Bell Getting Out Of 206 Business?!

[TwistedSpar]

My understanding of the Hughes 500 which I was told at the factory on course 1970 was that it was the only helicopter built to crash. One of the requirements that the army had for the LOH program (Light Observation Helicopter) was that the crew be afforded the best designed airframe to survive a mishap. My personal preference when crashing is to be in a H500. If you ever want to roll down the side of a mountain do it in a 500. The fuselage is egg shaped to roll better and the pax and crew are sitting forward of two overhead bulkheads. One roll and the blades are gone from the xmsn. The sports helicopter at the time, did over 7K in all models and loved them.

 

One time in Ethiopia1976, in the Ogaden Desert, I had just dropped of a crew and as heading back to Gode when I blew my cooler belt. I landed with temps getting high, shut down and said WTF. The closest helicopter to me was back in Addis Abba and I was 25-30 miles from Gode with no way to contact anybody. So, I took the rear insulation of and was going to put a new belt on. The only problem was that the input drive shaft had to come off (eng. to xmsn). Took the rear coupling of first and then proceeded to the one on the main xmsn, there is a set of splines coming of the xmsn which the coupling fits onto. Once the coupling was removed low and behold the gd splines were almost worn off. So, doing a Risk Assessment I proceeded to put the forward coupling back on (this is the one the belt is attached to) took to large split pins and drove them in at 180 degrees apart into the remaining grooves of the splines, put everything back together, gave it the engineer blessing and told it that it would only be required to stay together for twenty minutes. Put my pilot hat back on, fired the sucker of and proceeded to home base. Everything stayed together. Ordered a new xmsn from Addis and was back in service in two days. It takes about two hours to change a xmsn, one guy.

 

How many machines can you do that with.

 

Cheers, Don

 

PS: xmsn=transmission

 

Input shaft to xmsn turns at 20,000 rpm if I remember correctly.

 

back then you could get away with that...today you'd be in alot of trouble...moreso if an accident resulted....you got lucky.

[transquebecniece]

Different times, different circumstances. Drastic times, drastic measures. How shall we paint it? Luck? Perhaps. Skill? No, doubt. Great thread, BTW. Interesting and informative.

[cap]

Mark_ .........we all gotta be someplace doing something. Sometimes we make bad choices and end up in the wrong places at the wrong time. That was Vietnam for me and as far as everything else, there's lots who lived the same experiences and at least half this board could fly my a*s off......then and now.

 

As far as Blackmac is concerned, he's older than me and was in the RCN somewhere between three-masted Brigantines and the HMCS Bonaventure. I was still in High School when he was flying around Halifax Harbour. So if you want OLD stories of yore concerning aviation, you just ask him because if memory serves me correctly, I was still a virgin when he was already in the RCN

[Freefall]

I heard with the Loaches if you damaged a blade pretty bad you could take it off and the opposite one and wind her up as high as the governor would bring it and it would get you home. Any truth to that one?

[Phil Croucher]

Not with 5 blades, surely...... or did they have a different number then?

 

Sorry for calling you Shirley

 

Phil

[sharkbait]

4

[Freefall]

Not with 5 blades, surely...... or did they have a different number then?

 

Sorry for calling you Shirley

 

Phil

 

They didnt have 5 blades until the D model. Shirley you can't be serious.

[cap]

Freefall --------- like I said before, the Cayuses arrived at the tail-end of my second tour (13 months), so I can't speak in great detail about them painted in cammoflage....and I never heard or saw that while in the Army. I heard about that after I got back home and started flying again, but then again, many of the 'stories' I heard about what happened in 'Nam were truly 'marvellous'........to listen to . All I remember about their M/R blades was that it was the FIRST time that I had ever seen anyone detach a M/R blade from any helicopter and walk away with it like he had his noon lunch under his arm. I looked twice at that one I can tell you......and so did my maintence Crew Chief. What he said is not allowed to be seen here, but it would have curled your grandmother's wallpaper . You'll have to wait perhaps for Blackmac's answer to that question, but in the meantime, I have to say "I don't think that dog would hunt".

[sharkbait]

 

Civ 500 on bags in Kenora Ontario in the 70s - Viking machine - via the Late, Great Geoff Palmer.

 

4

 

My gawd I replied to my own post - Is this the internet version of talking to yerself?

[sharkbait]

By the way if you put "Loach Helicopter' into a search engine such as www.dogpile.com you'll come up with lots if info - some of it like

www.vfw764.org/urquhart.htm is pretty sobering stuff.