BO 105 C-FMCL Do you fly it?

[Lu Zuckerman]

If you are the pilot of this helicopter I can tell you where you can get a beautiful photograph of the aircraft. The paint livery is blue and white and on the side is a red Maple leaf and it says BO 105 LS B1 XO1.

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The Cat

[offshoreigor]

Lu:

Was that the machine that was on loan to AETE in Cold Lake? If so I may know a few people whould be interested.

Cheers, OffshoreIgor http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Offshoreigor

I honestly don't know where the helicopter was serving. I was sent a bunch of photographs of BO and BK helicopters along with several photos of other American Eurocopter helicopters. This picture was in the set.

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The Cat

[widgeon]

this was the only version of the LS powered with Pratt and Whitney engines ( 206 I think) Developed by MBB Canada and germany . It had full fadec engine controls and established a Canadian time to altitude record during development flights. Jim Leitch was the princpal pilot during the test program. After the program was completed the airframe was converted back to a LS-A3 and sold to an operator in California as i recall.
I will fwd thi thread to Bill Walker who has a lot more information about the program.

[Weight and Balance]

This is my first post, I hope it works. C-FMCL origionally flew with PW205B engines. This was the first flight of any of the 200 series of engines. I was the FTE on almost all the flights, which took place from May 1989 till about June 1990. The airframe was built from left overs of a structural mockup and earlier BO105L prototypes. After the test program, the fuselage, tail boom and gear box was used to rebuild LS A-3 s/n 2012 after it crashed in Mexico. How do I find the original picture that was mentioned?

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Weight and Balance Walker
wage slave
donations glady accepted

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Widgeon

Can you also contact Jim Leitch as he is most likely the pilot in the picture.

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The Cat

[4Rvibes]

The Bo105 was one of the most expertly designed helicopters of the 20th century.
It was built like a brick sh*thouse and could withstand glorious amounts of pilot error and yet they engined it the totally unreliable and maintence intensive Allisson 250.
If an PW 206 could be shunted in the box a dream machine could have been on the cards.

-----A Bolkow did the job, EC135 is the biz--

4R

[Weight and Balance]

Thinking about MCL today brought back some more unrelated memories that might interest you.

The radio call sign we used was "Mickey Canuck Leroy". That's 3 inside jokes about the FT department and one former employee at the time.

If the picture being discussed shows the helicopter in flight over Niagara Falls, that's Jim "Captain Smooth" Leitch in the left seat, and our chief instrumentation engineer Peter "Repeat" Beens in the right seat.

Somebody mentioned an MBB prdouct at AETE in an earlier post. That was probably a BK117 A-3 used to flight test the Canadian Honeywell HINS (Helicopter Inertial Nav System) being offered to the Canadian military in the early 90s. After Jim Leitch flew the helicopter back and forth over Lake Erie for a few months, we turned the machine over to a joint AETE/USAF test team. They flew it over ranges at Cold Lake and at least 2 US locations before the helicopter was returned to MBB. The last I heard, this helicopter was in an EMS operation in Scandanavia.

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Weight and Balance

The helicopter appears to be in a hover and the only frame of reference is some trees in the background. From the looks of the trees the picture was either taken in the late fall or early spring because some of the trees have no leaves. It is being flown by a guy wearing an orange flightsuit and he is wearing a white crash helmet. It appears that on the doghouse there is a P&W decal so at this time it most likely had P&W engines installed.

The helicopter appears to being controlled from the right seat. From the looks of the pilot he knew the picture was being taken and he is sort of posing

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The Cat

[This message has been edited by Lu Zuckerman (edited 04 February 2001).]

[ecureuil2]

I have a black and white pic of this helicopter.I was originally powered by 2 experimental Pratt & Whitney Canada PW-205 turboshaft engines of 412shp.This helicopter served as a testbed for the PW200 series helicopters engines.

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George A.Arana
[email protected]

The Un-Official Helicopters,Inc.Homepage
http://www.geocities.com/euroastar350/