Backcountry Pilot

[OregonMaule offline]

I'll say this for the Maule crowd...they are loyal.

I'm loyal untill I can afford a Bush Hawk. I think it is going to be a long wait....Rob

[Capt. Kirk offline]

I'll say this for the Maule crowd...they are loyal.

I'm loyal untill I can afford a Bush Hawk. I think it is going to be a long wait....Rob

Where's the wing struts on that thing? How's a person to haul plywood without wing struts?

Regarding the pictures...I take it I can't link to my BCP photo album huh?
Is there a way to slap a picture into a post straight from the hard drive?

[hotrod180 offline]

I don't know jack about helo's but I think the coolest one out there is the Sikorsky S-58/H-34, aka Choctaw or Seahorse. That's the one on tailwheel gear with the Wright 1820 mounted kinda slantwise in the nose.
The UH-1 Huey comes in second. I love that scene in the movie Forrest Gump when he has just arrived in Vietnam and a big bunch of Hueys whop-whops their way by.

Eric

[OregonMaule offline]

Regarding the pictures...I take it I can't link to my BCP photo album huh?Is there a way to slap a picture into a post straight from the hard drive?

Capt. Kirk, yes you can put any picture that is on a internet server in your post. No you can't take one from your hard drive straight to the post. You first must put it into BCP.org server. Hope this helps.

Here are the official directions from the man himself.

phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=28

[Yellowbelly offline]

Here's one of the meanest ones I've ever seen, sitting in the Saudi desert about 50 miles south of Kuwait protecting my civilian butt. It was Thanksgiving and we drove across miles of desert loaded with roasted turkeys and pumpkin pie to show our appreciation. Middle son got a close up of the chain gun which is slaved to the helmet sighting system. Apparently the Apache has more wire cutters than a Ford Explorer has cup holders.

[Zzz]

Here are the official directions from the man himself.

phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=28

Thanks Rob, you're officially un-banned.

[a64pilot offline]

YB,
If you can believe it the "trashe" originally was fielded without WSPS, wire strike protective system and the original performance planning charts did not include the WSPS. there was something like a .1% increase in flat plate drag with the WSPS. One of the favorite things to check on checkride day was to see if you computed for the increase in drag. It wasn't enough to measure on any of the cockpit gauges, but you were wrong if you didn't compute it.
My unit had two wire strikes before it was installed, both at Fort Hood Tx. The first one was at night when the pilot hit one of the BIG power transmission cables that are attached to those towers that go cross country. Well the wire tore off the nose of the aircraft which includes both the TADS and PNVS "night vision systems" Dan Craytor "the pilot" did what anybody would have done and landed immedately. Problem is that that he flew through two more sets of wires on they way down. It was a long time before that airplane flew again.The second one was when the unit commander hit a wire that wrapped around the gun, pulled the pole half way out of the ground, then broke it off and drug it a couple of hundred yards before the wire broke.

[OregonMaule offline]

Zane, thanks. I'll cancel the contract I put on ya... Rob

[OregonMaule offline]

If you fly a hele with a tailwheel instead of skids do you have to get a TW endorsement? Is the insurance more with a TW?

[a64pilot offline]

If you fly a hele with a tailwheel instead of skids do you have to get a TW endorsement? Is the insurance more with a TW?

Skids are for kids

[Capt. Kirk offline]

testing

[OregonMaule offline]

testing

By golly I think he got it.

[hotrod180 offline]

Good photo-- makes me want to buy a Luscombe!

[Yellowbelly offline]

Good photo-- makes me want to buy a Luscombe!

Hey Zero, this will too:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XS8X1FokJ7g"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XS8X1FokJ7g" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

BTW: I once saw the Red Arrows at a little grass strip like this in England. Three feet off the deck and close enough to spit on. They don't land at fields like this, but on airshow weekends, they just go around to half a dozen fields and give everybody a thrill. They must be short on lawyers over there.

YB

[Zzz]

I'm tempted to break off a Luscombe thread, because that was awesome.

[Yellowbelly offline]

A64
Nothing would surprise me about that indian being one tough hombre. We used to do ballistic tolerance studies on the main rotor components. We got a main rotor blade that had been shot with a 30mm HE round and it looked like as if most of the structure had been blown away. We strapped it into the test fixture and started applying regular mission loads to it. Most of the test crew gave up and went home after several hours. IIRC, it flew about 48 hours of regular mission loads before failing even though it looked like a chicken wing with the meat taken off.

[OregonMaule offline]

Yellowbelly, Great clip!!!!

[a64pilot offline]

YB,
If I remember the main rotor blade was built with 4 titanium spar "boxes", one behind the other, supposedly only one was required to keep the blade together. Every critical component on the Apache had either a backup or would at least tolerate a 51 cal hit. You sure it wasn't a 23mm HEI round?
Oh yeah, there are 6 wire cutters and 11 defelectors, I still have the operators manuals, checklists etc.
Who did you work for?

[Yellowbelly offline]

A64
You are exactly right, it was a 23mm. I round up for impact. Now everybody knows the factor to divide my claimed TAS, gross weight and fish length numbers with. I worked for Hughes Helicopters, the ORIGINAL creator of the Apache.

I remember the pitch links that had no backup but were heat treated so hard that they couldn't be finish machined afterwards because they were harder than the tool steel bits. We got several ballistic samples for testing with .51 cal rounds impact welded to them. They bent, but none broke.

[a64pilot offline]

YB,
The PC links and several other things on the AH-64 were ESR (electro slag remelt) I remember the controversy on that. Apparently after 1440 days the steel age hardened to the point it was too brittle. The ARMY knew that and had not bought the parts to replace them. Or the det cord that would blow the cockpit windows, they didn't buy replacements for that either instead they gave us knives to "break out". Or the GG rotors on the GE engine were undampned, GE told the ARMY there would be failures and the ARMY just wrote the failures off until an ambassador was killed in a blackhawk, then suddenly it became important to get fixed.
I have fond memories of the aircraft though, did you know it supposedly has a higher roll rate than a FA-18? Nothing can out turn an AH-64, except maybe a LOSH.