Ask a helicopter pilot anything

[Siko]

Philibuster said:

Great thread, thanks Siko (and others) for sharing their info and experiences.

Bought Chickenhawk and Low Level Hell, thanks for the tips. Started Chickenhawk and it's gripping stuff.

Thanks and glad you’re enjoying the books! ‘To the limit’ is another good book in the same vein as Chickenhawk.

[Siko]

Mercdriver said:

Bought this many moons ago, still reading it, must have read it about four times, still fascinating reading.

Two things stick in my mind

Using the rotary wing as a hover mower to enlarge a landing space, says it all the blades on a Huey are very wide

Grossly overweight with soldiers, under fire from vastly outnumbered Vietcong on top of a hill. Just able to lift off but struggling to get forward motion so careers over the edge just above the stall and waits for the speed to increase in dive. Nerves of tungsten!

Edited to clarify, enlarged not created landing space

Edited by Mercdriver on Tuesday 26th April 12:59

That’s just nuts….those guys were bloody amazing. I did my S92 type rating in West Palm Beach (tough gig I know…!) and our groundschool instructor was an ex-Cobra pilot. He had heaps of great stories about blowing stuff up in Vietnam but I remember him describing how he was trying to blow up a small bunker with rockets and every time he lined up on the bunker he had to pull away due to ground fire. The last time he rolled in, determined to get ‘that goddamn VC!’ but he got absolutely riddled by AAA and pulled away again without firing his rockets. I asked him what he did then and he said he went home in shame “if he goddamn wanted that bunker so much, he could goddamn keep it!”

Edited by Siko on Tuesday 26th April 17:24

[Siko]

The_Doc said:

When out on the pull with my brother, he being commercial helicopter pilot.

To a nice girl or girls in a venue.
Me: "you'd like my brother over there he's a surgeon. Nerves of steel."
They turn to him.
Him. " Ha, what a joke, he's the surgeon, I'm a helicopter pilot"

It's worked once and once only.

I have a mate who is a surgeon and I can confirm surgeons are way more popular with the opposite sex than a lowly pilot

[Siko]

PurpleTurtle said:

Had to Google it to see what they look like as I'm not immediately familiar.

In doing so, Google presented this amusing link.

https://www.aircraftcostcalculator.com/AircraftOpe...

"Depending on numerous factors the average price for a pre-owned Sikorsky-S-92 is $16,750,000.00. A $8,375,000.00 loan over 120 months including $34895.83 per month in interest equates to a $419,953.61 per-period payment. Based on 450 annual owner-operated hours and $5.12-per-gallon fuel cost, the Sikorsky-S-92 has total variable costs of $1,158,850.80, total fixed costs of $361,400.00, and an annual budget of $1,520,250.80. This breaks down to $3,378.34 per hour"

That's just like PCP'ing a 318D, yeah?!

That’s not too bad to be fair! When I hired an Agusta 109 for my Instrument rating in 2012, I paid £1800/hr which probably isn’t too far off the S92 price nowadays.

[Siko]

IanH755 said:

The worst/funniest rip-off of someone else's work I'd heard (stolen from various Fast Jets I think) was an awful description of the Merlin (from a seriously cabbagey Groundcrew SNCO) which called it a "Double Rotor Triple Motor Carbon Fibre Troop Provider" (and technically wrong too).

If that wasn't sickening enough, the rumour I'd heard in Afghan which was that someone Aircrew (front end) in Jan '10 at JHF-A had heard that description, was very impressed by it and wanted to use that description below the "Merlin humping a Chinny" wall art before they were fairly swiftly talked out of it.

Lol never heard of that description of a Merlin! I do remember the mural though and have a great picture of it and the name wall from the IRT shack in Al Amarah.

[Siko]

Speed 3 said:

Maintenance costs per hour and total costs per seat-mile on rotary are insane compared to fixed wing. S-92 (18 seats) is more expensive than a 737 (180 seats) by almost every measure apart from total block hour fuel. It blew my mind when I did a stint in running transport rotary after airlines. The AW101 was another level more insane operating cost than the S-92 when we looked briefly at it for SAR.

Someone early in my career said "don't worry about the big numbers, they're just more zeros but the same logic" - as I was staring at an invoice for the purchase of a 747-400 ($140M or thereabouts).....

Instrument ratings were interesting, in my time at that operator (before the OP's arrival) we had the one and only UK CAA certified single engined helicopter for IFR training - a heavily modified Agusta-Bell 206 Jet Ranger. We had to retire it and the cheapest option was to buy a training school that had a Twin Squirrel AS355 and Sims equipped for the task. One of my most memorable missions - got a call to say we were buying the training school and casually enquired as to "anyone inspected the aircraft ?" When the answer was no I had to do a hasty trip to another part of the UK only to discover half the records for the aircraft from before it was imported to the UK were missing. Lots of panic phone calls to the lawyers and MD who were just about to close the deal. CAA had issued a Certificate of Airworthiness at import which they shouldn't have but now it was G-reg'd it no longer mattered. The aircraft was a very nice well maintained example so we weren't worried about it.

My wife always used to love telling people "he buys helicopters" when they enquired what I did for a living....think it may even be on my daughter's birth certificate from that time.

Thanks - interesting post! I know more than a few pilots who did their IR on that 206, it was very fondly remembered. As you say helicopters are incredibly expensive to maintain compared to fixed wing…as an example we had a bird strike a few years back where the bird damaged a rotor blade. The rotor blade required removal and replacement along with ground/air testing to balance the blades (this is really important and normally involves adding small weights to various parts of the blades). I was told the whole exercise cost in the low hundred of thousands of pounds

[Siko]

geeks said:

Saw this and thought of this thread...

(deletes thread in massive huff)

[Siko]

Chuck328 said:

Siko,

What would (roughly) be your fuel flow ( say at 1000 ft) in the hover compared to cruise speed?

Thanks.

I think around 1800 lbs/hr when cruise is circa 1350….so approx 40% more. Flt idle on the ground (rotors turning) still burns approx 600/hr and the APU burns approx 175/he in the air too if you are using it.

[Siko]

swampy442 said:

Also, Ive got some very interesting pictures of a Merlin that took an RPG round in the side, it didnt go off but passed straight through the cabin! Not to drag the thread off topic

Feel free to post the picture if you are able - I know exactly the one you mean as I remember it happening. Just please check it’s not restricted or anything first please.

I know the female crew you mean too, all great girls and one of whom was awarded the first Distinguished Flying Cross for a female in RAF history.

[Siko]

Quick getaway said:

Hello Siko , brilliant thread thanks for starting, absolutely love helicopters, would have loved to have tried this career but due to eyesight requirements never took the plunge. Amazed no ones asked, but in your opinion whats the better helicopter S92 or AW101 ? , they often seemed to be pitted against each other ( looking at Canada in particular SAR birds vs Navy birds etc ).

Hi mate, thanks for your comments! It’s a difficult question to answer as it’s like asking what car should I buy to do anything, between a 1990 518d and a 1992 320d?! Merlin has found it’s niche as a SAR platform and seems to be performing well in that role, whereas the smaller lighter, vastly cheaper and more modern S92 has hoovered up commercial operations. I know there are civilian merlins but you are paying a premium for them.

I have only flown the Merlin in a military role and the S92 as a commercial pilot, so comparing apples with pears, but for me the S92 is the simpler, more reliable and the better option.

[Siko]

loop swing said:

I'm not sure I've ever seen the 92 referred to as smaller, lighter, cheaper and more modern before

Have you ever had to have a word with a colleague after viewing HFDM data?

Yeah fair point about the chubby S92 lol! Ref the hfdm a key part of the programme is conducting crew contacts to find out why a particular event has triggered. I’ve been contacted a couple of times over the years and it was always done with tact and understanding by the gatekeepers. I forget what the first one was, but the second one was triggered by groundspeed being higher than airspeed on approach to land offshore. It was a slack wind day so we had flexibility on which direction to land and the copilot was flying, he chose an approach heading that turned out to be slightly downwind, so we got asked to clarify why we were downwind. Brief email explanation about the variable wind and all accepted fine, I think that particular trigger has gone now (or at least been raised a bit).

[Siko]

Talksteer said:

It's always struck me that the Merlin is incredibly heavy with its dry mass being a very large % of its MTOW. Part of that is that the mass figures are always for the ASW variant but even the troop carrier is:

9000kg empty
15600kg MTOW (which appears to be an upgrade)

Vs Chinook

11,200kg empty
22,500kg MTOW

Vs CH53E

15,600kg empty
33,300kg MTOW

Vs S92

7000kg empty
12600kg MTOW

From that limited data set we can see a trend that larger helicopters have lower dry mass fractions likely due to certain items being of similar mass irrespective of size however the S92 shades the EH101 despite being lighter.

Any idea why the AW101 turned out so bloated?

It's a fair criticism of the Merlin and I think comes down to the original design spec for an anti-submarine helicopter designed for hovering over the sea and parked on a ship. Hence you have an extra engine to allow safe hover performance with a failed engine and heavy items of standard equipment such as powered driveshafts (to permit starting engines for tail folding etc without starting the head). Basically a compromised design is why the troop Merlin is so heavy...sadly.

[Siko]

Mabbs9 said:

Hi Siko,

I was up the road in Inverness the other day. As we came down the approach there was a helicopter in the hover on the south side. After we landed and disembarked they were still in the hover.

Probably 25mins. Would that be exhausting? I think a coastguard callsign but can only imagine it was training?

Mabbs

Hi Mabbs!

It can be very tiring - I once did a 45min solo wet winching sortie in Anglesey harbour (30 mins hovering or so) was really hard work! I also used to fly a surveillance task on the Puma which involved long periods in a very high hover with extra fuel tanks fitted - think the longest I was in a high hover at night was circa 2 hours and yes that was bloody knackering!

Thankfully most modern helicopters (particularly SAR ones like you saw) have hover modes which help to alleviate the job but they don’t always work perfectly…..

[Siko]

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Surprised they didn't have auto hover. Even the H2s had passable auto hover... H3s really good by all accounts.

Puma autopilot was essentially 1960/70s technology for the most part. Basic height hold and balanced turns (iirc), I almost never used the height hold as it was cr**.

The Merlin could hover on automatics very well but generally speaking you’d never use the automatics for regular flying. I suspect the Navy anti-submarine Merlins use it routinely although I honestly don’t know, but I can’t imagine it’s much fun sitting in the hover at night over the sea manually

The S92 I fly has no auto hover although I think the SAR model does have that capability. We can only maintain coupled flight down to 55kts on my variant, meaning we have to manually fly every takeoff and landing. Other aircraft types use different techniques and I was told by an EC225 (Super Puma) pilot that they would double click their autopilot as they established a hover and it would be automatically maintained.

[Siko]

Mabbs9 said:

For us fixed-wing bods the autopilot assistance sounds most appealing! Thanks for your answers once again.

No worries! I guess I’m a bit of a Luddite but the way I was trained to do military flying (and my basic SAR course all pilots had to do - 25 hrs iirc) was to put an aircraft (if required) into situations that needed instant and constant corrections based on voice marshalling from the crewman/winch operator. I don’t know how modern SAR is done compared to what I learnt back in 1999 (last millennium ), so it may be used all the time by modern SAR crews but since I got my wings and 6500hrs later I’ve probably used an auto-hover facility at best for a mere handful of those hours.

As an aside, the night surveillance task we did was incredibly difficult to do and some of the most challenging flying I have ever done. As I mentioned the Puma had no auto hover and we were usually asked to maintain an accurate GPS location/height/heading for anything upto 2-2:30hrs or so. We used to put the gps waypoint into our very basic FMS and then make an approach into the high hover (always at night!) where we switched over to a Doppler hover meter. This worked in the opposite sense to our ILS which was mega confusing at times, showing where you are going as opposed to where you want to be. It was all often slow to show movement and as it was pitch black you only noticed you were losing the hover when you glanced down at the FMS and saw your waypoint rapidly accelerating away……

I fell asleep once in the hover….or at least nodded off for a few seconds and waking up as the helicopter wobbled out of the hover (with my navigator still fast asleep too) was not an experience I ever want to repeat

[Siko]

Chuck328 said:

What's your approach minima in one of these? I know ABZ and INV are both Cat 1 ILS. I assume you can fly that to system mins?

500m rvr is our minima for a destination ils. An alternate has to have +200 ft cloud base over the minima (normally 200ft, so weather actual and forecast suitable for 400ft) and +200m rvr, so for an alternate airfield typically 400ft cloudbase/700m rvr. Offshore it’s 1400m visibility.

[Siko]

Speed 3 said:

The EC225 had a far superior AP set up compared to the S92, unfortunately the EC225 was hampered by other legacy issues of a design developed beyond its sell-by date (a la 737). Americans like functional, French like sophisticated. I did have the pleasure of a rig trip with our Chief Test Pilot on an EC225 (ex-Empire Test Flight School guy MP - as good as they get who may have overlapped with you in ABZ) just before I left - and it was later grounded of course.

Hi mate - yes I know MP well. Lovely chap with a gentle stutter and brain the size of a planet. I met him when I was 'holding' at Boscombe Down waiting to start helicopter flying training and he was one of the Test Pilots, he took me flying a few times and despite being a lowly unwinged trainee pilot he treated me exactly like a fellow helicopter pilot.

I have flown the 225 Simulator and it was very nice indeed - in fact as part of my application to my current employer I had to jump into the 225 Simulator for a brief assessment. It was mega twitchy compared to the aircraft I flew at the time but obviously got me through the door as I didn't do too badly! In the military world you have dedicated Sim instructors who are normally ex-military retired types, normally fairly chilled out and not on a career push just happy to do the hours and top up the pension. When I jumped in the 225 Simulator for my assessment an older guy got in and set it all up and I assumed it was the same sort of retired pilot type as in the military, we had a nice friendly gas about stuff and even during the flight it was very informal and I just assumed he would give a yes/no to the HR team. Come the interview the same guy was sitting opposite me and turned out to be the head of training for the whole company! He was a genuinely nice guy though and obviously I got the job, I wish I'd known who he was first as I would have treated him very differently

[Siko]

Geneve said:

The other reason for having gear down in a high hover (out of ground effect) is that, in the the event of engine(s) failure and the need for a rapid autorotation, the helicopter is already equipped for landing.

As an aside there are YouTube videos where the retractable gear has stuck (up) and the pilot has descended to a low hover, to allow pax to disembark, and then landed the fuselage of the Heli on carefully stacked tyres. All much less dramatic than a fixed-wing undercarriage failure.

Spot on

The S92 has a fully castoring nosewheel which is unpowered, there is no issue with it unless you have completed a tight turn just prior to take off when the wheel could be 90 degrees out to the side....it should rotate back into line with the undercarriage bay but has been known not to do so and when the gear has been raised it can jam. Hence we have to do a short straight taxi to line up the wheel if we have completed a tight turn, which should sort it out. The Merlin had a fully powered, castering nosewheel which was just amazing as it could turn in it's own length, which was quite a cool party trick. You pulled a little bit of power to lighten the aircraft, pressed the nosewheel button (which turned it 90 degrees to the aircraft heading) and lowered the lever again, then just used yaw pedal to spin the helicopter around on the spot. It really was amazing how tightly you could turn a 70' long helicopter around without moving off your spot

[Siko]

That’s absolutely amazing and thanks for posting. I know why it didn’t go off (well at least what I was told at the time) but all I’ll say is there was a huge dollop of luck involved.

[Siko]

Chuck328 said:

I'm assuming the aircraft was on the ground when that happened?

Looking at the entry and exit points both seemingly the same longitudinally?

Yes that’s correct was on the ground. Nasty bit of kit the RPG, Black Hawk Down shows how effective it can be against airborne helicopters let alone tanks. It’s still effective against modern tanks, just need to be relatively close and have a steady aim (and balls of steel!).

Edited by Siko on Thursday 5th May 13:12