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NAC Fieldmaster

type of aircraft

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 8, 2025
Entity authorityQ6952174
Source-derived summary

The NAC Fieldmaster was a British agricultural aircraft of the 1980s. A turboprop powered single-engined monoplane, it was built in small numbers and used both as a cropsprayer and a firefighting aircraft.

Development and design

NDN Aircraft was set up in 1976 by Desmond Norman to build the Firecracker trainer. Norman had been a founder of the Britten-Norman company, the manufacturers of the Islander. NDN Aircraft designed a new agricultural aircraft, the NDN-6 Fieldmaster. This was a large single-engined low-winged monoplane with a fixed tricycle undercarriage, powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop engine, the first western-built agricultural aircraft to be designed for turboprop power. Novel features included an integral hopper made of Titanium to carry its chemical payload, which was dispersed via spray nozzles built into the flaps under the aircraft's wings.

The first prototype flew on 17 December 1981 at NDN's airfield at Sandown, Isle of Wight. TNDN moved the premises to Cardiff, Wales in 1985, renaming itself the Norman Aeroplane Company (NAC). Production finally started in 1987.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “NAC Fieldmaster” as type of aircraft. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1981, 1985, 1987—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Fieldmaster, type and aircraft can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of aircraft. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6952174. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1981, 1985 and 1987.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “NAC Fieldmaster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow NAC Fieldmaster primary sources, NAC Fieldmaster archive and Fieldmaster research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from NAC Fieldmaster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.