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Author Topic: Is that Don waving at us from the window??  (Read 1341 times)

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Offline Higher Caliber

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Is that Don waving at us from the window??
« on: January 24, 2016, 10:43:09 AM »
dude needs a wheel barrel!
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Offline KensAuto

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Re: Is that Don waving at us from the window??
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2016, 11:59:34 AM »
Cool pic. Not so cool event.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 12:00:33 PM by KensAuto »
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Offline Flyin6

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Re: Is that Don waving at us from the window??
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2016, 03:24:58 PM »
We've seen this one before...wanna say Pennsylvania guard guy in the hills north of J-Bad.

Looking at that pic and knowing how much that thing weighs, I was always half wondering what the guys there were thinking...wondering when the roof would cave in with a chinook right behind all the falling junk
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Offline Flyin6

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Re: Is that Don waving at us from the window??
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2016, 08:20:46 AM »
Chinook Aft wheel Landing Commentary
I want to give everyone an appreciation for how hard that is to do with a hundred foot long helicopter where you can't see the back end. In all my Armee days only two things I did with a helo made my skin craw and caused me to embed finger prints into the cyclic. Those two maneuvers, in order of severity were Aerial refueling under NVG off of the right hose, and aft wheel landings like the one pictured.

The hook obviously is a dual rotor head aircraft. The flight controls operate (through a Mad...ie...crazy mixing unit) to make a single control input do whatever it is spota do to make the thing actually controllable. So as long as you are flying along counting your mutual fund contributions, all is good in the world of tandem rotor aerodynamics (Which might be bordering on a black art of some design...I’m not exactly sure)

But when you land on the aft wheels, At that moment the flight controls are really only flying the forward head, and that causes all sort of aerodynamic principles which were all solved just a moment before to suddenly pop up and say, "So how's it feel to go from being a Chinook pilot to a Huey pilot with the tail stinger tied down?!

To do that landing and more importantly to actually stay there, you have to get over top of the landing pad while taking direction from the aft crew chief. You can't see the wheels, unless you're in a spec ops bird and are looking through the FLIR screen...and the wise a$$ in the other seat hasn’t turned it upside on you just to see if you really can do it! So this bird doesn't have either the FLIR or the wise guy, just two pilots who were selling insurance two months ago and a crew chief who is wondering how in the heck did someone ever talk him into doing this crazy stuff on weekends!

Well after the chief calls you over, "Back five down two, hold your down back one, slide right one, hold your position, come straight down...abort come straight up..."What did I miss it, what happened?" "Naw sir, had to scratch my face, I'm good, bring it down ten, right three..." Yea after all that, you're on the building top, well you're on something. For all you know you could have backed into a parallel universe and the aft wheels are resting on a beach near the annual Sports Illustrated swim suit photo-shoot!

Anyway your world is now one of crushing plastic cyclic grips, leg muscle spasms and a one seventy heartbeat. Once the aft wheels are down you have to put some weight on them. You do that by placing the cyclic aft...Whoops, forgot to set the brakes..."You're rolling aft...bring it up...bring it up...AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

OK assuming you did it right and set your brakes. Well now as you move the cyclic aft about 2", the nose would normally come way up and the aft rotor start chopping up pine trees, buildings and soldiers. None of that is authorized so at the same time you pull the cyclic aft, you need to lower the Thrust lever to maintain that nice 2 degrees or so nose high attitude. On forgot to mention, the rotors spin in opposite directions, counteracting the natural force of torque. Torque produced in one rotor helos causes pilots to get dizzy since the fuselage would try to spin as fast as the rotors, but in the opposite direction. So to keep everything nice and regular like, the engineers provided a tail rotor blade system and a pair of pedals to control the amount of spinning.

Chinook pilots know as much about this anti-torque thing as a space shuttle pilot does, so we seldom use the pedals. But now, all of a sudden, we find a forward rotor system is flying all by itself while the aft rotor system said, "Hey aft landing gear, you got it, I'm on break." So while you're moving the thrust around the amount of power to the forward rotor is varying and the nose is ah-wanting to go on tour! Being a good Chinook pilot you can't let that happen. And besides there are a couple Apache pilots circling overhead watching you and calling out insults...They regard anyone not carrying guns who kill things for a living, a lesser life form. Well, you don't want to provide them any added entertainment! So you do your professional best.

Now all the while you are making these fine adjustments, things are happening. The aft crew chief is taking a leak over the side of the roof top trying to hit some grunt, and the other grunts are given to do all the lifting of supplies or whatever off the aircraft. God forbid the aircrew should ever lift anything except for their 401K statement! So while all this is going on, your good friend and constant companion, Mother Nature shows up! She says, "Ya know, these here are hills...and proper hills ought to have wind gusts, ya know to get my pine trees makin' that pleasing swishing sound..." "And maybe a little bit more next to that noisy thing and that nasty man peeing off the roof!" So here comes a little bit more, and a little bit less, and a whole lot more and a whole lot less, and let’s make the next gust from the other direction!

The life of the hook pilot...While the Apache pilots are hoping the hook driver would have backed into a tree or something they are now no longer interested because that guy in the freight truck with rotor blades is actually pulling this thing off, and well, nothing can approach the coolness of a gun pilot (Who has told everyone he is a gun pilot) sittin' under a rotor system, slinging rockets and cannon just looking for something to kill!

I'd go on and on, now that the quoffee is kickin' in, but I have to get ready to go to church and honor a God who created men who can make landings like that!
« Last Edit: January 31, 2016, 09:09:31 AM by Flyin6 »
Site owner    Isaiah 6:8, Psalm 91 
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