EP-HAM
I get palpitations every time I hear that registration.It was an Agusta 204B and did indeed have a Gnome engine , controlled? , by a computer a la WS55-3. Unfortunately the computer was located in the Hell Hole, and in this machine it was just that. There was no cooler for the TX oil system and TX cooling relied on the flow of air down past the TX and out of the bottom hole, and as a consequence hovering and ground running in the conditions out there required a careful watch on TX oil temps.,as some of you may remember. Just the place to fit a non too reliable computer! As a result the computer failed often , sometimes in the most awkward of situations, and the machine must have spent most of its operational life 'in manual'.
I first came across HAM in Galeh Morghi,it was being prepared to go out on operations and was being particularly contrary, the computer was running away on start up and then wouldn't shut down. On at least two occasions I saw the engine being stopped with CO2 down the intake. It was eventually discovered that the computer power supply had been routed throught the Fuel HP cock and so was not actually being supplied until the cock was switched on thereby not having time to sort itself out before light off. Forget might remember more details,I was just an interested bystander at that time, but I remember that even Bill Barnett was down from the office trying to sort out the beast.
Thereafter it was a very fussy starter as I was to find out first hand when I was sent down to Bushehr to take over from Frank Brimelow. The starting issue was less of a problem at Bushehr since it was rarely shut down on the rig, when we moved to Shiraz however, supporting the Sofiran gas field it became one of many nightmares HAM threw at us. I eventually sorted out the starting problems by fitting an additional Ignitor box and plug, in the process of which I found that I needed to fit the maximum amount of spacers allowed to the ignitor plug on one side , and none on the other, the combustion chamber was distorted, probably due to the unusual shut downs in Galeh Morghi. The computer reliability I never conquered. I would be interested to hear from anyone with subsequent experience of HAM( I left Iran in 1975).