FLIGHT International,

319

27 August 1964

Fokker F.28 Fellowship

A DUTCH/WEST

GERMAN CO-OPERATIVE

OWADAYS, in the highly competitive world of aircraft manufacturing no constructor is ever left alone
for very long to exploit a part of the market with a new
kind of aircraft development. It is unlikely, for example, that there
will ever be a repetition of the circumstances which allowed Fokker,
with the twin-Dart Friendship, not only to make a comeback to
airliner building, but also to establish a commanding hold over the
small to medium-sized short-haul market. Now, with the F.28
Fellowship (again powered by Rolls-Royce, in this case two Spey
Junior by-pass turbojets), in the face of established competition
from BAC and Douglas with the strong chance of Boeing as well,
this relatively small but highly efficient Dutch company is making
a strong bid to build further on the good reputation established by
nearly 300 Friendships sold to 43 airlines, 36 business operators,
and seven air forces and governments.
As with the Friendship, evolved from a project similar in size to
the DC-3 (which it was aimed to replace) to become an aircraft
with a payload nearly twice that of the universally employed
Douglas maid-of-all-work, availability of a suitable powerplant
has dictated the size of Fokker's latest project. In this case, the
first intention was to produce a jet replacement for the Friendship;
and, since the aircraft would be faster, the earliest studies were for
one even smaller than the twin-turboprop, so that it would not
represent too big a step-up in productivity for existing F.27 routes.
During the four years the F.28 has been under study, traffic on
the kind of less-dense routes where F.27s are used has continued
to expand healthily and Fokker has decided that a bigger aircraft
powered by a well established engine, while still smaller than its
immediate British and American competitors, should find a
worthwhile market. In its initial form the Fellowship will be nearly
twice as productive as a Friendship, have a gross weight some
20 per cent greater and carry up to 65 passengers over 500-mile
stages, in contrast to the Friendship's 48 passengers over 350-mile
stages. Such improved flexibility cannot be gained without price
increase: although the F.28 will, it is claimed, have seat-mile costs
comparable with those of the Friendship, the aircraft per-mile
and per-hour costs will reflect the purchase price of around
750,000 (complete with electronics and furnishings) compared
with around 400,000 for a similarly equipped Friendship.
Earlier this year it was announced that the Netherlands Government had agreed to underwrite 10.3m of the 12m estimated cost
of developing the Fellowship into a production aircraft. At that
time the remaining support for the programme was expected to
come from French, German, and Italian participation but, in the

Designed to the same criteria that ten

years ago led to the Friendship, the
fellowship's conventional shape btlies
important differences from its slightly
wger
g American and British compet-

itors

VENTURE

event only Sud-Aviation and a German group consisting of

Hamburger Flugzeugbau und Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke
was signed upto design and build respectively the wing and the
rear fuselage, engine installation and tail surfaces. This summer,
because the French Government announced it would not decide
whether to support the French participation before September,
Sud withdrew from the project, though not before investing
considerable funds and completing a good deal of work. Participation in the project is arranged on a cost and profit-sharing basis
rather like the arrangement between Douglas and its major subcontractors on the DC-9. Fokker is currently negotiating with a
number of European manufacturers for someone to take over
Sud's share; they could handle the wing themselves, but have said
they would prefer to have two partners and would like the project
to be a European venture. An announcement is expected very
shortly.
Although metal was first cut for the Fellowship quite recently, an
unusually extensive amount of the engineering design and production planning had already been undertaken while the decision to
build was debated.
Airframe Design The moderately swept wing of the Fellowship
has been carefully optimized for the short-haul operation. In the
course of theoretical and wind-tunnel studies, some seven wing
designs and 20 aerofoil sections were tested in the large trans-sonic
tunnel of the Dutch National Aeronautical and Space Research
Institute. With a maximum operating Mach number fixed conservatively at 0.75, the resulting wing has a sweep angle of only 16
at quarter chord and a relatively high t/c ratio of 14 per cent at the
root tapering to 10 per cent at the tip. By virtue of these dimensions,
Fokker say that no compromise in low-speed handling characteristics has been necessary, especially in the approach configuration.
Another effect of the thick wing is that it has not been necessary
to use leading-edge devices to achieve the required Cunax of 2.5,
and double-slotted Fowler flaps allow estimated fully factored
landing field lengths of around 4,000ft.
The wing structure is a further development of the F.27 layout
and is unusual for an aircraft of this type in being in three major
components: centre section and outer wings. The wing bottom
skin will be made out of three planks joined in such a way that
cracks will not pass the joints. Any two planks are capable of
supporting the fail-safe load. The taper-rolled top skin with its
bonded stringers is formed into a torsion box with the lower panels
by forged light-metal ribs in the centre section and at the join