• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Useless aviation knowledges/Helo NATOPS Potpourri for $200 Alex

AllYourBass said:
As for useless knowledge: I can draw the shit out of the automatic approach and departure profiles. Control mixing is also a lot of information to which I needlessly dedicated precious "learn it verbatim" bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I've never been much of a fan of "verbatim" anything. But sometimes things are less important after you get time in the aircraft compared to when you're new. On numerous occasions I've seen CAT 1s diagnose a Loss of T/R control as something other than Loss of T/R control because when they cycled the pedals to check, the nose went up and down. That movement equated to still having control in their minds because they weren't thinking about mixing. Obviously with time and exposure, they become more aware. And I'm not going to lie, I've seen at least one more senior pilot do the same thing.

Some of the stuff is overboard, but some of it is good to understand when trying to troubleshoot in the moment.
 
squorch2 said:
How often are you encountering T/R failure modes?!
Click to expand...

With CAT 1s? In the simulator, pretty frequently. The point being that understanding why mixing happens can help you later. Just like Boost Off landings. If you make mixing work for you, it's much easier to land than to try and man-handle the aircraft. Or the helicopter I fly now where I can click off the altitude hold, so I don't fight it, but I can just manipulate power and it will adjust my airspeed for me through mixing (and a little bit of one of the AFCS functions).

Admittedly, finesse discussions can quickly turn into needless minutia discussions.

Python1287 said:
I noticed all the useless NATOPS knowledges are coming from the non-Tacair communities.
Click to expand...

No doubt.

I think there's lots of stuff that isn't super-relevant, but there's some aero minutia with helos that helps to make you a better pilot. Much like, I'd imagine, there's some minutia with boat flying for tailhook that helps with better boarding rates. But again, that's different than maintaining a minimum standard that is the NATOPS check. Obviously it's about balance.
 
My primary onwing explained it like this...at the time helo world didn't have much in the way of tactics (relatively speaking) so they had to evaluate on something, thus, NATOPS minutiae, whereas the fighter community was firmly established in tactics and evaluated as such. I thought going from HSL to HSM the scales would have tipped at least somewhat, but sadly, did not. When I asked the LT FRS instructor during my CATII syllabus why I should really care about a number that I can't really see, can do nothing about, and is not covered in any checklist or EP the answer was generally a flat "because."
 
Like others have said, in P-8 we've gotten soooooooo much better at not memorizing bullshit. 8 years ago I got hit on my P-3 systems board for not knowing the path a torp takes in the water, despite the fact our PQS literally told us not to memorize that shit and to focus on the why's of presetting and placement. For the most part, this kind of stuff rarely happens now.
 
kejo said:
My primary onwing explained it like this...at the time helo world didn't have much in the way of tactics (relatively speaking) so they had to evaluate on something, thus, NATOPS minutiae, whereas the fighter community was firmly established in tactics and evaluated as such. I thought going from HSL to HSM the scales would have tipped at least somewhat, but sadly, did not. When I asked the LT FRS instructor during my CATII syllabus why I should really care about a number that I can't really see, can do nothing about, and is not covered in any checklist or EP the answer was generally a flat "because."
Click to expand...

Questions I've been known to ask on a NATOPS check, usually in a row:

  • How many engines are in the aircraft?
  • How many hyd systems are in the aircraft?
  • How many landing gear do we have?
  • What is the forward tilt of the main rotor?

Sometimes there would be a puzzled look and then a grin of realization with the answer on the last one. For CAT others/fleet guys, it always seemed to me it would become apparent if you didn't know what was important with the systems once we started doing EPs in the sim.
 
squorch2 said:
there's the rub.

I can see something like "only transition from forward to sideward flight below <airspeed>" (given lack of low-speed IAS fidelity, how could you realistically follow that?) but that's not what it says.

as such, that maneuver was widely variable - from people creeping straight towards pickup zones to O-4 phrog bros kicking the tail at 70 KIAS (justifying it saying "oh, we're well below 45 knots by the time the tail is all the way out").
Click to expand...

At one point a senior member in the HTs tried to justify his/her obvious breaking of the sideward limit (based on winds that day as he/she slid into the pits as everyone else agreed to not fly) by saying that you get bounced around sideways during turbulence and probably exceed the limit, especially if crabbing. The JOs in the room had to respectfully shoot that one down and said offender backed down.
 
Pags said:
It's been 7yrs since I've had a NATOPS qual so you'll have to excuse me if some penguins have fallen off the iceberg.

It is hard to define and it's hard to measure. There are lots of limits like this throughout aviation that are there because you can't say "there's no limit" but you also can't have a limit that says, "no sideways flight at speeds that make the grass blurry" because that's just as dumb of a limit. I'd offer that the way you'd really do this is to use the hover page when you can because there's no KIAS sideways so it has to be KGS and that you need to calibrate your eyeball because there are real bad things that can happen if you break it (looking at you Whidbey SAR).
Click to expand...

That's what I did. What's the Whidbey SAR incident?
 
DanMa1156 said:
That's what I did. What's the Whidbey SAR incident?
Click to expand...
It's been more than 7yrs so the specifics are hazy but if I recall the crew was out doing pirouettes to the left. When they went to stop by putting in right pedal the a/c kept spinning to the left. So, despite the LEFT spin, they diagnosed it as loss of TR drive, pulled the PCLs, pranged the bird real nice, and all walked away from it. Turns out the 60S has more left pedal authority than right pedal authority because it turns out that American helos use left pedal more than right. So once they got spinning real good to the left there wasn't enough right authority to stop them. Of course if they'd pulled power that would have increased the torque and, in effect, added more right pedal thus helping to stop their leftward rotation. There was a minor dust up and hand wringing after the fact about, "show me in the MDG where it describes a pirouette!" and that sort of business and that if I recall resulted in community guidance to not make up maneuvers, etc.
 
My preferred way to do an APART is to start with the Performance Planning Card (PPC).

Why is single engine max torque available higher than dual engine (if it is)? This leads to questions/discussion on engine control functions. At a minimum you had better know about TGT limiting, Ng limiting, which component of the engine does which, and a little something about failure modes. Hint: You might encounter one or more failure modes during the flight evaluation.

Why do we have a minimum and maximum single engine airspeed? How are they derived? Why is max rate of climb airspeed different from max endurance? What airspeed will you use to climb out on a rolling takeoff? How can you tell if you are about to take off over max gross weight? Hint: You will need this information to correctly fly some of the maneuvers for the flight evaluation.

Some other favorites. Why does the backup pump take 3-5 seconds to come on during the TR backup servo check but only 0.5 seconds when we are flying? Just how fast is a hovering turn at the 30 degrees per second limit? I have demonstrated it in a spinning chair. Nearly all are surprised when they realize it is not as fast as they thought.

My approach is to ask a limitation, then discuss why or how that limitation is likely to affect them in a typical flight. For a junior pilot, it may be more of a teaching event. For a seasoned PC, I expect some thought, coupled with experience and a solid knowledge of aircraft systems and limitations.

As to the original question, I HATE the way the Army wants you to hand write EPs verbatim for emergency procedures exams. It's gotten better, but we used to have EPs that said "lower the collective" while others said "adjust the collective". Some would have you adjust/lower collective first, then establish SE airspeed while others were the opposite. Write it down incorrectly and you missed the question. WTF? As if you don't actually do the steps simultaneously in the aircraft/sim?
 
^This. We had someone fail the Immediate Action Exam on a unit eval because they didn't write (if required) at the end of one step for one EP. I get "verbatim" but that was the most useless thing I saw in the F18 community.
 
Pags said:
When they went to stop by putting in right pedal the a/c kept spinning to the left. So, despite the LEFT spin, they diagnosed it as loss of TR drive, pulled the PCLs, pranged the bird real nice, and all walked away from it. Turns out the 60S has more left pedal authority than right pedal authority because it turns out that American helos use left pedal more than right. So once they got spinning real good to the left there wasn't enough right authority to stop them. Of course if they'd pulled power that would have increased the torque and, in effect, added more right pedal thus helping to stop their leftward rotation.
Click to expand...
Saw the same thing during taxiing with a strong left crosswind - while slowing down for a right turn (read: bottomed collective), 2P tries to turn right, gets nothing, 2P says the pedals don't respond, HAC takes controls and pull in a bit of collective, bird magically turns right.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top