NAS Key West - SAR Helo upgrade

[ChuckMK23]

The Air Operations Department at NAS Key West recently took delivery of the former YSH-60F prototype. This aircraft will be used for search and rescue duties.

BuNo 163282 had previoulsy been stationed at NAS Jax as a maintenance trainer and had not flown in over three years. The "Dragonslayers" of HS-11 were tasked with removing the aircrafts ASW suite and restoring the SeaHawk to flying status. Squadron maintenance personnel worked more than 1400 hours to accomplish this feat!

The aircraft is the first of numerous SH-60F's that will be deconfigured of ASW gear and tasked with SAR duties. These aircraft receive the designation UH-60F and replace the UH-3H as air station SAR assets.

 

[Stearmann4]

I'll bet that phase team was a bunch of happy campers. They didn't even get to fly the aircraft!

 

[Gatordev]

Makes you wonder if they even bothered to do the A-profile or if they just built it up and turned the keys over to the NAS KW guys to do the FCF. "Here you go. If you have any problems, let us know..."

 

[Brett327]

Makes you wonder if they even bothered to do the A-profile or if they just built it up and turned the keys over to the NAS KW guys to do the FCF. "Here you go. If you have any problems, let us know..."

Technically, you need a waiver from higher authority to do that. Ideally, the KW guys would go to JAX to do the acceptance FCF. One would hope the the JAX guys would have done something to get it going - at least the vibes, cause that could be a huge hassle after a big reconfiguration.

Brett

 

[ChuckMK23]

Technically, you need a waiver from higher authority to do that. Ideally, the KW guys would go to JAX to do the acceptance FCF. One would hope the the JAX guys would have done something to get it going - at least the vibes, cause that could be a huge hassle after a big reconfiguration.

Brett

oh man vibes and track alone is probably a day of ground runs......uggh

 

[Gatordev]

Thanks for the safe for flight training. I was just joking. But yeah, the vibes would be painful. My personal best was a 9"+ track spread. The same bird apparently had a 11" spread on cruise. I was sore the whole next day.

 

[Brett327]

Thanks for the safe for flight training. I was just joking. But yeah, the vibes would be painful. My personal best was a 9"+ track spread. The same bird apparently had a 11" spread on cruise. I was sore the whole next day.

Here to help. We had this one bird which had been a hangar queen for over a year. When they put the hub and MRBs back together, they had put them on in the wrong order, so when we turned it up for the first time, I thought the whole thing was going to shake itself apart. As it was, we almost ended up on our side before everything was shut down.

Bad times,

Brett

 

[Gatordev]

<Shudder> Doesn't sound like fun.

I think my most painful day was chasing a MRB vibe ALL DAY. Turns out my lead mech (and LPO, and overall great guy) had misread the wires. No one really had to chew him out because you could tell he could barely live w/ himself.

I'd still take that over almost rolling though. Yikes.