Originally Posted by
Um... lifting...
Yep, all that stuff is correct above. The CG has virtually always flown the thing with two externals on the left and sometimes one on the right. Over the life of the airframe, this led to a lot of stress imbalances in the transmission deck because the loading structure for external stores is different than that of many of the Blackhawk models. Transmission deck cracking was one of the problems the aircraft had that Sikorsky had to burn the midnight oil on. Probably wouldn't have been a problem had Sikorsky known up front that for all intents and purposes the externals were going to be continually mounted and continually used. Transmission deck cracking was one of the factors that led the CG to start looking at an alternate machine to fulfill the MRR requirements of Deepwater.
Why they don't use this external config.? Seems compatible with the hoist...
