I'm sure some of you might have seen this, but first for me!!
Couple of you guys are Helo pilots, I have a little time in them, but this is pretty wild!!

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

The Chinook is an absolute ageless beast of a helicopter. I have a friend who rescued stranded climbers on Mt. McKinley at 18200 feet with one and had a lot of praise for the capabilities of the ship. He actually made two trips on back to back days and was named Army Aviator of the Year.

Not to bust balls but Im pretty sure thats a Boeing Vertol/CH-46.

The Chinook is a CH-47 and a larger airframe.

-46


-47

Crazyvan13 is correct on the models. The CH-46 had a lot of issues so the Marines, of course, ended up with it. We got the better CH-47.

The demonstration was an excellent display of pilot technique , crew coordination, and stupidity. If I had been in the crowd, I would have been the one leaving rapidly at a ninety degree angle.

It would be interesting to see a video from inside of the pilot's motion while they are flying. Must be some wild control movement to turn like that.

This also makes me very interested in the flight controls of a tandem rotor helicopter versus a standard single rotor.

I caught a ride back to Phu Loi from Saigon in a Chinook. The "Peter pilot " let me have the right seat near Phu Loi. Lots of room to move around up there. At a hundred feet, on the approach, the AC came to a hover and told me to take it. Easiest helicopter I ever hovered. Cyclic and pedals only. You had to pull a collective set trigger to move it. Very, very stable.

Single rotor helicopters require dynamic proactive movement of cyclic, collective, and pedals all the time and don't do OGE hover very well.

contactflying wrote:Crazyvan13 is correct on the models. The CH-46 had a lot of issues so the Marines, of course, ended up with it. We got the better CH-47.

The demonstration was an excellent display of pilot technique , crew coordination, and stupidity. If I had been in the crowd, I would have been the one leaving rapidly at a ninety degree angle.

I think the camera angle made it appear like they were over the crowd at points. I hope that was just a bad camera angle and not the actual case.

asadarnell wrote:This also makes me very interested in the flight controls of a tandem rotor helicopter versus a standard single rotor.

The pilot has physical control over collective pitch and lateral cyclic pitch of the rotor discs, but everything is mixed mechanically so that the flight controls are arranged in the "standard helicopter" configuration.

The thrust control lever (left hand, up/down movement) controls collective thrust in both rotor discs. Generally makes the helicopter climb/descend, but combined with attitude (pitch or lateral) will cause the helo to accel/decel.

Forward/aft cyclic (right hand) controls pitch attitude by adjusting the collective pitch in the fore/aft discs. To pitch down you decrease pitch in the forward disc and increase on the aft disc.

Left/right cyclic controls roll attitude by adjusting the lateral cyclic pitch of both discs simultaneously to cause the discs to tilt. Left cyclic increases the pitch of the forward disc over the nose and the aft disc over the tail. Blade pitch is simultaneously reduced on the opposite side of each disc. As the discs counter-rotate, aerodynamics and gyroscopic precession cause the discs to tilt to the left, which causes the aircraft to roll left.

Left/right pedals control yaw by causing the rotor discs to tilt laterally in opposite directions. Left pedal causes the forward disc to tilt left and the aft disc to tilt right, causing the helicopter to yaw left.



EDIT: corrected a ton of spelling typos and fixed my misquote (tcj to asadarnell)

tcj wrote:It would be interesting to see a video from inside of the pilot's motion while they are flying. Must be some wild control movement to turn like that.

That's a big misconception from fixed wing pilots. My primary aircraft was the OH-58D. We'd make that aircraft dance with cyclic inputs that never exceeded ~2-3 inches from center. Collective inputs around 4-5 inches, and pedal inputs were usually around 1 to 2 inches from neutral in forward flight (hovering is another matter, depending on the winds and how proactive you are with corrections).

I've flown the Chinook and currently fly a lot of Blackhawks. Control input ranges are pretty similar in those airframes as well.

Cameron,

I was looking at weight, inertia, and missile damage. Blade strike, two big three bladed rotors breaking into hundreds of lethal missiles in a roll over : big body count. Where does the transmission go in a twin rotor blade strike?

The helicopter is the most dangerous military vehicle with respect to those on the ground.

I have it on very good authority, from an actual Marine, that they liked the CH-46.

contactflying wrote:Cameron,

I was looking at weight, inertia, and missile damage. Blade strike, two big three bladed rotors breaking into hundreds of lethal missiles in a roll over : big body count. Where does the transmission go in a twin rotor blade strike?

The helicopter is the most dangerous military vehicle with respect to those on the ground.

The good news is that if you have a mid-air with yourself in a tandem rotor, the transmission that really matters is already gone. The combining transmission is what keeps the blades safely meshed. There's also a fore/aft pylon transmission just under each rotor head, as well as a nose gearbox off each engine.

The CH-47 airframe is structurally fatigue-life limited to a 52,000 lb gross weight. The engines make tons of power, and can readily exceed that weight.


EDIT: Jim, I re-read and saw I missed your question. Here's an example. These are from ground resonance, but would look similar to a blade strike if you knocked enough blade off to create a large imbalance.

https://youtu.be/RihcJR0zvfM

https://youtu.be/D2tHA7KmRME

Cam,

Not nearly as bad in that video as I have seen in Bell crashes. The OH-13 threw splinters like crazy.

Jim

CamTom12 wrote:

tcj wrote:It would be interesting to see a video from inside of the pilot's motion while they are flying. Must be some wild control movement to turn like that.

That's a big misconception from fixed wing pilots. My primary aircraft was the OH-58D. We'd make that aircraft dance with cyclic inputs that never exceeded ~2-3 inches from center. Collective inputs around 4-5 inches, and pedal inputs were usually around 1 to 2 inches from neutral in forward flight (hovering is another matter, depending on the winds and how proactive you are with corrections).

I've flown the Chinook and currently fly a lot of Blackhawks. Control input ranges are pretty similar in those airframes as well.

That was one of the misconceptions that the instructor disabused me of when I took my one and only helicopter lesson some years ago, in a little Schweizer 300 bug. When we took off, he said, "watch my hands, and see how little I move the controls." So when I took the controls over, I knew not to move them very much. I did climbs, descents, and cruising, and came in to a low hover and then a landing, all with him hovering over the controls but not touching them--he could talk fast! He said that I was the first fixed wing pilot he'd had who hovered successfully on the first lesson without him having to take over--what I remember is that barely moving beyond breathing was enough to start the little egg beater oscillating back and forth.

They are not easy to fly. I came away from that lesson with a new found respect for helicopter pilots!

Cary

CH-46 for sure got 800 hrs flying in the back, crew chief, in the Navy doing Vertical Replenishment from USS Sacramento off Viet Nam. Will post pics if I can figure out how to get them off this stupid thumb drive would much rather take my chances in a CH-46 than an Osprey

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... ey-hmm364/

Good article Don,

Army troops had great respect for Marines. So much smaller than us, you guys had few places for Rear Area Folks to hide. I went to FRG on my Armor Officer ground tour after RVN and found a good number of the Army's. Good troops as well, but this hillbilly pilot was shocked.

Jim

A deck load of bombs to vertrep to carrier for delivery to Ho

DonC wrote:A deck load of bombs to vertrep to carrier for delivery to Ho







Wish we had a hoist like that

Don,

I fixed the images for you. When grabbing the image url make sure to right click on the image itself and click "copy image address" to insert into your post [img] -----------[img]

Man aging myself now You can see our other helo on rear deck of Sacramental in the middle. Not to mention the Battleship Had the opportunity to watch a nighttime firing of 16 in. shells 20 miles inland. very impressive They said every time they fired a broad side the ship would move 12 feet in opposite direction

akaviator wrote:Very cool, thanks for sharing.

The Chinook is an absolute ageless beast of a helicopter. I have a friend who rescued stranded climbers on Mt. McKinley at 18200 feet with one and had a lot of praise for the capabilities of the ship. He actually made two trips on back to back days and was named Army Aviator of the Year.

Myron Babcock? He held (maybe still does) the high altitude winch rescue record for a long time. I thought his rescue was at over 19,000 though.....He is retired now, but flew with the Sugarbears out of Wainwright.

MTV