Nametags on flightsuits

[wlawr005]

That reason is they want to fly CSAR and NSW; not VERTREP.

TERF & Low Level through the mountains has been the most fun I've ever had in the aircraft, especially Day Terfs in the PI!! (No rules there)

CSAR and NSW are exciting missions, hence movies and books on the topic. I'm still waiting for the Hollywood movie on VERTREP...

Says the F/H guy who probably advocates straight in approaches for VERTREP.

Let it be known that the Phrog was the best VERTREP aircraft to ever fly the pattern, but I have known many HSC (60S) pilots who have continued the tradition of stick skills + good crew coordination to get the job done. VERTREP, when done correctly, has been some of the most rewarding and challenging flying I've ever done in a helo.

 

[60flyer]

You would think delivering mail was fun too if you could do it sideways. VERTREP is like getting paid to do donut holes with a Vette!

Nice analogy!!!

 

[Pugs]

I'm still waiting for the Hollywood movie on VERTREP...

 

[Pags]

TERF & Low Level through the mountains has been the most fun I've ever had in the aircraft, especially Day Terfs in the PI!! (No rules there)

CSAR and NSW are exciting missions, hence movies and books on the topic. I'm still waiting for the Hollywood movie on VERTREP...

I got to go to FT Knox and fly in their ranges. Their guidance was along the lines of "don't tie the record", "don't land anywhere you can't get out of" and "try to keep all the bullets on one range". It was Helo Disney World. My buddy and I were flying a TERF route and we had a flight display crap out on us. Maint couldn't duplicate the gripe on deck, so we were given 1.0 to go see if we could replicate the gripe.

Tactical missions are "fun" in the professional sense of mission accomplishment and getting to do stuff that not many other folks get to do.

Day TERF and day Vertrep rank about the same in my book. Both have you flying a helicopter like God intended a helo to be flown. In the TERF environment you get to fly at low altitudes and land the helo in all sorts of awesome places. In vertrep, you also get to wring out the helo. Flying sideways and backaward at 45kts is a blast and is something that no other aircraft can do.

 

[Pags]

You would think delivering mail was fun too if you could do it sideways. VERTREP is like getting paid to do donut holes with a Vette!

Delivering the mail when it takes 2.0 of straight and level flying is a lot less fun, but the per diem sure was sweet.

 

[helolumpy]

Says the F/H guy who probably advocates straight in approaches for VERTREP.

Says the F/H guy who's done both missions. VERTREP is fun and that's well known, but IMO it gets boring after an hour. It take stick skills to do it, but the scenery never changes.

TERFing on the other hand, you get to see places. Pinacle landings with a platoon of SEALS in the back required more finesse on the controls than any VERTREP evolution I've had to do.

The H-46 may have been a great VERTREP platfrom but it has passed into history. I had to listen to numerous stories about how the H-3 saved the world from communism; plus you could stand up to use the relief tube. I will say that I was envious that I never got to try water landings in the H-3... You can do them in the H-60, but only once.

Whether you like it or not, you have the 60S and since the HSC community is not having engine failures/roll-backs every 10 hours then I'd say that's a good thing.

If you really, really want to do VERTREP then may I recommend: http://www.evergreenaviation.com/emp/index.html or http://www.aarcorp.com/aws/aws_careers.htm

 

[Pags]

Whether you like it or not, you have the 60S and since the HSC community is not having engine failures/roll-backs every 10 hours then I'd say that's a good thing.

Whenever my DHs would tell tales about the Phrog, the stories of greatness would always fade into stories about how many of their friends it had killed. One of them said "On my HAC cruise, every time I took off from the boat, I was pretty sure I wasn't coming back." It takes balls to man up a bird day after day when you're pretty sure it's going to put you in the drink.

 

[phrogdriver]

Whenever my DHs would tell tales about the Phrog, the stories of greatness would always fade into stories about how many of their friends it had killed. One of them said "On my HAC cruise, every time I took off from the boat, I was pretty sure I wasn't coming back." It takes balls to man up a bird day after day when you're pretty sure it's going to put you in the drink.

They were exagerating a LOT, but the point is taken. Those Navy -46s were trainwrecks. The rollbacks were bad enough. The fact that they were probably overtorqued hundreds of times was even worse.

The reminiscing does remind me of a joke though.

How many phrog pilots does it take to change a light bulb?

28. One to change the bulb, 27 to talk about how great the old bulb was.

Yes I've told that one here before.

 

[Pags]

They were exagerating a LOT, but the point is taken. Those Navy -46s were trainwrecks. The rollbacks were bad enough. The fact that they were probably overtorqued hundreds of times was even worse.

HC-6 used to have a Phrog that was made by cobbling together the remnants of a UH, a CH, and an HH. For some reason, they could never get the vibes in on it.

I believe the DH who said he wasn't sure he was coming back. ****Very vague story to follow. I don't know all the specifics. PhrogLoop will probably better know the story.**** Around the time they left for cruise, another det had a very scary near mishap. A mechanical failure (I can't remember exactly what it was), caused a Phrog to descent no matter how much collective they pulled. At near impact, they decided "what the hell, pulling power isn't working, what if we let power out?" Because of the nature of the failure, the reduction in collective caused the helo to stop it's descent and come to a hover just short of the water. The crew then carefully hovered back to the ship. At the time, the community didn't know what caused this, but their det just kept flying like nothing had happened.

Another DH was doing ground turns on board a USNS. He shut down and walked away from the helo. Shortly afterwards, he was walking through the hangar and saw some maintainers holding the scissors and was surprised to see that they had been removed so quickly. Turns out they had departed the a/c during the ground turns.

Saying that the Navy Phrogs were a trainwreck doesn't seem like too much of an exaggeration to me. I always found it hard to believe that the Navy had let the airframes deteriorate so far.

 

[PhrogLoop]

PhrogLoop will probably better know the story.**** Around the time they left for cruise, another det had a very scary near mishap. A mechanical failure (I can't remember exactly what it was), caused a Phrog to descent no matter how much collective they pulled. At near impact, they decided "what the hell, pulling power isn't working, what if we let power out?" Because of the nature of the failure, the reduction in collective caused the helo to stop it's descent and come to a hover just short of the water. The crew then carefully hovered back to the ship. At the time, the community didn't know what caused this, but their det just kept flying like nothing had happened.

Yeah, I was the HAC on that one...

We had just launched from the LHA off the coast of Yemen on an FCF. Aft rotor system had been in work, so it was a full flight controls profile. Boss put us in the port delta because there was a flight of Shitters on its way back from Djibouti and they were inbound off the starboard quarter. 300 feet, 70 knots, 3 miles from the ship my H2P was at the controls in the left seat while I was heads down opening up the FCF checklist. We heard a muffled pop, the bird shuffled a little, someone goes "What the fuck was that?" and we start falling tail first towards the water. Almost immediately, we bled off all our airspeed and the nose was above 30 high and climbing while the aircraft was falling though 150 feet. I looked over and my H2P had the cyclic jammed full forward, almost touching the instrument panel. He started raising the collective and I noticed the nose climbing through 45 high. I took the controls and looked over my right shoulder and saw nothing but water. I thought about ground effect and decided last second to dump collective. The nose dropped just in time to level the aircraft around 20 feet and we bounced around a little before we realized we were dry.

I added some power and we started limping back to the boat at 200 feet and 40 knots (all I could get). Dave called the boss, declared an emergency, and asked for immediate landing. He reported we had a "serious flight control failure with uncommanded nose up." Apparently, he was so cool on the radios that the boss didn't really get how bad it was because he asked us to take a couple of turns while he had the handler move the harriers out of the aft bone. I got on the radios and said, "Boss, we need to land now." Put it down on spot 8, we shut down, and I literally kissed the flight deck.

Turns out that after the maintenance, the bolt securing the drive arm link (scissor assembly) on the rotating swashplate was installed, but the nut and cotter pin were never installed. Bolt worked its way loose, the drive arm link flapped open, and the aft rotor system went to near-flat pitch spinning on bent pitch change links with no flight control response. We kept flying, a couple of guys lost their CDI quals for a few weeks, and that was that (I will say no more on that subject but it still lights a damn fire in my stomach). Still love the Phrog...she brought me home that day.

 

[Scoob]

words.

Jesus.

 

[BigIron]

Jesus.

Concur.

 

[abracadabra11]

I was lucky enough to spend some time aboard USS Wasp a week or so ago (along with a few thousand other folks) and while aboard for the tour a couple things struck me as odd that lead to some thoughts. First, I was surprised at how open the ship is inside, it makes sense because of the nature of its mission, but wow.

The actual questions concern an MH-60S crewman that was aboard:
One, is it common for USN a/c to be on Navy ships that are basically Marine aviation ships? I had assumed when I heard Wasp was visiting that there'd be Harriers, V-22s, etc. Sadly it was just the two MH-60s and an engine/glass/instrument/door-less Phrog that is progressively being destroyed for rescue training aboard.
Two, he had an embroidered nametag, "Rainbow Brite" D). Was that just a 'here comes the public, let's be goofballs' thing? He also said something to the effect of "We do SEAL inserts, VERTREP, etc, everything except hunt subs because that's boring and nobody wants to do that anyway", which made me think a few folks on here might differ with that opinion.. Not wanting to be "airshow guy", I didn't say anything to that comment though..

Thanks for any help.

Just as an FYI, the crewman you talked to is actually a pilot.

 

[darrylcn]

Ahh! I was hoping that at the time "I bet someone on AW knows this guy". Thx abracadabra. Any clues on the name's origin or is it just one of those things...?

 

[Rubiks06]

Nobody wants to do ASW until there is a torpedo in the water.......besides....starboard d is way more exciting. I would rather do 6 hours of actual ASW than 2 of starboard d. I always thought people put HSC because they wanted to go to San Diego.....