Originally Posted by
kintyred
Interesting article. Having flown the RAF Mk2 straight from the docks on delivery more years ago than I care to remember and another nation’s aircraft from the factory, I know that Boeing expect their product to vibrate significantly less at the crew stations than the RAF tolerates.
On a couple of occasions, I had US Army pilots in the other seat of my RAF Chinook. Invariably, when I lifted to the hover, they would say that the vibration was so severe, to them, that in the US they would land back on and give it to the maintainers to fix. As I recall, the US Army changed whole (balanced) rotor blade sets, rather than one blade at a time in the UK. So the US comments about excessive vibration could probably be taken with a small pinch of salt. It could be SOP for us!
Vne for a US Chinook was 170 kts. RAF limited it to 160 kts. Flight at that speed tested the security of one's teeth fillings.