Royal Navy "lost" a Merlin for a week...

[MB140]

Max_Torque said:

MB140 said:

Very true. I recently read a book called Low Level Hell about the 1st infantry scout pilots flying tiny little OH-6 Loach over Vietnam.

They would deliberately fly very low (tree top) and slow to entice the Vietcong to open up on them. They would then call in the big gunships and coordinate fire whilst also co-ordinating there own rocket and gun fire. It’s a brilliant read. Almost as good as Chickenhawk (tales of a Vietnam Huey pilot) if not on a par.

There's a claim in one of the 'chopper in Vietnam' books (sorry can't remember which one, might be Black Cat 2-1 ?? ) that some Crew Chiefs 'illegally' modified their Huey's turbines to exceed their rated power level. I guess back in the day, the fuel mass was set by a mechanical control system, so altering that may have been possible in the field, but it sounds a bit fishy to me??

That is chickenhawk. It’s the section where their doing the ships beer run and it’s so overloaded that it won’t take off without skidding down the grass in to transitional lift. It’s a cracking read not sure how true it is.

Mind you I remember talking to a C130k GE who said he went up on a flight as they couldn’t get the autopilot to hold a course and in flight he took the lid of the autopilot computer and adjusted the trim pots until the captain was happy it would hold a course.

Not sure how much I believe of it and it certainly wouldn’t happen today, but I could imagine it happening years back. Certainly things I did as a tech when I first joined up and were seen as common practice would get you in serious st in the so risk averse RAF of today. He was a proper old boy who did most of his career on hercs before becoming a GE and then stayed on them.

[Oilchange]

MB140 said:

Max_Torque said:

MB140 said:

Very true. I recently read a book called Low Level Hell about the 1st infantry scout pilots flying tiny little OH-6 Loach over Vietnam.

They would deliberately fly very low (tree top) and slow to entice the Vietcong to open up on them. They would then call in the big gunships and coordinate fire whilst also co-ordinating there own rocket and gun fire. It’s a brilliant read. Almost as good as Chickenhawk (tales of a Vietnam Huey pilot) if not on a par.

There's a claim in one of the 'chopper in Vietnam' books (sorry can't remember which one, might be Black Cat 2-1 ?? ) that some Crew Chiefs 'illegally' modified their Huey's turbines to exceed their rated power level. I guess back in the day, the fuel mass was set by a mechanical control system, so altering that may have been possible in the field, but it sounds a bit fishy to me??

That is chickenhawk. It’s the section where their doing the ships beer run and it’s so overloaded that it won’t take off without skidding down the grass in to transitional lift. It’s a cracking read not sure how true it is.

Mind you I remember talking to a C130k GE who said he went up on a flight as they couldn’t get the autopilot to hold a course and in flight he took the lid of the autopilot computer and adjusted the trim pots until the captain was happy it would hold a course.

Not sure how much I believe of it and it certainly wouldn’t happen today, but I could imagine it happening years back. Certainly things I did as a tech when I first joined up and were seen as common practice would get you in serious st in the so risk averse RAF of today. He was a proper old boy who did most of his career on hercs before becoming a GE and then stayed on them.

[pedant] think you mean translational lift, happy to be corrected though.[/pedant]

[eccles]

Oilchange said:

MB140 said:

Max_Torque said:

MB140 said:

Very true. I recently read a book called Low Level Hell about the 1st infantry scout pilots flying tiny little OH-6 Loach over Vietnam.

They would deliberately fly very low (tree top) and slow to entice the Vietcong to open up on them. They would then call in the big gunships and coordinate fire whilst also co-ordinating there own rocket and gun fire. It’s a brilliant read. Almost as good as Chickenhawk (tales of a Vietnam Huey pilot) if not on a par.

There's a claim in one of the 'chopper in Vietnam' books (sorry can't remember which one, might be Black Cat 2-1 ?? ) that some Crew Chiefs 'illegally' modified their Huey's turbines to exceed their rated power level. I guess back in the day, the fuel mass was set by a mechanical control system, so altering that may have been possible in the field, but it sounds a bit fishy to me??

That is chickenhawk. It’s the section where their doing the ships beer run and it’s so overloaded that it won’t take off without skidding down the grass in to transitional lift. It’s a cracking read not sure how true it is.

Mind you I remember talking to a C130k GE who said he went up on a flight as they couldn’t get the autopilot to hold a course and in flight he took the lid of the autopilot computer and adjusted the trim pots until the captain was happy it would hold a course.

Not sure how much I believe of it and it certainly wouldn’t happen today, but I could imagine it happening years back. Certainly things I did as a tech when I first joined up and were seen as common practice would get you in serious st in the so risk averse RAF of today. He was a proper old boy who did most of his career on hercs before becoming a GE and then stayed on them.

[pedant] think you mean translational lift, happy to be corrected though.[/pedant]

I'm pretty sure the book calls it transitional lift, as in transitioning from the hover to forward flight.

[Oilchange]

I think you've combined two terms.


'While transitioning to forward flight at about 16 to 24 knots, the helicopter goes through effective translational lift (ETL)'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_lift

Edited by Oilchange on Tuesday 29th October 11:32