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Hot new helicopter/rotorcraft news
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
My comment was a joke about the GrizCopter and it's questionable tail rotor.
It should go without saying that the Army designed, tested, and fielded a new rotor system for increased performance and any improvement in the looks department is a happy accident.
I would imagine the Army and Eurocopter is staying with the fenstrom in place of a tail rotor. I am wondering how long it will be before mechanical tail rotors are replaced by electric tail rotors (see the article on Bell’s experiments) - less moving parts is a good thing.
Future Flight: Bell debuts electric tail rotor
Bell is flight testing a new system that it thinks has the potential to make helicopters safer, more efficient, and quieter.
www.aopa.org
As for replacing the Kiowa, Bell and Eurocppter will have entries but I can’t imagine anything beating a derivative of Sikorsky’s high speed compound helicopter S-97 Raider.
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Yes - the old school TR is out.
I’ll be at AUSA next month and I check the rumor mill. I believe the Army is looking for something to fill the years between now and the S-97.I would imagine the Army and Eurocopter is staying with the fenstrom in place of a tail rotor. I am wondering how long it will be before mechanical tail rotors are replaced by electric tail rotors (see the article on Bell’s experiments) - less moving parts is a good thing.
Future Flight: Bell debuts electric tail rotor
Bell is flight testing a new system that it thinks has the potential to make helicopters safer, more efficient, and quieter.www.aopa.org
View attachment 32513
As for replacing the Kiowa, Bell and Eurocppter will have entries but I can’t imagine anything beating a derivative of Sikorsky’s high speed compound helicopter S-97 Raider.
View attachment 32514
Bell has their FARA/360 Invictus/"it's not the Comanche we swear!" as well. Maybe @phrogdriver can tell us why it's a better contender than the S-97.
If these nerds give me a loss of t/r drive due to software error or a bad wire….I would imagine the Army and Eurocopter is staying with the fenstrom in place of a tail rotor. I am wondering how long it will be before mechanical tail rotors are replaced by electric tail rotors (see the article on Bell’s experiments) - less moving parts is a good thing.
Future Flight: Bell debuts electric tail rotor
Bell is flight testing a new system that it thinks has the potential to make helicopters safer, more efficient, and quieter.www.aopa.org
View attachment 32513
@Randy Daytona : HSMPBR is right, less moving parts doesn't necessarily mean a less complex system. Now the complexity is buried in SW instead of in HW. Get a bad coder or a coder having a bad day and you could get a TR that runs the wrong way.
UH-72 has been a home run of a program for the Army and NG - hugely popular with crews, heavy satisfaction with end users like FEMA (for disaster response) and orders of magnitude less $/hr than a 'hawk. I think the drama over its use as a primary trainer is over now that its the path foprward. The B model just shows the tech innovation Airbus is doing - something Sikorsky/LM and Boeing just don't have the DNA to do ...
Huh? What does this even mean?
Taking an existing design, optiimizing the blade airfoil, adding a 5th rotor blade to the hub with zero downside or compromise to the aerodynamics with GW/perf improvements and providing an upgrade path for existing H145 operators to this configuration...
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And if the code is bad you have to give Lockheed $50,000,000 to fix it over a five year period. Waiting for sysconfig 18 is bad enough. We don’t want to wait for tailrotor 2Y.
You mean like putting anhedral at the main rotor blade tips, increasing blade chord, and changing the spar from titanium to composite, negating the need for a BIM indicator, requiring less power in a hover and increasing control responsiveness at or near it's service ceiling? see 60M. Also, what about the 60V? And then there is this thing.
Calling the UH-72 a home run for the Army and national guard is disingenuous. Yes, we have learned to live with it's limitations. It, so far, appears to produce similar quality pilots compared to the TH-67...except for air work with the flight director off or, gasp, AFCS/Boost off. The 72 is not a home run. Nor is it a strike out. The worst part is that he maintenance for that thing is a civilian square peg in an Army round hole. It more than doubles our work with respect to QC and command inspections. And that's especially telling considering we also fly Blackhawks and Chinooks at our facility.
Airbus didn't do this out of their good graces, they did it because they were given a contract with requirements and funding. Or the USA was a "beneficiary" of a COTS change... beneficiary is in quotes because maybe now the USA needs to update their aircraft to align with the limitations of COTS.
Also do you know there are no downsides or compromises? Sure it can lift more but is everything else the same?
The other bigs do plenty out of their IRAD such as V-280, S-97, SB-1, etc.
Edit: and all the things @RobLyman said. But again, those took contracts and requirements.
It's hard to tell how much was from contracts and requirements and how much is carried over from R&D. If you take a tour of Sikorsky's WPB facility you will see all kinds of FrankenHawks. Composite tail boom? Fly by wire? External APU accumulator pump handle fitting? There is also the X-2, which had landing gear borrowed from someone's airplane. I saw all of that years ago. I have also seen some neat, innovative and convenient upgrades to the Black Hawk integrated into some foreign sales aircraft I have delivered. There is definitely a mix of contract/requirement funded changes and R&D changes that appear on some of Sikorsky's aircraft. I would think the exact ratio might be hard to determine even by someone who worked there.