The RAAF Roulettes, flying the Pilatus PC-9, Avalon Airshow 26 Feb-3 Mar 2019
The Roulettes are the Royal Australian Air Force's formation aerobatic display team. They provide about 150 flying displays a year, in Australia and in friendly countries around the South-east Asian region. The Roulettes form part of the RAAF Central Flying School (CFS) at RAAF Base East Sale, Victoria.
The Central Flying School formed its first official aerobatic team in 1962, the Red Sales, using De Havilland Vampire jet fighters. On 15 August 1962 the team was involved in a major incident with the loss of five lives and four aircraft. The Telstars were formed in Feb 1963 still using Vampire aircraft. They were re-equipped with Macchi MB-326 aircraft in Feb 1968, but were disbanded in Apr 1968 due to budget restraints.
In 1970, the Roulettes were formed to celebrate the RAAF's 50th anniversary to be held throughout the year of 1971. The Roulettes first air show was at Point Cook in Dec 1970. Their last air show using the Macchi was at Lakes Entrance in June 1989. Initially, they were equipped with four Macchis, growing to five aircraft in 1974 and seven in 1981 before cost-cutting saw the team reduced to five again in 1982. Towards the end of the 1980s, the Roulettes flying hours had to be reduced as the MB-326 fleet developed premature metal fatigue problems and a replacement aircraft type was investigated. In 1989, with the new Pilatus PC-9 trainers starting to arrive and MB-326 airframe hours severely limited, the Roulettes flew just a single pair of Macchis. The Roulettes switched over to the new PC-9s in late 1989, and arrived at the composition they have used ever since: six PC-9s plus a spare. The Roulettes will switch to the Pilatus PC-21 by 2019, which has been selected to replace the PC-9 as the RAAF's advanced trainer under the AIR5428 project.
The aircraft are painted in the bold red, white and blue scheme, with a large "R" symbol on the tail. The RAAF has since adopted this scheme (minus the "R") for all its PC-9 trainers, except for the PC-9s at ARDU and FAC, which allows an aircraft to be swapped into or out of the team to equalise fleet airframe hours by just repainting the tail.
There are seven Roulettes pilots at any given time, and gaining appointment to the team is a rare distinction. All are flying instructors, except number seven, who serves as the commentator and ferry pilot for the spare aircraft.
From time to time, the CO of an RAAF operational squadron recommends a pilot for instructor duties with either the Basic Flying Training School at Tamworth, NSW or at 2 Flying Training School at Pearce, WA. Upon progression through several levels of instructor categorisation, some of these pilots are then selected for duty at the Central Flying School, where they train flying instructors. From the 21 CFS senior instructors, the CFS commanding officer and the Roulette leader then offer selected individuals a chance to try out for the Roulettes. The team is organised in 'seasons' lasting six months; most members serve on the team for three seasons before moving on to other duties.
A pilot begins with three months of intensive formation aerobatic training, starting with relatively simple manoeuvres (such as loops and rolls in echelon or line astern) performed at altitude, and progressing through more complex and demanding ones (such as corkscrews, ripple rolls and rollbacks), close formation line abreast aerobatics (which requires constant fine attention to power and trim settings), and eventually working up to the full six-aircraft display routines. Only when a routine is well-practised at altitude is it brought down in gradual steps to the minimum safe level of 500 feet (150 m). First season pilots fly as Roulettes 2, 3 or 4, while the more experienced pilots fly as Roulettes 5 and 6. Roulette 1 is the team leader, and Roulette 7 flies the spare aircraft, is responsible for public relations, and often provides commentary at flying displays.
The Pilatus PC-9 is a single-engine, low-wing tandem-seat turboprop training aircraft manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland. Designed as a more powerful evolution of the Pilatus PC-7, the PC-9's first flight was made in May 1984 after which certification was achieved in September 1985. After this, the first production orders for the type were received from the Royal Saudi Air Force, with deliveries commencing in 1985. Since then, more than 250 airframes have been produced across five different variants and the type is employed by a number of military and civilian operators around the world, including the Swiss Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal Thai Air Force.
The Pilatus PC-21 is a turboprop-powered advanced trainer with a stepped tandem cockpit. It is manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland. In November 1997, Pilatus flew a modified PC-7 Mk.II in order to test improvements for a prospective next generation turboprop trainer. As a result of these tests, Pilatus elected to fund the development of a new training system in November 1998; development of the new trainer, designated as the PC-21, formally started in January 1999.[2] The PC-21 would be developed and certified as a completely new training system, aimed at meeting future military customers' specifications in terms of capability and life-cycle costs for the next three decades.
The PC-9 is a more powerful evolution of the PC-7. It retains the overall layout of its predecessor, but it has very little structural commonality with it. Amongst other improvements, the PC-9 features a larger cockpit with stepped ejection seats and also has a ventral airbrake.
The PC-9 program officially started in 1982. Although some aerodynamic elements were tested on a PC-7 during 1982 and 1983, the first flight of the first PC-9 prototype took place on 7 May 1984. A second prototype flew on 20 July of the same year; this prototype had all the standard electronic flight instrumentation and environmental control systems installed and was thus almost fully representative of the production version.
Certification was achieved in September 1985. By this time, the PC-9 had lost the Royal Air Force trainer competition to the Short Tucano. However, the marketing links that Pilatus built up with British Aerospace during the competition led to their first order from Saudi Arabia.
As of 2004, more than 250 aircraft of this type have been built.
The first production aircraft for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) flew on 19 May 1987, under the Australian designation PC-9/A.
