Posted on 10/02/2006 8:44:34 AM PDT by A.A. Cunningham
Osprey puts on show in high country
By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com
Gunnison - Tourists come here in summer to hit the trails and fishing holes and soak in the mountain scenery. But for the past month, they have gotten a gee-whiz bonus in the skies over Gunnison.
The military and its defense- contractor partners have been testing a new type of aircraft that is part helicopter and part airplane.
The part-helicopter, part-airplane V-22 Osprey has drawn crowds on takeoffs for the past month at the Gunnison County Airport, which was chosen as a testing site because of its high altitude and long runway. The tilt-rotor craft will join military operations next year. (Denver Post / Hyoung Chang)
It looks and acts like nothing else that flies in and out of the tiny Gunnison County Airport.
The Osprey is an aircraft with rotors that point up to make the gun-metal gray, whalelike craft hover like a helicopter or tilt forward to let it fly like a plane.
When it takes off in the early mornings on test flights, visitors and locals often line the fence near the Gunnison County Aviation building to watch it rise straight into the air with a window-rattling clatter then tilt its rotors to streak quietly into the distance.
"People are asking about it. It's something rare for such a little airport," said Teresa Bryniarski, owner of the Alpine Inn, just down the road from the hangar where the $69.9 million plane sits when it isn't flying.
Mechanics and crew check out the V-22 tiltrotor craft before a test flight Tuesday. (DP / Hyoung Chang )
The plane is undergoing testing in Gunnison because of its high altitude and long runway.
The plane has been tested in five other sites across the country, but this is the highest altitude of the sites, and the testing in Gunnison is being done with the heaviest loads.
"The weather patterns are great here," said U.S. Marine Maj. Scott Trail, one of two test pilots flying the aircraft in Gunnison.
The Osprey is a joint project between a dozen aerospace companies headed by Boeing and Bell Helicopter.
It is scheduled to be in use in military operations next summer.
James Darcy, a public affairs officer for the V-22 Osprey Program based in Patuxent River, Md., said it will enable the military to carry twice as many soldiers into operations, to fly twice as fast and to go five times farther without refueling than standard aircraft used now.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
How about telling us about Harry's ties to the boys at United Technologies.
that's a funny tag line...
If you look at the dates and way the CH-46E crashed you'll see that the V-22 couldn't have survived combat /search and rescue for downed aviators because it hasn't been tested at those parameters successfully. The last attempt was the "software" malfunction" and that was the April 2000 crash in Arizona that took a couple of friends....not Marines I knew personally, but friends.
Unlike you I don't have to guess as to why we lost 44 Ch-46's during the first five years of their service, I know why and strangely enough it does have to do with a "software malfunction" of sorts.
Unlike HH-3s and UH-34s, Ch-46s weren't used a lot as search and rescue aircraft by the Marine Corps, to be sure some were later on but not at first and certainly not during the first five years of their service. During that time the CH-46 was used as a transport and cargo aircraft, but mostly it was used to insert and extract Marines from LZs.
For the most part 46s are very forgiving aircraft with few vices, almost docile if such a term can be applied to a helicopter, the problem with that is that flying into and out of a LZ just really isn't something you want to do with a docile helicopter, you want a hot rod something that will zip in and zip out and stand on it's rear spin and run balls to the wall in a heartbeat as needed.
Having worked on 46s at one time in my Marine Corps Career I know that there are or were special actuators attached to the rotor head flight controls to give a little extra pitch when needed to up the performance of the 46 slightly during certain times while it plodded through the air docilely. One of the first things Marine Crews learned to do to the otherwise docile 46 was to figure out a way to cause these actuators to have a software malfunction and to give that little extra performance when they wanted it to occur. The immediate effect was to turn the normally docile 46 into something like a hot rod when it came to entering and exiting LZs.
The price The Marines paid for this intentional software malfunction was the loss of some 44 CH-46s during the first five years of service because the Airframe that is to say the physical body of the CH-46 wasn't strong enough to be Hot Roded as Marines needed to do to save lives on the battlefield.
Most of those aircraft lost were lost because the rear half of the CH-46, the part with the engines and rear transmission and rotor head separated from the front half at station 410, and each remaining sections failed to maintain flying docilely, all CH-46s had to be reinforced at station 410 to prevent this from reoccurring.
There were other factors as well but Station 410 failures caused most of those losses.
Which brings me to a point I'd like to make about how Marines want to use helicopters and other rotor craft like the MV-22.
For the sake of argument I am going to temporarily make you a Marine commander on the ground, your command has been in a firefight and has suffered a number of casualties. You have several choices before you to send those wounded Marines of yours to a field hospital some 200 miles away.
First you can load them into your amtracs and drive them there in about eight to ten hours.
Or you could load them in hummvees and send them there in maybe six to eight hours
You could get a CH-46 to pick them up and given the CH-46s mandated top speed of around 90 mph (plus or minus an additional five to ten that both the pilot and the co pilot are willing to risk by ignoring their gauges) your men will arrive at that hospital after a short pit stop by the 46 for fuel in three hours. Which really isn't bad considering it is half what a banzai run by a Hummvee would do.
Your last choice is the choice you don't want the Marines to make because you don't trust the Osprey, if you load your wounded on an Osprey they could be at that hospital in a hour or less at full tilt boogie for an Osprey.
Those are your choices, choose wisely and I do believe by the way that the Marine Corps has by continuing to do everything it can to get the Osprey to those that need it the most.
Will the choppers have to come in hot ooops I mean will the Osprey have to come in fast and is there a lot of dust that might obstruct the cockpit causing "brownout" in order for the Osprey to determine it's rate of descent and forward velocity. ( I don't know if they've got the new "laser" measuring device on yet that was supposed to help with Vortex Ring State)
I guess I'd ask my medic to contact the field hospital doc, triage the patients, determine which are priority ones(need help within an hour or die) or just burns, belly wounds, extremity fractures, amputations etc that might be able to take the road out. I wouldn't want to lose any choppers or pilots landing in a hot LZ if a road trip is reasonable.
time is a priority with combat casualties but not if you've got to kill a pilot, crew and chopper to get them out.
My dad rode a Huey that landed on a dike in the middle of a rice paddy and was in the Philippines in 12 hours from getting hit at Chu Li. He stuck his leg back on, provided cover fire till the medic jumped on him and saved his life.
the chopper pilot had bowling balls for testicles cause my dad said he could hear rounds pinging around as they were lifting off. I don't know how he heard sh@t in a chopper but I wasn't going to question him.
My point is that it's a small, nimble, tough machine attached to a pilot with balls that makes a difference whether you live or die on insertion and extraction. I'd like for my brothers and friends to have the best machine. If the Osprey is it... great. If this is just a trough for officers, congressmen, and the Pentagon... I'm p#ssed.
Nothing I say about the Osprey is meant to disparage aviators or the men that have worked and died in it. I think we both want the best for our Corp and the men who serve, fight and die in the service of our country.
it's a small, nimble, tough machine attached to a pilot with balls
Honestly There was a time when guys like you said the same things about helicopters being too dangerous to fly Marines in.
whatever I had in my hands was not of sufficient caliber, magazine capacity or accuracy for me...
whatever artillery was never of sufficient accuracy, quantity and promptness for me...
and beer is never quite as cold and smooth to the taste buds unless I'm sitting in the Lone Star state between the Rio Grande and the Red River.
honestly I just want to meet the big DI in the sky on the field of battle or my bed at home...not flying to or flying out of either one....I'm just funny that way.
Not so. The Army still operates many fixed wing aircraft but are limited to the size of the platform by the Key West Agreement. Down the road, Army Special Forces may very well be operating the Osprey and they are participating in the development of the QTR - Quad Tilt Rotor.
What is the source for your posted quotes? I certainly hope it isn't that LA Slimes hit piece from a few years ago.
The folks at New River, PAX River, Edwards, etc. disagree, vehemently.
So I went straight to the men that have worked on, flown in and maybe in charge of the unit involved someday... after several adult beverages I asked what they thought about the Osprey..... they looked at me, rolled their eyes and laughed. then they made this little comment... "it's a software problem....no, no, wait it's a hardware problem.... no, no, no ...you're right it's a software problem"..all laughing
I seriously doubt all of your "anecdote". Your remarks in this thread have more than a hint of bovine excrement to them.
Well I guess you're privy to a whole different set of guys than I am at NR, etc....
I'm just talking to guys that are now with the 5th Fleet Naval Station in Bahrain, an officer at the anti terrorism battalion in Camp Lejune that's going to the National Defense Univ., a JAG from 29 Palms and another CH-53 driver from the east coast that might know a little about the Osprey.
Those guys are 2 Colonels and 2 Lt. Colonels. Some of the NCO's I've talked to crewed for the CH-53 wingnut.
I'm sure that some of them are full of bovine excrement and I might have heard them wrong cause we were talking about family, duty stations, favorite beer, favorite blonds, longest legs, guns, hunting and other crap. However I do seem to recall that those were the words I heard when I mentioned the Osprey and they weren't kidding when they told me it wasn't pilot error and that it was a software problem.
They also mentioned that there have been several "incidents" that never made the papers.
Like I said, if you're calling bullsh#t on me. OK.
I'm not ever going to have to fly on one, in one or with one. I'm just concerned that my kid has an uncommon interest in doing what his dad, grandfather,uncles and cousins have done...join the Marines. We tend to do that, then go to college and the rest of our lives...or go to college and then join the Marines...for the rest of their lives.
I probably want what you want. A vehicle that provides the best delivery for guys to and from the field.
If the Osprey is that vehicle, great. If it's a money trough which is more of a trail for career advancement and post service "consultation" fees... then I'm gonna be a little p#ssed. Especially if it gets my friends killed. We all take that chance from the time you put your feet on the yellow footprints till you go out the gate for the last time. It's just I didn't want to die due to an "accident" or "software" problem.
I know that people die in the service from all kinds of stuff, I've got an acquaintance whose son was killed when a tire from a Blackhawk exploded in Turkey. Safe from terrorist, not a bullet in anger....just a frickin tire blowing up. As I get older, I suspect I'm just more cautious and realize my mortality and that of my son.
Please provide, in detail, the actual hands on experience in the Osprey of these individuals that you have traded sea stories with, including logbook time for those that are rated pilots. Know anyone actually serving with VMX-22, VMMT-204, VMM-263, VMM-266, HX-21 or the 71st SOS? The fact that you posted that crapola from Harry Dunn, which is four years old and wrought with errors, says a lot about your credibility.
Also, I seriously doubt you have much intimate knowledge beyond the fat chewing stage about the behavior of Dick Cheney and one David S. Chu while they were in the Office of SECDEF back in 1989 or the ties the Cheney family had to Sikorsky which played a major role in his push to try and kill the Osprey and have the Corps buy UH-60s.
By the way, who is John Sarno or Tom Carter?
you're right, I'm wrong. The Osprey is going to be great.
Typical response from someone without any facts to back up their rhetoric.
10,000 rivets flying in close formation!"
LOL. A good friend of mine is a CH-47 driver in the Army...calls the Chinook, "The only aircraft in the US inventory capable of an air-to-air collision with itself."
During my time in the Army I seem to recall that at some point during every Chinook flight I was on, the crew chief came back, started tearing panels of the wall and tightening things...after awhile, I assumed it was normal, but I always preferred Blackhawks. I actually had a few flights on UH-1s which were ok, and even one in the plywood box under a CH-54...exciting in a nightmare kind of way.
I hope it's all you think and a bag of chips. I'm just glad I'm not ever going to have to fly in one..... or a chopper ever again...unless I'm medivaced out of a traffic accident.
So like I said before, you're right, I'm wrong. Time will tell.
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