Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A Shithook:

Yeah, yah. Chinook.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

What happens when the tail rotor gives up the ghost:

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

H-34

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A Mosquito Air:

To roughly quote what a long-gone friend once said about the J-3, it'll fly fast enough and high enough to kill you.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A Brantly performs an autorotation:

Bell-47:

R-44:

UH-1:

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

CH-53Es:

"Big fucking helo" is an understatement.

Your Sunday Morning Naval Air Noise

At a NAF:

Your Sunday Rotor Noise

Lots of helicopters.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

The old, reliable Shithook!

A Few Curmudgeonly Words on Those Electric Commuting Helicopters

There has been a lot of press on them over the last week or two. I have some thoughts.

First off, they are going to need helicopter pilots with commercial ratings to fly them. A lot of pilots. Where are they going to get them, unless the companies send their own people through a training mill? Helicopter licenses are expensive to get, far more expensive than fixed-wing licenses.

So they are going to be hiring from the bottom of the barrel, for any pilot with experience is going to go where the real money is,and that's not schlepping two people from lower Manhatten to JFK or laGarbage and back. Yes, I know they claim that they are four seaters, but four seaters with luggage? Nope.

Second, while localities may not be able to stop those things from flying over them, they damn sure can regulate where they land. You aren't going to be able to call an airUber to pick you up from the nearest public park.

Third, if something goes wrong, you likely will die. Adult helicopters have large rotors; if the engine fails, the pilot quickly transitions into autorotation. That uses the airflow over the rotor to keep it turning, which results in a very fast, very steep, controlled descent. If the helicopter goes too slowly, the rotor stops turning and then the helicopter assumes the flight characteristics of a similarly-sized box. (There is a zone of flight, translational flight, from takeoff to cruise (and vice versa) where the helicopter is not going fast enough or high enough to autorotate in the event the engine fails, which means you die.) The electric helicopters have little rotors that are too small to autorotate. So if the electrical system shits the bed, well, you might as well hope you're over a cemetery, because that's where you're ending up.

Fourth, if those things are flying en masse to a large airport, they are going to saturate the air traffic control system. The FAA already has problems hiring, training and retaining enough controllers as it is. Your airLyft might take seven minutes to buzz to the airport, but it might have to wait ninety minutes for its landing slot. You might be better off taking a black car.

Fifth, if there is a way that these things will be able to fly IFR and comply with Part 135.215 et sec., I don't see how.

Sixth, keeping with Part 135, look at 135.209(b). Twenty minutes of power reserve would seem to be a good chunk of the possible range of the things.

And keep in mind that light helicopter flight over land is a fairly hazardous endeavor to start with. The FAA isn't going to care very much if the pilots kill themselves doing it, which is why ultralights are almost unregulated. As the aircraft get heavier and carry more people, the FAA cares more. And when they crash and kill people on the ground, then they care even more. A few crashes near the pickup points and, like the PanAm building helipad, those will go away, too.

I wouldn't be one to invest anything with the eChopper companies that I couldn''t afford to lose. And I damn sure am not sitting my pink ass in any of those flying coffins.

Same as It Ever Was, Aviation Ed.

A deadly Osprey aircraft crash last November off Japan was caused by cracks in a metal gear and the pilot’s decision to keep flying rather than heed multiple warnings that he should land, according to an Air Force investigation released Thursday.

First off, it's always easy to blame the dead pilot(s). The manufacturer has technical people and lawyers to throw shade and deflect blame. The Air Force has senior officers and more technical people and JAG officers to deflect blame and throw shade. the dead crew has nobody to speak for them.

Second, this accidents points to a syndrome known as "alarm fatigue", which is when too many alarms keep going off, most of which are meaningless, and, if one terminates a flight because of them, results in an ass-chewing. It's a phenonemon that goes back a very long time (as in The Boy Who Called 'Wolf'). Easier to blame the dead pilots for not figuring out which of the pasta-gazillion alarms were valid, instead of fixing the damn bastardized aircraft.

The SS doesn't let POTUS fly on the MV-22s operated by HMX-1, which should give you some idea how safe they believe those critters are.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

CH-53s:

Get-There-itis?

Five U.S. Marines aboard a helicopter that went down during stormy weather in the mountains outside of San Diego are confirmed dead, the military said Thursday.

Authorities say the CH-53E Super Stallion vanished late Tuesday night while returning to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego after training at Creech Air Force Base, northwest of Las Vegas.

Grampaw Pettibone warned Navy and Marine Corps aviators for decades about the dangers of get-there-itis. Whether the pilot wanted to get back to San Diego or command ordered the pilot to do so, flying in extremely poor weather for a non-operational emergency smacks of piss-poor decision making.

I could be jumping the gun on this. Maybe the helo went down for reasons unrelated to the weather. But the odds are that it was a weather-related crash that cost the lives of five Marines and the loss of a very expensive helicopter.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

MH-53E:

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Marine One:

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

By request, sort of, a Bell-47:

The request was for the title sequence to MASH, which has Bell 47s (technically, H-13Cs) and no rotor noise to speak of. The introduction of helicopters to medevac wounded soldiers nearly halved the rate of casualties dying before reaching a medical facility.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Bunches of helicopters prep for a presidential visit.

(Assholish political comments prohibited.)

Flight Recorders on Military Aircraft?

U.S. Army investigators have recovered flight recording devices from two helicopters that collided last week in Interior Alaska, killing three soldiers and injuring another.

The AH-64 Apache helicopters collided April 27 about 50 miles east of Healy while returning from training at an aerial gunnery range in the Donnelly Training Area southeast of Fairbanks.

Wouldn't those things be a security risk during a war? I would think that the Army wouldn't want an adversary getting their commie mitts on a flight recorder during a war. Even moreso if they have cockpit voice recorders.

A Tragic Day for Army Aviation

U.S. Army investigators are trying to determine what caused two Black Hawk medical evacuation helicopters to crash during a routine nightime training exercise in Kentucky, killing all nine soldiers aboard. No one was hurt on the ground.

Nondice Thurman, a spokesperson for Fort Campbell, said the deaths happened Wednesday night in southwestern Kentucky during a routine training mission.
...
“This was a training progression, and specifically they were flying a multi-ship formation, two ships, under night vision goggles at night,” [Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the 101st Airborne deputy commander] said. He said officials believe the accident occurred when “they were doing flying, not deliberate medical evacuation drills.”

I cannot begin to imagine how hard it is to fly a helocopter while wearing night vision goggles, let alone fly in formation. They'll investigate this, whether to find out what happened or find out who gets the blame, is an open question.

Nine families are going to be burying their soldiers in a few days. They have my condolences.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A "Shithook":

OK, Chinook.