-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Hot new helicopter/rotorcraft news
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
The thing with helicopters is that they have some fundamental physical limits due to the nature of the platform. You can lift a little more, maybe add aux tanks, but you're not going much faster, and you can only go so much farther.
The H-60 is pretty much the platonic ideal of the medium lift helicopter. You could get a little bit better with a clean sheet design, but not enough to justify the cost and time. So you keep iteratively putting better and better electronics and weapons on it.
The next step is to go to an FVL-type or HSVTOL platform (tiltrotor, X2, Airbus A3/Racer, etc.) and/or unmanned. Those have their own foibles.
Also, naval aviation (the Navy side, anyway) is BROKE. There's no budget room for new toys until the 2030s. FA-XX is barely hanging on, and the only new aircraft you're likely to see are the rest of the F-35s on contract and the new TACAMO.
“The Navy’s problem here is money,” Cancian said. “Even if the defense budget goes up, there will only be a relatively small increase available for shipbuilding. (If) the budget stays steady or goes down, then the Navy will have a major problem. The fleet will continue to shrink.”
Trump turns to outsider to shake up Navy, but his lack of military experience raises concerns
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, has not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service.
apnews.com
It looks like Army is moving forward with RFI/RFP for a pilot training platform for Initial Entry Rotary Wing to replace the UH-72.
Interested in what @FlyNavy03 thinks...
TH-73 is real contender with the SPIFR requirements
aviationweek.com
Interested in what @FlyNavy03 thinks...
TH-73 is real contender with the SPIFR requirements
Helicopter-Makers Line Up For U.S. Army Rotorcraft Training Refresh | Aviation Week Network
Rotorcraft manufacturers are seeking partners and preparing bids for the U.S. Army’s updated training plans.
aviationweek.com
The list of competitors is interesting. I am surprised to see Schweitzer on there with the -333. The Enstrom 480B has the very, very slight advantage of being “American Made” where the Bell 505 is a “51st State” product (that’s a joke guys). The MD-530 is an interesting idea, but autos in them are quite a wake-up call (look between your boots and land there)! The MD-530 is also American made (and looks cool). Personally, I simply say “no” to the R-66, so there’s that - but it too is American made. If it comes down to a political decision in the current political climate my guess would be Enstrom simply because it is a Michigan/Wisconsin built ship while the R-66 is a dirty California ship built by pot smoking hippies. The MD would come in a tight second or third.
Bell is upping its marketing game...
news.bellflight.com
Bell Proposing ‘Purpose-Built’ 505 Jet Ranger For U.S. Army Training
Bell is proposing a dedicated instrument flight rules (IFR) variant of its Bell 505 Jet Ranger X single-engine light helicopter to meet an emerging U.S. Army need to refresh its rotary-wing training fleet.
This aeronautical dumbass wonders (given the Chinese H-60 copy with the five-blade rotor): Add power, upgrade transmission, five-blade rotor, probably find a way to cram in some more fuel given the power upgrade to maintain endurance. Same footprint aboard ship. Assuming NAVAIR is no longer broke, what does that give you?
Maybe 10 knots and a couple thousand pounds more lift capacity for billions in NRE, twice the per-aircraft flyaway cost, and substantially increased fuel and sustainment costs.
I also don't know where you'd put the fuel. The Bravo/Romeo airframe is already pretty cramped with the existing expanded fuel cells, all of the black boxes, buoy launcher, and now an ALFS. You could get rid of the launcher, but now you still need room for the individual buoys. If you add fuel, that eats up the space for the reeling machine and/or the rescue station, not to mention losing any kind of pax capability.
These skills should never be removed from the training syllabus. As aircraft evolve, we tend to threat some of the older "requirements" as being overcome by technology. I look at this the same as spin training in fixed wing. A must know skill and confidence builder, same with full autos.
I agree with both Chuck and Phrog, but the “newest thing” in civilian training is to end “full autos” with the addition of power and ending up at a hover rather than running along the ground. The reason? Less wear on the airframe. I’ve never done an auto in a wheeled helicopter…is there a difference? I have been to airfields where full autos (to the ground) are prohibited except in an emergency. Flying privately I tend to make about half my landings full auto to a hover recovery just to keep in practice.
It’s always about cost/benefit here. Autos due to real emergencies are rare enough that being able to get to a survivable hover might be sufficient, given that there’s a lot of cost due to wear and tear practicing them. Then add in the fact that occasionally someone wrecks a helo practicing full autos to the equation.
No twin or wheeled helo manufacturer allows practice full autos, so then you have to assess how transferable and relevant are auto skills that the pilot learned on a different aircraft in entry training a decade ago.
The only difference is that if the landing surface is relative smooth, a running landing is easier on wheels than skids.
But other than that, and auto is an auto.
I had a CO who insisted that every landing back at Tustin, to the runway, would be a 180 auto.
He said he had lost too many friends in VN who didn't make it to a field right next to them when the lost power due to enemy fire.
They overestimated how far they would "glide" in the auto.
When Capt. Sully was asked about knowing how to land in the water he said "For 42 years I’ve been making small regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. On January 15 the balance was sufficient so I could make a very large withdrawal."
He often spoke of his glider, F-4, and annual sim sessions, as part of the bank of experience.
So we really never know what experience we might draw on when the time comes.
And at least in my opinion, we can never do enough practice autos. No matter what they are flown in, even if not your usual aircraft.
Having survived an "impossible" auto, I completely agree with Sully's take.
We lost the tail right in the "dead zone" of the NATOPS HV diagram, and entered the auto well outside of established auto parameters, and definitely not in a regime you can practice in the aircraft itself. I still think the thing that saved us is: despite having never flown together before, we both thought through similar scenarios and even practiced them in the sim, even though there weren't established procedures or training for our scenario.
We certainly weren't perfect in our execution, but everyone walked away from what was deemed an "unsurvivable situation," so I think we did ok.