Originally Posted by
Al M
Also the blade balancing system.
You mean the large area washers added when doing main rotor balancing with the Chadwick-Helmuth kit? That was always fun. Read the phase angle and IPS on the box, then refer to the chart in the manual to see how many washers to add to which location(s). It worked fine on our 1981 UH-60As. Just make sure you have the cable that connects the accelerometer up top to the test box in the cabin firmly secured, as any slack will sound just like you're taking small-arms hits and may skew the vib readings. Ah, good times!
On the subject of air transportability:
In around 1987, our Germany-based US Army combat aviation unit was instructed to prepare 2 of our Blackhawks for air transportability as part of a training exercise. One was to be loaded on a C-5 and one on the C-141. We actually sent one of our birds over to Rhein-Main or Ramstein (can't remember which) to visit with a C-5 crew and see how well the loading and unloading went. The guys who went along to do the prep work didn't break anything so I guess it went okay. I remember from school that you had to use a hydraulic mule to extend and retract the shock struts to avoid scraping the belly during ramp loading. Thankfully we never actually had to demonstrate it on the C-141. To fit in the 141, the rotor head had to be partially disassembled and lowered. Lots of work, especially putting it all back together with the brass split rings and pressure plate torquing. I was assigned to the crew that got to do all that in the comfort of our own hangar. And the post-mx test flight as well. If you fixed it, you flew with it! Tech inspectors too.