As to the impact of the flying in that video, there is nothing in that video that should concern the Pprune audience, the unit maintenance chief, or anyone else I can think of*, Obviously an empty aircraft, the pullup wasn't particularly aggressive etc etc. There wasn't any stall ( by a huge margin ) so control loads were within reason.
*Now, if that was a US Army ship, there might have been some administrative issues as their definition of prohibited aerobatic flight is very restrictive, and this maneuver went beyond it, by a good margin.
Think I've mentioned this in some PMs, or maybe even here, but the subject of doing some public aerobatic flight came up as the ship was getting close to delivery in 1978, and the review of flight manual limits was under review with the Army. It was the clear position taken by the Army leadership not to do anything like that, and the flight manual limits reflected very restricted maneuver limits. Their reasoning was that they have a large number of young aviators who have graduated from a training syllabus that included zero acrobatic training in any aircraft, much less a helicopter. They saw the certitude of some imitation by this group if the aerobatic capability of the Blackhawk were to be made public, either by Sikorsky or by the Army, and thus the limits in their publications.
Certainly, during the required development and qualification of the helicopter to the rigorous standards contained in AMCP 706-203 ( The Army Engineering Design Handbook, Part 3, 1972 ), the maneuver envelope was very fully developed. The main rotor flapping hinge offset is 25% more than the original Blackhawk, the S-67 ( basically an S-61 head geometry-wise ) so the available hub moment is up accordingly. Those interested in more detail can send a PM.
Last edited by JohnDixson; 21st March 2023 at 20:06.
Reason: missing letter