If you’ve ever dreamed of flying in an airshow, now’s your chance to own a complete military air demonstration team, some assembly required. The Pickles auction house in Australia will be selling off the surplus Pilatus PC-9 aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force’s Roulettes starting Nov. 4. The RAAF replaced the team’s 30-year-old PC-9s with the new PC-21 turboprop trainer a couple of years ago and although the team flew a six-ship show, there are 10 PC-9s on the block, all cheerfully decked out in their bright red and white livery.
As might be expected, none of the aircraft is ready for a hop around the patch. All were disassembled for storage and will likely need substantial effort and paperwork to get back in the air. They’ve also been flown hard and most have about 8,000 hours, albeit with the benefit of milspec maintenance. Once airworthy, the new owner(s) will have a very capable tandem configuration single that looks suspiciously like the U.S. Air Force’s Texan II, which is based on the PC-9 and built under license by Textron. It is, of course, fully aerobatic, pressurized and cruises at almost 300 knots.
