airfield Warkworth NZ when I was a child and was a common sight in the rural skies locally.

Remember seeing lots of those top dressing in NZ when I was a kid. Most unconventional looking things when they first appeared. A neighbour was a top dressing pilot. At the time in the early 2000's he was flying a Fletcher which from memory they had been refitting with Czech turbo prop engines. He used to fly along the coast over our home and wing wave at our young kids at the time Great stuff Bob Cranston, a good bloke.

As a kid I watched these take off from the factory in Seven Hill in Sydney. They literally would take off from a strip of concrete than ran along the side of the building, just clearing the fence on the edge of the property. I think the concrete also served as the car park!

Having seen Mad Max 3 a number of times the Airtruk is by far the standout in that movie.

*My dad was a crop-duster pilot for 30 years, usually flying a Pawnee or a Stearman. He worked mostly in the Sacramento Valley, but also did work in Texas and Arizona. And in World War II he was a copilot on a B-24 Liberator.*

I got to know Luigi in 1997 while working on contract for Hawker deHavilland and visited him regularly --he was a little past it by then but full of anecdotes particularly about his "Aerautos" - I tried to get Pedr Davis to do a book on him without success (he was too hard to 'interview' or keep on a subject ...) His design for Victa preceeded the Millicer Airtourer and got shoved aside , he had many other designs or stillborn projects not well recorded and his flying car work was notable for it's far sightedness - he hoped Australia would need and embrace them but he ran into "the department's' (DCA then CASA now) dead hand and in his words ended up making an aircraft that 'dropped shit from the skies' I suspected that some of the configuration might have arisen from his flying car work in terms of being foldable (no bulky or long fuselage , etc) John Brown of CARPLANE GMBH carries on the flying car concept in Germany (although Australian) and credits his boyhood acquaintance with Luigi and Jack Brabham discussing race car aerodynamics at Bankstown airport with his inspiration . Luigi deserved more recognition than he got here .

I think I know about lots of planes ... well I don't ! This one is so beyond ugly it actually looks great !

I love the no bs presentation style Thanks for not fluffing New subscriber aquired

The "Pellarini was once again jobless" shots are comedy gold ^^

How not to love this perfectly looking Aussie bird?

Spent my whole life in aviation. Saw one of these up close while in Australia 1978. Still the weirdest airplane I’ve ever seen, I couldn’t believe it was real. Still got a picture of it.

I remember seeing a great Airtruk demo at Cambridge Airport in Tasmania in the 1980s. Really impressive aircraft and piloting skills.

Also thought the Mad Max plane was just a thing put together like a lot of the cars :-) We have one in a museum here in Denmark OY-DVZ

Built in a factory just off Station Road, Seven Hills (in Western Sydney). There is a GeoCache named AirTruk nearby ;-) Yes, it looked curious, but it was designed to be a cropduster from the outset and fit the bill perfectly. A great little beastie. I believe it may have been built under license in Eastern Europe at some point.

My introduction to this ugly bird was mad max beyond thunderdome.

Why do I like the weirdest looking things? Thank you for a great video!!!

Thanks for the upload. I haven’t seen one of these in over thirty years.

Pellarini's designs fully embody the pre-war style known as, "a collection of airplane parts flying in formation".

I helped rebuild one in the mid noughties. Once in use the owner/pilot noted that in comparison with the likes of a Pawnee or Cessna 185 it had reduced lateral control on landing runout as the airflow from the propeller didnt pass across the rudder. This made landing on horrible strips we used a different kind of challenge as compared to the tail-dragger types. Apart from this quirk it was apparently a plane with no vice. More docile to handle than a 185 and it would not bite you in the same way the Cessna would in a stall. The plane I worked on was ultimately lost after losing power on a takeoff run on one of our shorter, hilltop strips ( V1 was the moment you applied engine power) the layout of the cockpit had two identical levers to the pilots left. One for flaps and another(painted black and yellow) for hopper dump. Once the pilot was aware of the power loss he attempted to dump the load of super-phospate but mistakenly closed the flaps instead(whilst in ground effect) and the rest was history. The pilot did survive uninjured which was a testament to the happer being behind and below the pilot position A truly unquie aircraft indeed!

It's so adorably small and cute.

A pretty cool aircraft and I had not seen it before this, which is amazing. Looked like a really good design, glad you made this video!

the early PL12s were fitted with the geared Continental Tiara engine, and this probably affected early sales. The Tiara was notoriously unreliable, and the gyroscopic forces and G loading that Ag operations subjected it to meant it had a terrible failure rate. It was a real oddball engine too, so getting parts took a long time - too long for busy operators. Continental eventually gave up on it and the PL12 switched to the IO-520 instead.

Thank you sir! I really needed some high quality content today! Excellent video.

When you think about it this was a very sensible design.

Always one of my favorites! There is one displayed at the Sunshine Coast Air Museum

Thank you for sharing this Air Pickup.

Had the opportunity a couple of years ago to go for a ride in the back of one in Temora. Was loud but had a great view. And as it turns out, the video footage at the beginning of this film is what I shot on my iPhone during that ride.

Have never seen or heard about this aircraft until this video. They are very cool and practical for a lot of applications. They would probably sell good today. Who knows until they're put on the market. I do like it a lot.

There were 3 of them in Serbia where i flew. Looked quite unusual, very tall cockpit, but fly just fine with that 6 cylinder Lycoming. Two got retired, one crashed with deadly outcome, but not due to plane itself. We used to call them Kangaroo. Newer flew any of them, but spent years next to them...

What an amazingly beautiful, unique, little butterfly of an aircraft. You go Australia! ❤ I love unique ideas And things and this is one of the most unique things I have seen in my 52 years on this planet. I would by one and learn to fly it if I could afford it. 😊

That it's ugly but worked really, really well makes this an even more wonderful plane. I just ❤it.

Growing up in western Sydney, I can recall seeing these aircraft taking off across the major road at the western end of the Transavior Factory at Seven Hills.

That's rad, i love it! I can see how you could build out the cargo area modularly for a variety of uses

Not sure which I like better, the fantastic looking burger, or the hilarious Dynamic Duo skit. Skills!

G'day, I live in Glen Innes NSW, Oz. When I was a kid there was an Airtruck for a while, working for Airfarm or Air Ag, based in Armidale... There was a CAC (Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation) Ceres at the same time, the Ceres was based on the CAC Wirraway - which furnished the Spares you thought came from a T-6 Texan Nope. Wirraways are not Texans. Both the Airtrucks and the Ceres were outlasted by 650 Hp DHC Beavers, and F4U Fletchers...; then the Fletchers' owners bought-out the Beaver Fleet's Owners, and sold them for Floatplane Conversions to stop them re-entering the market here. And now the Fletchers have Turboprops.. But, yeah, in about 1968 or '69 there was a red & white Airtruck overflying my hometown at 500 ft several days every week. In 1978 I worked on Neil Cottee's Sopwith Pup Replica, built by Transavia at Camden, fitted with an Armstrong Siddley Gennet Major, with a replica Fokker DR-1 using a Warner Scarab at Olde Bowral Airfield, in the NSW Southern Highlands. You did ask. Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

came back just to roll around this one of the best Aereal Histories

As a young boy I had the privilege to be a passenger in one of these. It made me fell in love with aviation. Don't know how many were sold in South Africa, but one was doing cropspraying in the Malmesbury area

We had these planes sow fertiliser on our farm in New Zealand , great machines and pilots would wave out to us kids.

I saw the green one (landbrugs-flyvning) many years ago in Denmark...

I remember these in NZ. I always thought they were incredible looking. I think some people nicknamed them "flying pumpkins".

A very interesting story ! There was a top dressing company in my hometown, Wanganui, NZ but they used Fletcher FU 24's and a DC3. So this aircraft is new to me. I wonder if you could one day make a video about the Victor Air Tourer, a New Zealand built two seater, in which I learned to fly. The manufacturer hoped to sell them to the NZ Air force as a trainer and the joystick even had a spot for a gun button. They were fully aerobatic and a joy to fly. Mine was ZK CWC and I believe it's still flying after 50 years.

Now I low-key want to make a 3D RC foamie version of this.

My local airport has 2 of these owned by the same person :D, he also has an F-104, Fw-190, p-40 and a few other warbirds

Mad Max! We all saw this airplane in the film. When are people with very narrow lenses going to learn to not make absolutist statements?

In over 40 years as an aviation photograper I have only snapped 1 airworthy example and I had to travel to Stauning in Denmark for it. That was OY-DVZ in 1988. The only other one is non airworthy VH-TRN in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. rare beasts indeed.

heck yeah!!! Mad Max, it was awesome!

An aircraft flying in formation with itself.

What a wonderful piece of aveation history !!! Thankyou 😉😎

Thank you for the video I freaking Love odd ball plains like this

In many ways, this thing is an absolute stroke of genius.

I remember an airtruk being used as a glider tug in the early 1980s at Matamata

Spot On! thanks for the video

I remember seeing these flying around when I was a kid, mainly top dressing on farms. NZ replaced them with mainly the Fletcher.

As a pilot in NZ they were a great workhorse.

Thank you! I had always wondered about that weird little airplane in Beyond Thunderdome.

The Airtruk was made on Station Rd Sevenhills NSW near the bend near the western railway line, it took off in which is now the park behind the houses! In 1977 I did a work experience from school with a sign writer, we went to the factory & he painted the numbers & words on the planes!

Don't forget Molt Taylor's Aerocar..... you towed the tail around with it like a trailer until ready to fly, I believe the prop, at the tail, had to be connected to somewhat of a PTO shaft - it was featured on the Bob Cummings TV show, just like the Cessna 310 in Sky King(a thinly disguised promotional gimmick for Cessna Aircraft).

My favorite airplane of all time.

Ahh-hh, a real nostalgia trip! I used to work at Ardmore aerodrome (Auckland) and the row of AIRTRUK's parked outside Barr Brother was always a welcome and familiar sight. However, I always felt the basic AIRTRUK design was a lost opportunity in waiting because it almost screamed at you for the designer to give it a pusher prop makeover. Would look even cooler. In again topdressing guise the only downside with a nose hopper access cover would be superphos spillage into the engine cooling gills and the leader's tyres tearing up the soft paddock in front of the aircraft.

That demands to be built as a rubber free flight for FAC competition!

Iv wondered about this weird bird for awhile. Great video!

I can remember a number of them working in New Zealand spreading fertiliser over the farmland. But in the end, the Fletchers Top dresses, one out in New Zealand .

I Love the way this plane looks! It's a fun-looking aircraft that I would definitely own if I had the money and flight time.

I grew up in Tasmania and during the 80's I used to see these regularly. I used to call them Cowfish planes :-)

Love this video…. Cool rig… soothing for an airplane junkie like me! Ciao!

As we used to say in the Australian Infantry "A third class ride is better than a First Class walk"!!

Saw these and instantly started humming the song to Talespin.

I promised myself that I would watch this video without bursting into uncontrollable laughter, I failed!

I love that line about the plane looking like it had crashed, and was put back together by a blind person!😂

"Behold! A flying car!" "Pretty sure that's just a small plane"

You missed the principal reason for the split tailplane. If you had ever flown a cropduster, you would be aware that when the load is "dumped" - e.g. in order to lighten the aircraft so it could clear an obstacle in an emergency - the falling plume of liquid or solids causes a large downwash on the tailplane, if it is located in the conventional position. This results in most aircraft of that conventional layout, pitching uncontrollably nose-upward for a few seconds - which puts them at risk of a flick roll, very close to the ground. Pellarini knew this and his design uniquely avoided that; the PL12 simply rises like a lift when the weight is dropped, which means that one could dump a ton of water on a selected spot from as low as you liked - I did it from about 10 feet above the ground. I was given the job of doing an independent check of the performance of the PL12 with the IO-720 engine, when the Australian government offered to subsidise the supply of three of them to the Chinese Government. It had a hopper volume of 1 cubic metre, i.e. one English ton of water. The rear compartment could carry two occupants sitting aft of the hopper, plus all the spray booms, which folded - so one could stow them internally when flying cross-country. Yes, it "hit a brick wall" if you tried to cruise much above 100 knots, but that had nothing to do with all the tip vortices. It was actually very pleasant (if noisy) to fly, though the extra two cylinders of the IO 720 did not give the aircraft the hoped-for performance gain over the 300 HP version. The 300 HP version was by far the most efficient aircraft for its intended purpose at that time; it was superseded by larger aircraft with twice the power (mainly from turboprop engines) when they became available. Also, the wide swathe width from the sesquiplane layout proved to be a disadvantage when spray drift became a major issue.

Excelente trabalho de pesquisa, congrats 👏🏻

I love it already, looks very comfy to fly.

Great video. Thank you!

I used to see them from the train on the way to work, 30-40 years ago. They were built in western Sydney at Seven Hills/Toongabbie. The factory was right beside the railway line. There is an Airtruk in the Sydney Powerhouse museum.

My dad was a crop-duster pilot who flew these planes for a company called Airfarm out of Tamworth , NSW in the late 60's /early 70's. I remember one of the times he took my older brother and I in that back seat (facing backward) to one of the airstrips he operated from. We would spend the day playing on the superphosphate pile while he was working. I always found it amazing how he threw that plane around flying 18 inches off the ground as he dumped the load of superphosphate and climbed over the trees at the end of the field and then brought it back around in the tightest turns I had ever seen, to do another run. He then landed and the loader was waiting and loaded the plane again and off he went (just as seen in this video). After the day was done, he put us back in that back cabin again and took off to return to Tamworth after one more load. I remember well the G forces on my brother and I as he completed the final passes and look back on how tough and maneuverable those little planes must have been. Dad passed this last August and had so many stories to tell about life as a crop duster. He did have one accident in the Airtruk however. He was taxiing down the runway heading out to a job when the front wheel collapsed and he ended up upside down. The crash report said that there was a crack in the front wheel strut from a manufacturing fault. The only comment from the owner of the plane went something like" You bastard, you broke my plane!" Thanks for the great video and the trip down memory lane!!

You're absolutely bang-on at 8:45 - we call it cultural cringe, that nothing you can do here will ever be as good as something done somewhere else. It's a huge probably we have in Australia, and I thank you for touching on it. It's a function of being a colony, alas. It's still very much a thing, sadly - it's what killed our car industry, and it's why a lot of arts/cultural funding organisations would rather spend money attracting a Hollywood film than producing a local one.

Steve Death of Hazair is the last Aussie with the Airtruks. Great organisation!