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V-22 Chosen to be the new COD
- Thread starter lowflier03
- Start date
True, but an instructor's worth is determined by how good he or she can make Joe or Jane Average.
The AF sees it as a rotary wing pipleline platform - in the same vain as HH-60, HH-1N, etc .
I see the value in T-44 tract - long range And high altitude ops, cross country, crew coordination, etc. No need to do single engine asymmetric thrust (MEL) ops although I guess it couldn't hurt. And the T-44 is a great IFR platform.
The Marine V-22 guys/gals go to South Field to fly the first half of the TH-57 syllabus plus some forms flights(~20 flights) and then they go to Corpus to do the entire C-12 syllabus with VT-35.
The rumor is that they are going to change the training pipeline by having the guys complete their NATOPS instrument checks in the T-6 before going to South Field and then skipping VT-35 completely in order to reduce time to train.
Pardon my ignorance here, but is there really a necessity to put them through the instrument syllabus in the T6? Why not just treat them like a helo guy and do the instrument (read normal HTs) syllabus at South Whiting?
Because they need to be able to fly approaches fast.
I'm going to preface this with the fact that those decisions are above me and have never been explained to me. However, I would guess it's because the Osprey spends most of it's flight time in airplane mode; it's a plane that lands like a helicopter, not vice versa. Therefore, it makes more sense for us learn instruments in an airplane environment instead of a helicopter environment.
All the AF students at the FRS came from T-1s or T-38s with no UH-1 time.
C-12 is useful because of the whole fly higher and faster than a helicopter bit, so the training in mission planning helps a bit more coming from VT-35. On instruments, we are generally in airplane mode once 500 feet off the deck and we aren't bringing the nacelles up until 3 miles prior to the FAF. Even then, they're usually staying down at 60 degrees (~115 kts) even though we can easily fly approaches at category A-D speeds as desired. It's really about how fast you need to finish the approach. Faster approaches can be flown to a roll-on landing at a maximum of 88 knots, or we can do a hover/no-hover landing as needed.
Last edited:
danpass
Well-Known Member
Somewhat related curiosity question involving regular CONUS flying:
I was reading something (an online article I believe) where the Osprey has been changing a few things, such as an approach to landing.
You're on with the controller approaching the runway in an airplane-like manner when you request to land like a helicopter (or on a helipad) and the controller replies in the following manner:
[death!!11!!!1!] NEGATIVE SIR [/death!!11!!!1!]
due to plain old lack of knowledge.
Is there a control procedure these days for handling the transition between the classic fixed wing landing to a classic vertical landing?
I was actually wondering about this myself. Can you guys side-step like a conventional helo? I've seen first-hand the mess that an Osprey can generate when a landing area isn't secured, so I can understand the risk with it, but from a regulation point of view, can you guys do that?
How fast is the osprey flying approaches? I feel like the actual instrument knowledge from primary carried over well to advanced and tied together well.
AFAIK, no new procedures. Like Nike, we just do it. We are still flying the majority of the approach at airplane speeds even though we are in conversion. Generally, nacelles will be 60° and higher, so we can slow down in a hurry at the bottom of the approach. The standard speed I've seen so far is ~115 knots at the FAF and slowing down as needed to make the LZ. On one hand we can fly copter approaches if necessary, or on the other hand, high TACAN approaches. It's pretty awesome.
Procedurally, IFR is the same as anywhere else. The difference is in the constantly changing handling characteristics with the given airspeed and nacelle angle, as our flight control laws phase from FW to RW as those variables change through the approach.