Fishhuntcutwood

Awsome. Just awsome. I can't even imagine 40 foot seas.
Well I can imagine them,seen 'em.What I can't imagine is being on the surface in them,egads.We dove deep to get out of them,some times real deep.

I could hang tough doing what I did,I don't think I could make the grade in sea rescue.Good job Jeff.:thumbup:
 
definatly cool stuff. glad to see pics any time you post em. even mechanic pics:)
 
I shoulda gotten some pics from the main gearbox change we did last week. That's both engines, the head, everything off. I guess I've never thought of that as interesting, just work and late nights.

I tell ya what, it does me well to go to work and to know that some people out there think what I do is cool.
 
Well Jeff, it is cool. Very cool as a matter of fact. Any time you can post pics of tearing an engine down in one of those choppers would be great.

The stuff you take for day in day out stuff is a new & very interesting world to the rest of us.
 
Well alrighty, I'll look for some maintenance for some pictures.
 
Yes Jeff, Very cool......and just think of the Hotsaw possibilities with those engines and gearboxes.
 
Some of y'all wanted to see some maintenance pics, so here we go.

We've got a helo down for some pretty heavy maintenance right now. It's a "rotor head major." Which basically means we tear the entire head down, inspect it and put it all back together. It'll take us all week. The first one is all three of our planes. The second is the one torn down, rotor head removed. The third is the the #2 engine (Turbomeca 2C2CG). Fourth is the engine/main gearbox. Next is the rotor head almost fully assembled on a stand, almost ready to hang. And finally, the blades on a stand being inpsected by individual zones.
 
Can the pitch of the main blades change? I've always thought so, but I've never been able to figure out how it's accomplished. Looking at pic 5 makes me thing they don't.

Clean hanger, eh! :thumbup:
 
superclean shop indeed! Cool pics Fishguts, hey what is that little tube that goes to the large exhaust tube? Afterburners for choppers? :D
 
Can the pitch of the main blades change? I've always thought so, but I've never been able to figure out how it's accomplished. Looking at pic 5 makes me thing they don't.

Clean hanger, eh! :thumbup:


They do change pitch, either collectively, or individually. There's two imputs to the rotor head-collective and cyclic. (The pedals are for the pitch of the tail rotor blades, which is your yaw (pivot L/R) control.) The collective lever is kinda like the gas pedal. In fact, some helos (Bell Jet Rangers) have a manual fuel control on the collective lever for input anticipation, but that's a whole 'nother conversation.

The collective is a lever on the pilot's lefthand side. Pull the collective, and all main rotor blades increase their pitch simutaneously. This make the helo fly straight up. A higher angle of attack puts more of a load on the engines, so pulling collective increases engine RPM, temp and torque (Q) of the engines, so it's basically the power pull.

The cyclic is the proverbial "stick." This controls your pitch and roll, and the respective rotor blades will idividually increase in their pitch to make the plane roll or pitch.

The rotor head works on an engineering principle of the "swashplate." A swashplate consists of a rotating swashplate and a stationary swashplate. The rotating SP rotates with the head, the stationary SP is fixed relative to the gearbox, but they're attached to each other on a ball-ring, and their pitch in the horizontal plane is the same. Try Google or Wikipedia for an illustration. It's kinda like trying to explain how an axle differential works. I can spend all day writing about it, or an image on Wikipedia will make it clear in about 20 seconds.

Now, all the flight controls are related. Pull collective, and torque on the airframe increases, as does your tail rotor authority. The tail is mechanically connected to the head. So pulling more power into your head, puts more into your tail. This makes your helo kick left or right (depending on rotational direction of the head). Most flight controls will have it built in, but as you pull power, your need to add a little bit of pedal input to counter it. Likewise, if you push the stick (cyclic) forward, the nose pitches down. This makes the plane fly downward. If that's what you want, that's fine, but if you want to maintain altitude, you need to make a collective input to maintain a positive rate of climb. And if you increase collective input, you need to make pedal input, and we're back where we started. You fly a helo with your entire body.

And the clean hangar is a necessity. Poor housekeeping makes helos crash. Simple as that. Can't find a tool? Can't find the screw you dropped? Well it might be on the floor, or it might be lodged in a flight control, and the helo crashes. All tools are in individual cut-out spots in their boxes, and keeping things clean and somewhat orderly are just a fact of good aviation maintenance. We get dirty, and make a mess, but it's really a controlled mess.
 
...hey what is that little tube that goes to the large exhaust tube? Afterburners for choppers? :D

That is an oil vent tube. Just like in your car or truck, your crank case is vented to the atmosphere. We don't have a crank case, but our oil system needs vented for the same reason (heat, gaseous expansion, etc.) That tube runs from our accessory (oil pump, fuel pump, etc.) gearbox and vents to the atmosphere. Placing it in the jet blast does two things. Primarily, it immediately burns the oil mist coming out and carbonizes it so there's not oil pissing everywhere. And being in the jet flow creates a negative pressure on it, to encourage the flow. Kinda like the principle of a venturi. Not exactly, but that'll get your mind on the right track.

I'll get some more pics tonight.
 
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