Bell 206 down in the Hudson
- Thread starter azmedic
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ASpilot2be
Qbicle seat warmer
Are you insulting @mikecweb ?
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
If you are landing on 8L in Honolulu, the ship you see on the east side of the Pearl Harbor channel, just past the narrow section is an Army transport ship that serves as a shuttle to Barking Sands on Kauai.
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
Those boats are at Tyndall and I believe the only boat unit in the AF. They recover drones from the Gulf of Mexico. Security Forces there also uses boats since Tyndall has a lot of shoreline.
CFI A&P
Exploring the world one toilet at a time.
I have a family member that’s a retired CWO in the Army and spent their career in those boats, minus one “shore duty” assignment. Went all over the world moving large equipment and supplies.
Kind of wild to think about it. What’s next, tanks in the Air Force?
Lawman
Well-Known Member
BS.
Boat Warrants aren’t real. They are a set of hat and keys left as a conspiracy so we could funnel money to dark projects.
Two decades in the Army and I have yet to meet an actual boat warrant. Those guys are ghosts.
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Oh, I’ve met them. They make you guys look like hard workers who show up for formations and do PT.
Puckgoalie
Well-Known Member
Had a couple in my WOCC class. One of them broke the "No coffee (caffeine)" before we got rights. Was jealous until she got caught.
Skåning
Well-Known Member
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Bandit_Driver
Gold Member
to the helo guys. Wouldn't an overweight condition lead to the rotor folding up in a V shape?
knot4u
Repeat Offender
Or a Y for three blades, what about four or five bladed helicopters? I'm not a helicopter expert but I can't remember an accident that fits your description. They just don't work that way, as a machine a helicopter is an awesome assemblage of very precise parts working together in unison that is constantly trying to tear itself apart, the only thing keeping it in the air is that person with both hands and both feet on the controls at all times. Sheep herders get to use dogs for help when their herd gets unruly, helicopter pilots have no sheep dogs. When things get rowdy it's just two hands, two feet and hopefully a competent brain. I like helicopters, I'd like to learn to fly helicopters but my wallet will not support that sort of vanity.
No, helicopter blades and the rotor system are extremely sturdy. In an overweight helicopter on the ground, all that will happen as the pilots raises the collective and thus puts pitch/AOA into the rotor blades to get them to lift the helo off the ground, is rotor speed (Nr) decay. This is because when engine power required exceeds engine power available, as the pitch of the main rotor blades increase in AOA through pilot demand, the take more and more of a bite of air in attempting to lift off of the ground. When there’s no more available engine power to be transmitted to the transmission to increase rotor speed and thus increase lift, the blades with the AOA in them begin becoming more drag than lift, and the rotor system slows down, hence the Nr decay. And you just go nowhere lift-wise, besides beginning to overtemp or overtorque the engines by demanding more than they can give.
Inflight, it’s similar. Say you takeoff from sea level at just under max weight, fly to a landing zone at 9000 MSL on a hot day, then try to set up for a hover at heavy weight and in much thinner air, same thing could happen where power required exceeds power available. All that happens here, if nothing is done to prevent it like flying away with forward speed to allow relative wind through the rotor system to improve its efficiency, will be Nr decay and a resultant settling with power, and likely a loss of tail rotor effectiveness as the engines are not able to provide any more power to the tail for anti-torque to counter the main rotor. It’s a very bad place to get into, and could easily end up as a square corner that once can’t escape from if they hang out there too long and don’t correct it.
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
You could do a running landing, assuming about 10 other conditions in your favor plus a prepared landing area, but if you had that, you wouldn’t need a helicopter in the first place.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
I mean, we do running takeoff/landing all the time just because of the enhanced performance it offers. I dont think most people appreciate that above 20-26 knots of forward airspeed the helicopter effectively is takeoff/landing complete and into flight. The wing is always above V1, but it’s creating vortices that rob performance when its staying in one place.
Helicopters aren’t really hover machines as much as the greatest STOL design possible. Hovering stationary is a byproduct.
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Much easier in the wheeled birds, but can be done with the skid birds, insofar as takeoff,
Landings about the same, though the skid birds really need to have shoes on them to prevent skid damage on hard surface landings.
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
I’d think that doing a running landing with skids on anything other than a hard surface is asking for a DRO.
Can be done on flat short grass that’s atop dry ground. But you’ve gotta know that particular surface and touchdown is just above ETL for a short slide out. That’s for helos with a higher CG, namely higher skid ones. A Huey, for example, can do a sliding landing on flat dirt due to its very low CG and low skids, but also the touchdown speed is just above ETL. Any higher of a speed in higher CG helos, and you risk nosing it over. An Astar, I can do a very short slide landing in dirt, but that’s at about 5 knots forward speed, well below ETL and thus defeats the purpose of a slide landing. Otherwise can do one in grassy dry level ground just above ETL fine.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Any surfaced runway will handle a full 60-80 knot touchdown of a skid aircraft doing an auto with no difference than the skid and tire bits left that require annual maintenance around the touch down markers.
The skids on trainers that do it on the regular have scrape pads which are very cheap and easy to replace.
Honestly landing a helicopter to a hover 3-5 feet for your standard 5k-20k helo (Bell 206 - Blackhawk) is easier than doing a touch down landing skid or wheels. Once you get into ground effect the only places a 3-5 foot hover are difficult is in extreme DA of 7-9k or better. If it can’t hover 3-5 feet, it probably shouldn’t fly. Now combat we had that condition on the regular in Afghanistan, but we would “fly it like a P-47” and basically rolling takeoff to 60-70 knots (right round Vy) and then just burn off gas for an hour after that it flew fine.
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I don’t think I ever saw the British or Dutch Army Apaches ever do a hovering takeoff in Afghan. Their ramp was right next to the fuel pits, and the short helo lane perpendicular to it was where they always did rolling takeoffs. In our area, there were no US Army Apaches, so I never saw their ops.