To: Nick Lappos
Sooner than getting into a P*****G contest with an “expert” I will remind you of a caution offered to me by Heliport. It in part stated that I should not post defamatory information and I should have a means of backing up my statements. I qualified my post by indicating that this is the way it was when I was involved in the various programs and relative to Sikorsky it may very well have changed. If it in effect has changed then what I said is no longer true. My experience with Agusta was about twelve years ago and at that time they had their own casting facility and their own gear cutting capability and Bell did as well. Agustaalso put more manhours into the construction of their helicopters and as such had a higher build quality than the licensing companies. With the advent of elastomeric rotor systems maybe Sikorsky brought the machining capability in-house and no longer relied on outside vendors to produce their rotorheads and maybe with the advent of new machining capabilities Sikorsky started to cut their own gears and just bought castings from outside vendors. Agusta on the other hand (at the time of my involvement) made their own castings, their own forgings, and their own gears and assembled and tested these transmissions in their own test labs. This was true for SH3-Ds, S-61s, all of the AB products, the HH3-Fs, the CH-47s, their own product line (A-129, A-109 series and the EH-101).
You on the other hand simply said I was wrong without offering the facts as to why I was wrong.
Regarding the use of the term "expert" I will remind you of the definition of the term. An expert is an individual that knows exactly how many sticks of dynamite to slip into a bulls nostrils in order to blow the bulls horns off without getting the bulls eyes bloodshot.
[ 26 December 2001: Message edited by: Lu Zuckerman ]</p>