No shit! (BTW... BzB and Ron, don't try to pass around the armband tonight, Walt, 707guy and I know who the OOD is today.
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"Quirks" of Past Aircraft
- Thread starter Wingnut172N
- Start date
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Sad how things are now.
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SH-60B/F - When landing, the tailwheel touches first followed almost immediately by the mains, with the tailwheel absorbing a great deal of energy
UH-60A/L/M - Tailwheel touches first, followed by nose pitching forward quickly. It is funny how you imperceptibly apply control forces without releasing it. Flying the Blackhawk now I have to apply a slight bit of aft cyclic and hold a little bit of collective on touchdown or the aircraft rolls forward after landing and touches the mains a bit hard.
UH-60A/L vs UH/HH-60M. The Ms fly close to the aft CG most of the time. Last spring I had to fly an A for two months after flying Ms for 2.5 years. My first few flights I would drift forward on takeoff. Not flying close to aft CG, the A's tail would not drop requiring forward cyclic. But I instinctively added forward cyclic anyway.
And then there is collective friction vs trim, pitch bias actuator vs no PBA, and wide chord blades vs normal blades.
UH-60A/L/M - Tailwheel touches first, followed by nose pitching forward quickly. It is funny how you imperceptibly apply control forces without releasing it. Flying the Blackhawk now I have to apply a slight bit of aft cyclic and hold a little bit of collective on touchdown or the aircraft rolls forward after landing and touches the mains a bit hard.
UH-60A/L vs UH/HH-60M. The Ms fly close to the aft CG most of the time. Last spring I had to fly an A for two months after flying Ms for 2.5 years. My first few flights I would drift forward on takeoff. Not flying close to aft CG, the A's tail would not drop requiring forward cyclic. But I instinctively added forward cyclic anyway.
And then there is collective friction vs trim, pitch bias actuator vs no PBA, and wide chord blades vs normal blades.
Do you really notice the PBA (or lack of it)? Maybe it's because you can go faster, but I just don't really notice a difference without it. I'm hoping to jump back in a -60B "soon" and will look to see if I notice it. Then again, I may just be compensating for the lack of it and not even realizing it.
I haven't noticed a real difference between PBA and no PBA. I don't think the physical transition (control manipulation) from low speed to max blast happens quick enough to really pick up on it most of the time.
The landing gear difference is annoying. A well executed TERF landing in the B/F/H results in a nice simultaneous 3 point touchdown. That just doesn't happen with the tailwheel so far back in the Sierra, and most guys I've flown with who are learning end up getting the pendulum motion going pretty good, and try to drive the mains into the ground. (Most guys take the tailwheel location as a crutch to be lazy in not maintaining the correct profile)
Doing autos with the wings on in the MH-60S is an interesting experience. Unless you've practiced it a few times in higher wind conditions, it can jack your profile up in a bad way.
AVCS sucks balls. The "30 minute thump" it creates when clearing out errors feels exactly like a wire strike. Not a good feeling.
And my favorite "fun trivia fact" that helps guys out a lot when they first learn it. In the FLIR capable aircraft the left seat Cyclic is installed with an offset of about 2" to the left. (To provide room for the copilots right leg with the HCU installed.) This always results in guys landing with right drift their first few times in the left seat, since they fall back on the muscle memory of the cyclic being in a different spot for a correct profile.
The landing gear difference is annoying. A well executed TERF landing in the B/F/H results in a nice simultaneous 3 point touchdown. That just doesn't happen with the tailwheel so far back in the Sierra, and most guys I've flown with who are learning end up getting the pendulum motion going pretty good, and try to drive the mains into the ground. (Most guys take the tailwheel location as a crutch to be lazy in not maintaining the correct profile)
Doing autos with the wings on in the MH-60S is an interesting experience. Unless you've practiced it a few times in higher wind conditions, it can jack your profile up in a bad way.
AVCS sucks balls. The "30 minute thump" it creates when clearing out errors feels exactly like a wire strike. Not a good feeling.
And my favorite "fun trivia fact" that helps guys out a lot when they first learn it. In the FLIR capable aircraft the left seat Cyclic is installed with an offset of about 2" to the left. (To provide room for the copilots right leg with the HCU installed.) This always results in guys landing with right drift their first few times in the left seat, since they fall back on the muscle memory of the cyclic being in a different spot for a correct profile.
I know you have an extra special reason to be sensitive, but I found I got used to the bump. My first few FAM flights, though, it was very disconcerting to feel it.
Do you know if this is true in the R, as well? I haven't noticed this, but now I'm going to have to look.
Gee whiz! Sounds like two handfuls (heck, three handfuls!) regarding dealing with H-60 variants. A sincere "Hats Off" to you H-60 drivers! How many H-60 variants are there in the Navy at this time? Shoot, when I was on AD back in the mid '80's and early '90's, it was just the B model in HSL and the F model was starting to appear in HS...pretty simple.
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Gee whiz! Sounds like two handfuls (heck, three handfuls!) regarding dealing with H-60 variants. A sincere "Hats Off" to you H-60 drivers! How many H-60 variants are there in the Navy at this time? Shoot, when I was on AD back in the mid '80's and early '90's, it was just the B model in HSL and the F model was starting to appear in HS...pretty simple.
There are some quirks between the legacy models (B/F/H) and the current ones (R/S). I'd argue that the 500 hour 2P pilot may not notice them as much as someone with more time in one or the other. Some big issues I've noticed going from the B to the R is over-torquing on one engine (it's actually possible now...though I can't figure out why) and there's a difference in CG between the R and the B, which affects things like entering the auto. Otherwise it comes down to a) recognizing that one is heavier, by default, than the other and b) one has a glass cockpit, which by itself has some pluses and minuses.
I'm not getting into the UI issues of the current models (R/S), as that's a different issue and one the end user can't do much about. But I'd argue it's worse than the legacy models.
The 60A, 60L, and 60M without airspeed hold engaged, none of which have a PBA vary airspeed with small collective inputs by about 5kts. Neither hold airspeed like the 60B did. I don't remember how the 60B was, but all of the Army 60s require forward cyclic inputs when entering an auto.
We get the AVCS bump every now and then, but not every 30 minutes. It is pretty benign in the 60M.
Wide chord blades add a touch of responsiveness in pitch and roll as well as reducing the delay in rotor rpm after collective adjustments.
But to keep it in line with the OP, the 60A, now 35 years old, kind of sucks!
BzB: Can I assume you only flew from angled-deck carriers? Clearly, in the early jet era, everyone took a "cut" to land…since there was no bolter option…and the pack ahead of you.
Well, yes... but you still hat to stay on-speed and AOA.
Like Zipmartin says with the A-7, the TF-30 was very slow to spool up. However in the F-14, we could and did land with speed-brakes extended, and with DLC engaged lifting the spoilers a few degrees. That extra drag seemed to do the trick.
But those fan engines were a terrible thing to put on a front line fighter! (But that is another, long story abut $$$$, Congress, and politics.)
Two good questions...
F-4: Rock solid on approach to the boat. Instantaneous throttle/thrust response thanks to the turbojet J-79s. It was a pleasure to bring aboard. But what made it difficult was her higher approach speed -around 143 kts as I recall, compared to the F-14's of maybe 20 kts. slower. (IIRC, losing its leading-edge, boundary layer control bleed air over the wings, the F-4 became too fast and had to go to the beach.)
F-14: I thought it was "easier" to bring aboard, but they look terrible flopping around, hence the moniker "Turkey." She flew off bigger decks, had a HUD with needles, had DLC and the quickie stick-flip that worked like DLC. But she was butt-ugly coming aboard for these reasons:
BTF-14: I thought it was "easier" to bring aboard, but they look terrible flopping around, hence the moniker "Turkey." She flew off bigger decks, had a HUD with needles, had DLC and the quickie stick-flip that worked like DLC. But she was butt-ugly coming aboard for these reasons:
1. Spoiler control gave her adverse yaw.
2. Spoiler control meant she did not rotate around the axis of fusilage (like the F-4 did with aileron control), but rather the opposite wing tip (like the A-6 did, I believe.)
3. With her adverse yaw and spoiler control, the huge differential horizontal stabilizers flapped around like mad!
LSOs gave terrible landing grades initially to F-14s, because from outside it looked like the pilot had snakes in the cockpit with all the control surrfaces moving around violently. It took them a while to get used to that.2. Spoiler control meant she did not rotate around the axis of fusilage (like the F-4 did with aileron control), but rather the opposite wing tip (like the A-6 did, I believe.)
3. With her adverse yaw and spoiler control, the huge differential horizontal stabilizers flapped around like mad!
You are right about F-4 cat shots. The needed the strut extension to give them a head start for rotation. (The Brits used an even higher extension.) However once the F-4 got a good bite of air off the cat, she easily over-rotated... and often did with inexperienced drivers. There was a narrow window between under-rotation and settling off the bow, and wild and spectacular, over-rotations.
Well........ I took a cut in/before the wires once, at night on the USS Midway. Guys who were there still talk about it 40+ years later. Wish I had the plat tape. Or maybe I don't.
LSO saved my life. Should have ejected. RIO should have too. Most all would have.
I reached, but didn't pull. Next pass was an OK 2. (Schoolboy only had 3 wires on her best days.)
Went in to the skipper's state room later and offered up my wings. Told him I might be in the wrong business. He told me to sleep on it.
2 nights later I was back in action. I finished the cruise with lots of 'greenies' on the board, save for the real ugly black and red one early on!
No doubt CG comes into play. You have to put a little aft stick into the R to hold airspeed in the auto, unlike the B, which mostly just stood there and held what it needed on the entry. Common "error" for transition guys (B to R) in the 90 auto is to want to push the nose forward and follow it around the corner when it's not as necessary in the R. While I think the overall result is a good thing, TDI does make autos/Nr control twitchy, though, but that was true in the Bravo, too, after it got upgraded DECUs.