Originally posted by donut king
However, to use that fact to degrade your competitor( Sikorsky), when your own a/c suffers the same problems, is very poor.
I didn’t degrade any competitor, let alone mine. In fact I have no competitors…
Originally posted by [email protected] The Canadians are now the testbed for the Cormorant, so the Danes (who should get theirs in the near future) will probably benefit
Royal Navy (44), Royal Air Force (32) Portugal (12), Danmark (14), Japan (14), Tokyo Metropolitan Police (1), Italy (?), Canada (15) already have theirs or are about to receive them. From a total of 146 orders, 90 have already been delivered.
Some Nordic countries are considering it too. I will try to get a full list and will post it.
Originally posted by rjsquirrel
1) The EH-101 banks on "Maturity" but can't stay operational. Take it one way or the other, Rotorpilot, either the EH-101 is mature at 45,000 hours or it isn't. Which one? If it is mature, then why does the customer have these problems? If it is not mature, just say so and we would agree!
The "Sea King" and S61 with millions of op hours are probably the most mature helicopters flying today. Do you want to know the problems, the unreliabilities, the accidents, even the fatalities in Canada on those “ very mature” helicopters ?
Originally posted by rjsquirrel
2) 40,000 hours is not much at all, in any way, and is certainly not enough to brag about. A typical military fleet of one type helicopter in the US military gets 40,000 hours each MONTH. When you want to talk maturity, try for the first million hours because 45,000 is peanuts. Both aircraft are immature, I think.
I agree with you. 40k is not much, but a lot more then ZERO that is the present level of the S92.
The maritime version is not even built. I read in a recent newspaper that the Canadian version (folding tail & main rotor) has yet to be built from scratch. No wonder it has a very good record...
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Originally posted by rjsquirrel
3) Also, the use of 45,000 hours as proof of fitness begs the question, "How did those 45,000 hours go? Any problems?" I have heard that the EH-101 has the worst record of any development helicopter in recent history, as bad as the V-22 Tilt Rotor, which is developing a whole new technology.
Most of the big problems (some crashes included) were during the development phase, when the chopper was not yet in operation. I wish that phase as bad as possible, with all possible accidents during that phase so when it gets out to ops is more reliable.
Definitely you have never been involved in new model testing and operations. The Air Force that trained me and where I flew for 5 years tested in ops three different models. A small, a medium, and a big helicopter.
Just because of design flaw in one of them we lost 7 machines and had quite a number of fatalities. Only when we lost one flying over a base with everybody watching (and 7 dead) we got what was happening. We called the factory guys and told them what we had seen. They shortened 3 mm the long shaft and the tail rotor gearbox never came off in flight again. It was the increase in temp under certain conditions of full power and high heat/humidity from the long shaft that was throwing out the TRGB. Before this accident six machines were lost during operations but nobody did see anything. They just disappeared in the jungle without giving the pilot time to say anything. I didn't get killed TWICE because of two other snags ( a design flaw and a manufacturer error) just by pure chance. I had to open the bar for the entire base and foot the bill when they found out how and from what I had escaped.
New helicopters are like that. They are exaustively tested under certain conditions. Then they are taken to very far away countries, flying in extreme conditions, sometimes in situation of extreme danger are badly abused and snags start poping up here and there. Its up to us pilots to help things out.
My first big fight inside the forces was because I wanted to ground the entire fleet over a manufacturing error until the problem was solved. Non-flying big shots said it was impossible and reduced the life time of the failed component to 15 hrs when the situation was not a question of hours, but a component that was either good or bad and could fail in the first landing if it was bad, let alone after 15 hrs... Go figure !!!
It was one
hell of a good machine when all the snags were dealt with. My first 1k op hrs were in that machine.
Originally posted by rjsquirrel
4) I hear that S-92 has some kind of guaranteed cost per hour to the commercial operators, like a whole aircraft power by the hour. Does EH offer that? Anybody know the rates for either?
I don’t know, and really and don’t care. I am not buying helicopters for myself and the purchase in question is not a commercial one.
As for the Forces, my opinion as a former Air Force pilot in Europe with duty time in extremely dificult circumstances
with brand new models is:
"For military operations nothing but the very best!
Security has no price, safety is never expensive !"
In this particular case just the number of engines was reason enough for a decision and just for $1 milion more a piece, let alone the fact that they already have 15 !!!
As the saying goes: "
Those that have no money can’t have vices".
Just my $002
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