21st Century, I actually had read that article by Lt. Col. Gross some time ago, as it is from 2004. It does not dispel any "myth" about the V-22. In fact it confirmed something I've known about the V-22 with respect to A-VRS. Lt. Col. Gross reports:
The direction of roll off was not predictable from the cockpit.
Whoops! You mean to tell me that
WHEN a V-22 gets into A-VRS the crew won't be able to know which way it's going to "break?" Yikes!
Let us acknowledge that the Marana V-22 did not get into a sustained 2000+ fpm rate of descent at 300 feet above the ground. If it did, it was only a momentary excursion. Otherwise, it would have hit the ground on its wheels in a couple of seconds. No, the RoD momentarily dipped to 2,000fpm+ and that was enough to excite
one of the proprotors into VRS. Remember, Majors Brow and Gruber were trying to hold position on the lead V-22, "Dash-1" who was also having a hard time slowing down with the tailwind (and in fact they ended up crashing as well, something that gets glossed-over when speaking of the tragedy).
Lt. Col. Gross's article also does not answer my question, which was: How is the V-22 fundamentally "different" or "safer" now than it was back in 2000?
Answer: It is not.
Lonewolf asks:
should the Army and Navy and Marines have stopped flying Hueys because they can experience mast bumping?
Uhh, didn't they actually do just that? Why do you think the military flies UH-60's now and not UH-1Ns? Why are they developing the UH-1Y? Seems to me that if the 2-blade system was so great we'd still be using them. But what do I know...
jeffg asks:
Why do you imagine that a V-22 is more susceptible to a VRS incident then is a helicopter...
I've never said the V-22 is
more susceptible to VRS than a helicopter. I say the V-22 is more susceptible to A-VRS than a helicopter.
ASYMMETRIC VRS: One proprotor goes into it while the other one does not. Why do some of you guys keep denying the importance of this?
jeffg persists:
How is it you have managed all these years to avoid VRS without a cockpit warning device?
I actually have gotten into VRS in a helicopter. It was quite unexpected, inasmuch as my attention was diverted elsewhere at the time and it caught me by surprise. (And nobody was shooting at me either!) However I have never accidentally or inadvertently stalled an airplane. Why? Because the stall-warning horn gave me sufficient warning that I was approaching a critical angle of attack.
21st Century notes:
in the Marana case the aircraft was too low for recovery as would have been the case in an equivalent class helicopter...
Wait a minute. If an equivalent helicopter got into VRS at the same altitude as Majors Brow and Gruber, the helicopter would've settled vertically. If it hit the ground it would have done so upright, on its landing gear...not
inverted like the V-22 did. See, for those of you who don't know, it's pretty hard for a helicopter to get into A-VRS.
Yes, I harp on this. Because only a true idiot...or someone who knows next to nothing about helicopters would downplay the importance of what I consider to be the fatal flaw of the tiltrotor design: Asymmetrical-VRS.
Now, I acknowledge that no A-VRS accident has happened since Marana. However, I will not go so as to say that another "Marana" accident will
never happen again just because we're aware of it now.
The article that 21st Century posted by Lt. Col. Gross tells us that the V-22 crew now gets a "SINK!" warning on their PFD and an audible warning if the a/s drops below 40 knots and the RoD gets to 800 fpm. Great. Those are pretty conservative parameters.
The PFD and audible sink rate warnings are, in my opinion insufficient. I think that in practice, when the sh*t hits the fan, those warnings will be summarily ignored by V-22 pilots just like the stall-warning alert was ignored 75 times by the crew of AF447.
Bottom line: All those who claim that the V-22 is "a different aircraft now!" or "safer" than it was when first introduced are just putting out bullsh...uhh...propaganda. Yeah, yeah, we know more about VRS now. And we give the V-22 crews alerts. And if a V-22 pilot ever gets into A-VRS up at altitude he can just beep the nacelles forward and "fly out of it!" But we still can't tell the V-22 pilot with any certainty when one of the proprotors is close to VRS.
So it's still the same aircraft as it always was.
My book on the V-22 will be titled, "Fatal Flaw."