Re: Blackhawk Question
TwinHueyMan,
I flew the early prototypes as one of the test pilots, and was involved with this factor early on.
The vertical fin on a Black Hawk won't support powered flight home, but it can make a powered descent at about 1000 fpm possible, if you feel like being a test pilot during an emergency. The trick is to recognize the anti-torque failure (right yaw, dead pedals, heart in mouth) then get the aircraft under control (down collective, autorotate, pull engine levers if necessary). Once in a real, stable auto descent, then you can try to bring back some power, and side slip - If your copilot and pax agree that the possibility of losing control is preferable to landing into what is below you (freezing sea, 150 foot triple canopy, etc.) The way to do it is to remember that as the collective comes up and the power comes in (use torque as your guide) the aircraft will sideslip to the right, and left bank and nose down will be needed to keep the speed up and the turn stopped. If you let the speed drop, you will spin like a top and ruin your day! Keep the nose down and beady-eye the airspeed, keep it above 110 and preferably 120 KIAS. You should find that some torque can be carried while in the sideslip, and the ROD will be much less than a full auto. This will stretch your glide a bunch. At 6000 feet at 120 Kt (2 NM per minute) and 1000 fpm, you can go almost 12 miles! As you line up the place to land, get over it, then lower the collective, slip back the engine levers and auto into the place.
If you screw up and lose airspeed and the nose slides around to the right sickeningly, drop collective like a rock, cut the levers and lower the nose sharply to gain speed. Follow around the turn with the cyclic and as you pick up speed, stabilize in the auto descent, and dont try to get like Captain Midnight again!
The tail cutout was made during initial development to help the sideward flight at high altitude (45 knots at 8,000 ft DA at max weight) because it reduced the blockage of the tail rotor, but the fin was never able to let you fly home under power, regardless. In fact, I know of no tail rotor helo that can do so, period. The fenestron birds have enough tail feathers to let you fly home if light, at least one USCG dolphin has done so.
Last edited by NickLappos; 9th Jan 2006 at 02:12.