Furgitaboutit! What a lame idea. Any kind of Aircraft that "hangs" on the power supply is too dangerous to operate. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?

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Originally posted by Gutpile Charlie:
Furgitaboutit! What a lame idea. Any kind of Aircraft that "hangs" on the power supply is too dangerous to operate. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?

Well, there was this guy named Michelangelo. Sikorsky, too.

The design I have no comment on, but I get the concept of something as a better alternative to an urban helicopter

doing the tilt, just 23 million dollars, coming to an airbase near you soon.

1/3 the cost of a v22 Osprey

https://www.wired.com/story/be...alor-tiltrotor-test/

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Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Gutpile Charlie:
Furgitaboutit! What a lame idea. Any kind of Aircraft that "hangs" on the power supply is too dangerous to operate. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?

Well, there was this guy named Michelangelo. Sikorsky, too.

Back in the 70's there was a Police chopper that went down into the Olentangy River in Columbus due to a mechanical failure, IIRC the tail rotor lost a blade and the pilot barely managed a survivable "landing" in the river by intent. Naturally there was some discussion in my Engineering Dynamics class and the Professor stated that Rotary Aircraft require 3 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time. Always wondered if this we actually true. If so it does seem a rather inefficient way to fly.

quote:

Originally posted by Scooter123:
the Professor stated that Rotary Aircraft require 3 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time. Always wondered if this we actually true.

Back in my Navy days, sixty years ago (crap, I'm old!), I was not involved at all with helicopter operations nor maintenance (I was a missile guy), but we had a couple of them in our squadron and I heard figures like ten or fifteen maintenance hours for each flight hour. Of course everything that we had was really maintenance-intensive. All the electronic stuff -- radios, etc. -- made heavy use of vacuum tubes and discrete components, so that was a major maintenance area. If a radio was down, which happened frequently, the aircraft was down until the faulty unit could be swapped.

"Electric" jet engines. Kinda like today's "hoverboards".

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
doing the tilt, just 23 million dollars, coming to an airbase near you soon.

1/3 the cost of a v22 Osprey

https://www.wired.com/story/be...alor-tiltrotor-test/

Very cool, did not know this was in the works. Looks like it may be a better "Osprey" but it sure looks like it needs a lot larger LZ than a Blackhawk. Wonder how many soldiers it will hold? Double the cargo for double the LZ size is a fair trade except in extreme small single bird LZ situations.

More thoughts; can this thing do sling loads? Can it haul what a Chinook can haul? If so, I can see it replacing the Chinook and maybe 1/2 the 'Hawks, maybe the fast helicopter competitor maintains a light bird, small LZ, load 'em in a C-17 and fly them halfway across the world capability.

If it can't sling (or cargo bay haul) pallets, HWMMVs, and Howitzers, fughetabaoutit!

To put the "maintenance hours to flight time" in proper perspective with regard to military aircraft, one has to understand that military does a tremendous amount of "preventative" maintenance, hourly and calender based inspections, time change and calender change of components.

Compared to the civil (especially commercial) aviation world where an airframe that is not moving rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, or paying passengers everywhere else, is losing money.

So, maintenance hours to flight hours ratio is very different.

It is not that the helicopter had to have 3:1, but that may have been what was occurring due to the items I mentioned.

IIR the F-4 was a 24:1 and the F-15 was 22:1, but also figure you have entire shifts of ground crew, specialists, ground support equipment, the POL folks, Job Control, Scheduling, all the back shop, Repair Cycle chain, Phase docks, Weapons Shops, and more all "taking time" against the number of aircraft in a squadron/wing, and a lot of that time is not accuratly reflected in the "hands on" aspect, of making a jet flyable, but are required in a military context to be able to "kick the tires and light the fires" when the horn goes off.

Good point/perspective. The military is not, and never will be, efficient in terms of resources. It has to be effective!

That said, there is plenty of room for improvement on the efficiency side as well...but no matter what, stuff has to work in the harshest conditions when you need it.

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Originally posted by Scooter123:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Gutpile Charlie:
Furgitaboutit! What a lame idea. Any kind of Aircraft that "hangs" on the power supply is too dangerous to operate. What kind of idiots come up with these ideas?

Well, there was this guy named Michelangelo. Sikorsky, too.

Back in the 70's there was a Police chopper that went down into the Olentangy River in Columbus due to a mechanical failure, IIRC the tail rotor lost a blade and the pilot barely managed a survivable "landing" in the river by intent. Naturally there was some discussion in my Engineering Dynamics class and the Professor stated that Rotary Aircraft require 3 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time. Always wondered if this we actually true. If so it does seem a rather inefficient way to fly.

Our helicopter flies, on average, 8 minutes a day. On a busy day, our guys might put 3 hours on it. No matter what, 4 minutes or 4 hours, it still requires 8 man hours of labor afterwards. That includes lubrications, inspections, and also the progressive preventative maintenance. I’ve always said, the cheapest part about buying an aircraft is actually buying the thing. The amount of money that goes into upkeep is astronomical.

Until there's a working Hoverboard that can go anywhere (mag lev doesn't count), I remain thoroughly unimpressed and feel like their priorities are upside down.

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Originally posted by 46and2:
Until there's a working Hoverboard that can go anywhere (mag lev doesn't count), I remain thoroughly unimpressed and feel like their priorities are upside down.

I'd be happy with Mr. Fusion...