Posted on 01/15/2006 10:30:09 PM PST by HAL9000
Reuters -
U.S. HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN NORTH OF BAGHDAD -- WITNESSES
"And when I mention a FReeper by name, I DO put them in the "To:" line."
I figured you did. Be careful over there.
You're correct. You need no one's permission to sound like an armchair general.
When I was at Taji in '04, we took Black Hawks or Chinooks from there to BIAP. When I went at night, we ALWAYS saw tracers and other lovely fireworks. The shooters do stay busy. I don't think I ever saw one of 'em so much as blink.
Miss it yet?
Any word on what model the aircraft was?
Could you all stop the squabbling? I have a good friend who is a Blackhawk pilot over there and every time we lose a bird my stomach drops to the floor. You guy aren't helping.
LQ
OK,
We all know the enemy is, and it ain't us. Cool down and say a prayer for all of our loved ones over there.
The residue ought to be very easy to detect.
Don't know the type but it had a 2 person crew. Helicopters used by the Army that have a two-person crew include the AH-64 Apache and the OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance.
This report said it was likely a Kiowa:
http://www.sibernews.com/the-news/world-news/two-dead-in-iraq-helicopter-crash-200601163427/
I do that daily and I AM over here. And we've had a bad day here. Bad. OK?
Please cut me some slack.
Just damn. All of you are in our thoughts and prayers.
And please refrain from lumping me in and generalizing simply because I defended myself. If you read closely, you'll see who dropped it and who went on and on and on...
Thank you.
Thanks.
This sucks.
Thank you.
Prayers lifted for the safety of those involved in this incident.
As a plaque I have in my office reads:
"The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by an incompetent pilot, it will fly.
A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.
This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to." - Harry Reasoner
I have 1,100 hours on the UH-1H "Huey" and 500+ on the UH-60A Blackhawk befor moving on to a cargo airplane. The last paragraph sums it up quite well.
Just one correction: There may be not such a thing as a gliding helicopter but there are such things as autororating helicopters. It's just that some autorotate better than the others.
More on helicopters:
Helicopter flight: A bunch of spare parts flying in close formation.
Got this in an e-mail from a Safety Center friend of mine down at Rucker...
Anything that screws its way into the sky flies according to unnatural principles.
You never want to sneak up behind an old, high-time helicopter pilot and clap your hands. He will instantly dive for cover and most likely whimper...then get up and smack the shit out of you.
There are no old helicopters lying around airports like you see old airplanes. There is a reason for this. Come to think of it, there are not many old, high-time helicopter pilots hanging around airports either so the first issue is problematic.
You can always tell a helicopter pilot in anything moving: a train, an airplane, a car or a boat. They never smile, they are always listening to the machine and they always hear something they think is not right. Helicopter pilots fly in a mode of intensity, actually more like "spring loaded", while waiting for pieces of their ship to fall off.
Flying a helicopter at any altitude over 500 feet is considered reckless and should be avoided. Flying a helicopter at any altitude or condition that precludes a landing in less than 20 seconds is considered outright foolhardy.
Remember in a helicopter you have about 1 second to lower the collective in an engine failure before the craft becomes unrecoverable. Once you've failed this maneuver the machine flies about as well as a 20 case Coke machine. Even a perfectly executed autorotation only gives you a glide ratio slightly better than that of a brick. 180 degree autorotations are a violent and aerobatic maneuver in my opinion and should be avoided.
When your wings are leading, lagging, flapping, precessing and moving faster than your fuselage there's something unnatural going on. Is this the way men were meant to fly?
While hovering, if you start to sink a bit, you pull up on the collective while twisting the throttle, push with your left foot (more torque) and move the stick left (more translating tendency) to hold your spot. If you now need to stop rising, you do the opposite in that order.Sometimes in wind you do this many times each second. Don't you think that's a strange way to fly?
For Helicopters: You never want to feel a sinking feeling in your gut (low "g" pushover) while flying a two bladed under slung teetering rotor system. You are about to do a snap-roll to the right and crash. For that matter, any remotely aerobatic maneuver should be avoided in a Huey.
Don't push your luck. It will run out soon enough anyway.
If everything is working fine on your helicopter consider yourself temporarily lucky. Something is about to break.
Having said all this, I must admit that flying in a helicopter is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences I have ever enjoyed: skimming over the tops of trees at 100 knots is something we should all be able to do at least once.
And remember the fighter pilot's prayer: "Lord I pray for the eyes of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the balls of a combat helicopter pilot."
Many years later I know that it was sometimes anything but fun, but now it IS something to brag about for those of us who survived the experience.
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