Bell’s V-280 Valor Tiltrotor Picked As Army’s Black Hawk Replacement

I’m not really sure what your point is. As a former helicopter pilot who, as part of the regular flight training schedule, logged more than 200 hours of fixed-wing time first, including carrier landings, formation and night flying, before helicopter training, I can say there was no unlearning of skills followed by adapting. The same skills are there, with one exception: Hovering. But that took all of two or three training flights to master. The tilt rotor is a fixed-wing aircraft, and helo pilots can easily ease into it, same as the reverse.

I never said that Osprey pilots don't go through conventional flight training before transitioning to the V-22. I did say the pilots are pipelined directly now instead of doing line unit helicopter time first because of substantial flight characteristic differences.

My USMC neighbors who fly them gave me their insight on some big differences in training:

The V-22 Osprey is not a particularly good "pure" helicopter. They have to deal with disk vortex ring on each rotor in a lateral axis to flight instead of a linear axis. If there is an imbalance they can become roll rate unstable. This is typically not a problem with a single rotor or tandem rotor helicopters.

The V-22 has a disk loading in helicopter mode of about 27 lbs/sq. ft. In contrast, a CH-53E has a disk loading of about 15 lb./sq. ft and a UH-60 is about 7 lb/sq. ft. The Osprey hovers "heavy" compared to a pure helicopter. Because of that, lots of training time is dedicated to that characteristic.

The Osprey doesn't have conventional cyclic controls like a helicopter. As the engine nacelles rotate the flight control computer translates the control inputs to coordinate swashplate movements and control surface movements depending on mode of flight. The pilot does not have independent control of cyclic controls they would have with a helicopter. It can’t autorotate nearly as safely as a helicopter can either.

All of these factors add up to some pretty unique training.

As a final note, one said the Osprey was a very nice ride but as a pilot, you have to fly it, not ride in it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.