Great defence for Pingers, Sloppylinkage – appreciated as former member of that ilk. At least the present guys do it on two engines and at 40 ft. In the dear old Wessy 1 we did it on one engine and at 30ft. The Gazelle engine topped out at 19900 compressor rpm and if you hadn’t made the hover by 19600 rpm you overshot using the remaining 300 compressor rpm to climb out at, if an old memory serves me right, some 80 ft/min. No room for stick stirrers during the go around! In the Far East during the early to mid 60’s with such a narrow margin for error it was not an uncommon occurrence for crews to fail to make the hover and fly straight into the water at night.
Compared to the performance of the Whirly 7 we thought we were in clover with such an upmarket aircraft and systems. Love to have a go in the Merlin, but would probably feel too spoilt with three motors.
Ain’t nostalgia wonderful!!
Bit off the Silverstone topic – apologies, but good luck to all you guys who are going to cram yourselves into the airspace there next month.