Posted on 10/26/2013 9:07:28 AM PDT by IbJensen
Yes it it funny to hear such complaints about feeling excluded and apart from the rest of the class when it goes unnoticed by moochelle that she is a member of Association of Black Princeton Alumni. Maybe if she’d stop segregating herself from the rest of her alums, she might feel more included.
My point is the Afghans would turn U.S. helicopters into junk in a very short time.
After logging quite a few hours in the back end of Russian Mi-17 Hip helicopters, several things about the aircraft and how the Russians built them became apparent. The Mi-17 is similar in size and has similar performance capabilities as a CH-47 Chinook helicopter but comparing the two is like comparing a Yugo with a Ferrari. Both helicopters will get you from point A to point B, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
When an American boards an Mi-17, he knows right away he’s on an alien aircraft; nothing is familiar. The interior is painted a sickly blue; there’s no soundproofing padding, leaking hydraulic fluid smells strange, the engine’s loud and sounds like a washing machine with an unbalanced load and emits a foul smelling exhaust from half-burned fuel that finds its way into the troop compartment through the rear gunner’s window. But the most disconcerting thing about the Mi-17 is that the five rotor blades turn in a clockwise direction and the fuselage wobbles under the rotor blades in a counter clockwise direction. To fly in a forward motion while at the same time moving in a counter clockwise direction takes some getting used to.
There’s nothing on the Mi-17 that’s automatic or computer controlled. If the pilot wants the helicopter to do something, a lever must be pulled, a switch flipped or a button pushed. It doesn’t appear possible for the pilot to fly the aircraft alone in anything but straight and level flight. For anything else, it takes the pilot, the copilot, and the flight engineer working together to make the thing fly any kind of intricate maneuver. To watch the three of them put an Mi-17 into a tight LZ in marginal weather is like watching three maestros performing a concert together, but it makes one wonder what would happen to all on board if one or more of the trio were to become a casualty.
The overall simplicity of the Mi-17 is one of the most impressive things about it. This simplicity was demonstrated one day when we were out on an operation and our Mi-17 developed engine trouble. The pilot set us down on a small dirt road by a river; the Flight Engineer climbed up on the top of the aircraft, removed the engine cowling, and proceeded to disassemble the engine. Within a few minutes, there were parts and pieces of the engine lying all over the road, and it began to look to us as if we were out of the ongoing operation for good. But, just as we were about to call in that we were out of the play, the Flight Engineer found the offending engine part, pulled it out, blew on it several times and wiped it on his shirt, then he reassembled the engine, and we took off. Just try doing that with a CH-47 Chinook.
Even though the Mi-17 is a troop transport helicopter, it can be and usually is heavily armed. The Mi-17 can carry a variety of rack mounted weapons and the usual armament consists of rocket pods on the right and left side of the helicopter.
Mi-17s have rear clam-shell doors that can be swung out to take on equipment when the helicopter is on the ground with the engine shut down, but isn’t practical for quickly loading and unloading troops. The helicopter can carry thirty-four troops who must enter and depart the aircraft from one small troop door near the front left side of the aircraft, and right beside this troop door is a rocket pod holding twenty 80MM rockets with High Explosive warheads. Passengers must pass directly in front of this rocket pod when entering or departing the aircraft, and if the pilot feels it’s necessary during a heliborne assault, he’ll salvo 10-20 80MM rockets into the LZ and at least one of these rockets will miss fire and still be hanging in the pod and smoking when the helicopter lands. Troops exiting the helicopter must pass directly in front of this smoking rocket, and, needless to say, this gives departing troops incentive to make a very quick exit of the aircraft.
Mounted over the Mi-17’s troop door is a hoist with a winch and several hundred feet of steel cable and is used to extract or lower personnel and equipment when an LZ is not available, but the hoist and steel cable have another and more mundane daily use. The five rotor blades on an Mi-17 generate a tremendous amount of static electricity during flight and when it sets down on an LZ on its three rubber tires it retains that charge of electricity until the helicopter is grounded. As an Mi-17 approaches an LZ, the Flight Engineer leans out the troop door, and, using the hoist, he lowers the steel cable with a grounding probe attached in order to ground the helicopter as it touches down. If a soldier walks up and touches an Mi-17 before the Flight Engineer has properly grounded the helicopter, the discharge of static electricity could possibly kill the soldier, or, at a minimum, it will knock him out.
It’s almost comical to see an Mi-17 arrive on an LZ to pick up a team, and, even though the Flight Engineer signals it’s safe to do so, no one wants to be the first to approach the helicopter. All too often, the Flight Engineer thinks he has properly grounded the helicopter but hasn’t. Therefore, Mi-17 protocol calls for junior personnel to board the aircraft first.
One of the most revealing things about how the Soviet Union designed and built aircraft or anything else for that matter is that the Mi-17 uses the same door handle on its troop door that's been used on Russian army trucks since 1935. Apparently when the Mi-17 designer needed a door handle, he simply ordered a vehicle door handle from the door handle factory and was done with it.
If the Mi-17 had been a U.S. helicopter, the production of its troop door handle would’ve been ladled out as a dollop of pork on some U.S. Congressman’s District. The contract for this door handle would’ve gone to, probably, the Congressman’s brother-in-law. Tens of thousands of dollars would’ve been spent on that door handle’s R&D, and the final thoroughly tested and approved product would’ve been a one of a kind, ergonomic, Helicopter Door Handle, Type Mi-17 at a cost to the U.S. Taxpayer of at least a $1,000 each, but it would’ve really opened that door in style.
Like the Russian AK-47, the Mi-17 is crude, roughly finished, heavy, and compared to U.S. equipment they’re technically unsophisticated therefore comparatively easy for Third World soldiers to operate and maintain. As different from U.S. military equipment, there was no agenda involved in their design and production other than their utility. Lobbyists, politicians, and industrialist’s profit didn’t enter into the equation as it always does in U.S. weapons procurement.
Sometimes I wonder how we won the “Cold War” with Russia and the Soviet Union. Or did we really win the war, as the United States now has a Marxist Communist President and Russia now has a Free Market Capitalist President. If that thought doesn’t make your head hurt, nothing will.
DJ Taylor
Good point.
Excellent review of the Mi-17.
She is correct, she doesn’t belong there.
So Mooch thought the students at Princeton saw her as black first? Why the surprise since being black is what she’s all about. She no doubt had the same nasty, entitled personality then and everyone saw through her.
I suppose Issa will hold another ‘hearing’....
The “I’m black” weirdos need to be shunned by society. Who cares? Can you perform is the question. The Worst Lady, grifter mooch-elle, is such a pathetic racist.
Ok, that makes sense, thanks.
Ihave heard that expression and it’s as good as any.
this dude a member of the ontario provincial parliament not a federal member of parliament. the ontario liberals are a bunch of unethical, lying socialist sneaks.
She should look in the mirror. She's got some of that creepy azzed cracker blood in her, too.
The same story will be written about OfleeceCare next year. We all know who's hands were in those cookie jars.
I’m not sure it means anything, but we shouldn’t forget that about the time her friend went to work for CGI, about the time they received the no-bid contract, they bought Stanley for a billion dollars.
Stanley is the company that saw the passport files.
And with a billion here, a billion there, lots of money sloshing around.
Decent American citizens are being attacked from all sides. The attacks are directed at the stability of our nation and we are the end recipients of the rampant evil.
There has to be a drastic correction made immediately. We, unfortunately, are being stabbed in the back by a pack of moronic fascist bastards.
The evil generated by these Obamazombies is simply breath taking.
Nice writeup, very informative!
She, probably, got a no show promotion just before the contract.
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