A-4K Kahu - The modernized Kiwi

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I would cause enough strife that my small nation would appear as mighty as a cat struggling to use roller skates! NZ Sub tree for Britain!

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Oh hey, just saw this thread.

It was. Back on the old forums, by moi, and got passed to developers at the end of December 2019.

I’m pretty sure that’s an iPad screenshot I took years ago (not for Discord, not sure how it ended up there) from the foldouts at the back of Skyhawk flight manual, NZAP 6213.005-1.

NZ6202 is, funnily enough, documented as being quite literally the last Skyhawk to come out of the Kahu upgrade, with a return-to-flight date of 20 June 1991. You may be slightly confused, as '02 was the first Skyhawk in the European One scheme… when said scheme was introduced in 1984.

The A-4K, as originally delivered in 1970, had the squared-off fin containing the antenna for the IFF system. It was factory-fitted, as was the drag chute, and as such both predate KAHU by about 20 years.

Now, to clarify some other things in this thread, courtesy of said flight manual and this book here (ignore the RNZAF-contract Skyhawk stick assembled by Lear Siegler sitting next to it):

  • AIM-9Gs were not used on the upgraded A-4K. The remaining AIM-9Gs, by this point having expired, were expended in mid-June 1988. The first prototype Kahu only rolled out of the hangar earlier that month, and weapon integration to the upgraded aircraft didn’t happen until the two prototype aircraft - NZ6254 and NZ6205 - arrived at Ohakea in August that year.

  • Only stations 1,2,4, and 5 (the underwing stations) were wired for guided missile (9L and 65B/G) usage. And while the 65G could technically be fired from stations 1 and 5, it ran into the small fact that missile and pylon exceeded the weight limit for said stations.

    • There is no 65D for the A-4K. Full stop, end of story. The 65D was purchased to go along with the SH-2G(NZ), and - outside of system testing by Kaman prior to delivery - was first fired by NZ in September 2008, years after the Skyhawk was retired.

    • And to nip it in the bud, the NAS in the aircraft only supported a single guided missile on the wired stations, so any speculation about the LAU-88 instead of the LAU-117 is pointless.

  • While the AN/APG-66NZ was optimised for usage in a maritime environment, it was still more than capable of usage in an air-to-air role, and even included a track-through-the-notch capability in STT for such engagements.

  • While ALR-66 RWS seems good on paper, experience showed that the specific version purchased by the RNZAF had series issues, which were only rectified once different sensors sourced from RAF Phantoms were fitted.

Allow me to provide a bit of a rundown of what was involved with KAHU.

The RNZAF selected Smiths Industries (a British company) as the overall integration contractor. Under this were several others:

  • Lear Siegler Inc (US, though owned by Smiths from July 1987)

  • Pacific Aerospace Corporation Ltd (NZ)

  • Safe Air (NZ)

PAC, based in Hamilton, was responsible for a lot of the electrical elements inside the aircraft. They made new wiring looms, relay boxes, cockpit control panels, and the new instrument panels. These then got sent down to Woodbourne to be installed by Safe Air.

Safe Air was the primary installation contractor. They handled the disassembly, refit, and reassembly of the aircraft at RNZAF Base Woodbourne (aka Blenheim Airport, NZWB).

Lear Sielger Inc (LSI) determined the overall layout of the avionics inside the airframe (though the cockpit layout was dictated by RNZAF staff), and developed some of the systems running inside the aircraft, such as the master avionics running the display units, and the Mission Data Ground Terminal used to create flight data for upload to the aircraft.

So while bits and pieces were sourced from around the place - better RWS detectors from the RAF, the HUD from Scotland (specifically a FD4516 wide-angle HUD from Ferranti PLC, aka Ferranti Defence Systems Limited), and things like the radar and cockpit display units from the US - the overall contractor was British, and two of the three primary subcontractors were from NZ.

Plus, after refit, the aircraft were test flown by RNZAF pilots who had trained at the Empire Test Pilots’ School at RAF Boscombe Down.

So yeah. There’s a couple of UK connections in this thing, such as the primary contractor for the project.

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Yes, I’m aware of that, hence why I specifically said “here”, as I meant the “new” forum :)

Also thanks a lot for the added info :)

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Nice to see a pretty detailed rundown on it! The Kahu is just a neat plane in general, and I hope to see it someday

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Yeah, unless the snail has raw digital assets or physical objects like these (it doesn’t), it’s unlikely to happen soon with any amount of accuracy:

Spoiler




For reference:

(photo credit: AFMNZ)

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What do you know about the F-16’s that were supposed to be leased by the NZ government? Also was the A-4K still carrier capable?

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K was 100% not carrier capable, someone showed me a while back that the K had the Catapult equipment removed.

It still had the Arrestor hook, but had nothing to attach to the Catapults iirc

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Gotcha

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@lxtav is correct. The Skyhawks in RNZAF service had the bridle hooks inside the main gear wells removed, which prevents the aircraft from being hooked up to a catapult.

Spoiler

As for the F-16s, they were nominally standard F-16A/B Block 15 OCU, with the serials NZ6521-NZ6533 (F-16A) and NZ6541-NZ6555 (F-16B) reserved. All individual aiframes included with the lease-buy deal had their own NZ serial by the time the deal was cancelled (NZ6521 was allocated to F-16A 90-0942, for example).

IIRC at the time of the cancellation, the aircraft were maybe 12 months away from delivery at most, and hadn’t been repainted in RNZAF markings.

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Very nice. It’s just that some website had some conflicting information calling them “F-16AM-15 OCU” which didn’t make sense since the AM designation was for the MLU version.

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Yes it was only for landing on airfields - Ohakea had fixed arrestor gear IIRC, Woodbourne had portable gear

Delivery of the originals in 1970 - they were delivered by ship and then towed to Whenuapai…
image

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I wish it was added. I would love to fly me an RNZAF F-16 but gaijin says no :(

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Yeah, it’s just the OCU.

Skyhawks: the history of the RNZAF Skyhawk has a chapter on it that details the F-16 deal.

All 13 F-16A and nine of the F-16B were intended to be flown, with the remaining six F-16B being broken up on delivery and used as parts donor airframes. Delivery was expected to begin in early 2001, with an entry into service of March 2001 for the first aircraft, with the last ones arriving in 2002.

It was a 10-year (5+5) lease deal, with an option at the end to outright purchase the aircraft for a further 140 million USD. A mid-life upgrade was also offered for the five-year mark.

As part of this, the RNZAF also started looking for potential buyers for the Skyhawk fleet, with the Philipine Air Force expressing an interest. At the same time, as a direct consequence, several Skyhawk projects were cancelled by the RNZAF, including a proposal dubbed “KAHU II”, ejection seat replacements, and a structural life assessment programme (Skyhawk Loads Environment Spectrum Survey, or SLESS). These were then briefly restarted folloing the collapse of the F-16 deal, only to be stopped for good with the retirement of the A-4.

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