O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo..?

[McHover]

...Over here in the lake! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYExH8hpgXI)

qYExH8hpgXI

Just when you thought there was no-one looking and it was safe to go skinny dipping, another pesky camera laden tourist whips out their equipment and posts you on YouTube.

Tea and biscuits with the boss chaps?

McH :ugh:

[fijdor]

Curious to know, how much damage there was?

Looks like the tail rotor hit the water.

JD

[Hell Man]

I would take a guess that, just maybe, the t/r pulled thru this stunt?! But I'm also guessing that the pilot may have over-torqued when pulling off the water.

Would be kinda interesting to know the deal if there are any Army jocks in the know and willing to tell the story.

Tahoe is where I usually ski!

HM

[2papabravo]

I think this was supposed to be added to the 'Are military pilots over-rated thread?'

:}

2pb

[Gordy]

This has to be one of the ALL time classic quotes ever made by a military pilot......

“Somebody has to be a total moron to do it in total view of tourists and in a recreational area, when everyone has a camera these days. We don’t really have morons flying naval aircraft,”


Read it in full Here (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/23/navy-pilots-under-scrutiny-dip-lake-tahoe/)

Two Navy helicopters from North Island Naval Air Station were damaged, and their pilots are now grounded, after some bizarre flying over Lake Tahoe last week.
A Navy spokesman confirmed Thursday that a video posted on YouTube is genuine footage of two MH-60 Romeo helicopters from North Island’s Helicopter Maritime Strike 41 squadron.
The video shows the $33 million helicopters flying low over the lake. One seems to lose control, spinning and crashing into the water. The pilot then regains control and pulls the craft back into the air.
The Navy wouldn’t identify the pilots or say whether the helicopters were supposed to be hovering over Lake Tahoe, only saying that the entire Sept. 13 flight is under investigation.
The pilots are not flying until the Navy wraps up an aviation mishap board investigation, said Lt. Aaron Kakiel, spokesman for the Naval Air Forces command at North Island.
Lake Tahoe is not a normal training area for Navy pilots, he said.
The pilots could face administrative action — and even lose their flying qualifications — depending on the outcome of the investigation.
Though the YouTube video only catches one crashing, both helicopters hit the water because they didn’t have sufficient power to hold their hovering positions, Kakiel said.
The damage suffered by the two aircraft is estimated at between $50,000 and $500,000. They had to land at Lake Tahoe Airport to be repaired.
Watching the video made retired Navy jet pilot Steve Diamond think the helicopter crew may have had a legitimate reason to be hovering over Lake Tahoe.
Somebody out hotdogging probably wouldn’t do it in view of another aircrew, or over a popular tourist destination, said Diamond, who retired in 2002.
“Somebody has to be a total moron to do it in total view of tourists and in a recreational area, when everyone has a camera these days. We don’t really have morons flying naval aircraft,” he said.
“It’s possible they were troubleshooting a problem; you don’t know,” Diamond said. “It’s easy to make a snap judgment, but there are other possibilities.”
A different set of pilots flew the aircraft home, Kakiel said. HSM-41, which trains new pilots, dispatched another crew on a commercial flight to fly the helicopters back Sept. 16.
The MH-60 Romeo is the Navy’s newest helicopter and is considered state of the art. Its usual missions take it over the open ocean for anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare.
The MH-60s were flying home from Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento (http://topics.signonsandiego.com/topic/Sacramento) where they had taken part in an air show. Needing to refuel, the pilots were headed to Lemoore Naval Air Station when the incident happened.
A typical crew for the MH-60 Romeo is a pilot, co-pilot and crewman.

[Senior Pilot]

Maybe the DA was a bit more than they expected?

Lake Tahoe is 6200' AMSL, and average maximum temp this time of the year is about 22C: DA would probably be near to 9000ft, enough to test most manouevres :ooh:

[Epiphany]

Something tells me that didn't go strictly to plan?

[S92 driver]

Seems to me that a lack of performance planning on their part! Oh how I wish I could hear the radio chatter between both aircraft after this happend...PRICELESS I BET!!

:eek:

[Lonewolf_50]

US Navy taking a dip? (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/428813-us-navy-taking-dip.html#post5959622)

Unemployed Helicopter Pilots (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/428763-unemployed-helicopter-pilots.html)

Oddly enough, those two posts were one atop the other when I opened the forum today, and I chuckled at the poignant juxtaposition of the two topics.

As to putting the bird into Lake Tahoe ... :mad:

[Epiphany]

I had a laugh when I heard one of the party filming saying "I didn't think they could do that?'

Neither did I. :eek:

[Senior Pilot]

Back in 2002, we had a thread Blackhawk Accident was NOT settling with Power. (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/55245-black-hawk-accident-not-settling-power.html) Well worth a read, especially Nick Lappos' contributions (Post #9 and others) in the light of this Lake Tahoe incident :ok:

[TwinHueyMan]

I had a good chat with a Romeo Instructor Pilot from NASNI a few months back, and was pretty surprised at their OGE hover numbers for sea level on a warm day... I believe he said that at their average mission GW, they were steady in the triple digits for torque on a slightly balmy day over the ocean while dipping sonar (OGE). Not hard to see how doing the same thing up in the mountains might not be wise given the less than stellar altitude performance of the T700 when powering a H-60. The gent I spoke with was talking about how they were purposely trying to get higher performing engines out of maintenance so they had extra power (greater than 1.0 ETF) because the margins were just that close. Those things are pretty damn heavy.

Something else that I am curious about... I believe all the Seahawk family have a "Contingency Power" switch which re-references the TGT limiters on both engines' ECU/DECs to the OEI rating, while AEO. Curious if the pilots at hand were planning on it being on, when it was actually not. Get into an OGE hover, start falling through, find the button (which I believe is on their collective head) right as you hit the water possibly? Would explain the (relatively) spirited fly away. We have the option on our 'Hawks, and just about nobody turns the thing off. It's just always there just in case, so if it wasn't one time by chance, it could be a surprise and let you get into a situation like that in the video.

Yet another testament to the ole Hawk though, those things can take a beating. Pretty amazing to watch them fly away from that one.

Mike

[Lonewolf_50]

From the MH-60S Flight Manual (IIRC, uses the same engine on the R, I'd need to do a little checking).

UPDATE: Yes, Romeo uses the same engine, same rating. (Heavier bird ...)
The MH-60S helicopter is equipped with two T700-GE-401C engines.


At sea level and 59 °F (15 °C), the T700-GE-401C engine has a maximum continuous rating of 1,662 shaft horsepower (shp), an intermediate rating of 1,800 shp for a 30-minute duration, and a selectable contingency power rating of 1,940 shp available for 2.5 minutes duration.


I seem to recall at one time a recommendation from Sikorsky that a more powerful engine (can't recall the number, there was a T in it) be fitted to the SH-60R (which has become the MH-60R). At the time, there was also a recommendation to put the wide chord blade on the Romeo -- which blade is on the UH-60M presently (IIRC), but I don't think it is on the Romeo.

Or did the Navy finally decide yes on that?


I also recall some hot and heavy day performance numbers that were not pretty: (typical scenario, no-wind T/O and land in the Persian Gulf with a full load of weapons and stores).

Looks like high and heavy is likewise to be managed with care.

Note in re contingency power, somewhat dated, as am I, :cool: and it's B model memory.

Typically selected when doing ship board ops (TO/Land), hover work, cargo hauling with external load, single engine training work as your friend at NASNI doubtless does down at Imperial Beach.

[widgeon]

T700-GE701D has 1,994 SHP and powers the UH60M and Block 2 apache.
One wonders why they would not have chosen this .

[spencer17]

There is nothing odd, just another way to do a comp wash.:}

[Lonewolf_50]

widgeon, that's a good question.

I think part of the answer lies on large muscle movement logistic and fleet support considerations, and thus program cost. Romeo preceded UH-60X which became UH-60M by a few years. At the time of the decisions on engines, (before the year 2000) keeping the T700 was one way to keep program costs down. (During the Clinton admin, there wasn't much money to spare on any program ... different topic).

T700 was the common engine for, from NAVAIR's point of view, Cobra and seahawk, which by that point were B, F, S, and now R models.

It may be that with the UH-60M being brought into and beyond IOC (200 or so have been delivered to the Army so far), Navy may re-look their Romeo engine and perhaps make the step to put a little more power up there. That would probably happen during depot/SDLM cycle, if ever, and take a decade to implement.

Not sure what CG/weight/load/airframe mods would be needed to do that, or if it's even cost effective to do so.

EDITED: I think the Navy would rename that engine "401D" if they got it, since they tend to use "401" where the Army uses "701" for reasons I do not recall. I had it explained to me some years ago, but I've lost that bit of memory.

[TwinHueyMan]

We have a mixed bag fleet of 701C's and D's here and really don't much notice the difference. C to D is a drop in replacement, and there is a mod kit to convert straight 700 ships (A models) to 701Ds. The 701C and 401C are pretty much the same engine and the D isn't really that big of a gain over either... hell its just a few pieces swapped out, like a sport tuning I'd say. The -D engine helps a bit at altitude but isn't the upgrade that the Hawk really needs, though the fact that one day D engines started showing up and just got dropped in the aircraft, and that all our C's are being converted to D's when they go in for rebuild, proves it was an extremely smart logistical choice; getting a little bit of performance without so much as a hiccup on the flight line.

Looking forward to an upcoming introduction of a CT7-8 derivative, somewhere in the 2500shp range, with the wide chord blades. The idea was to make a Hawk that doesn't start losing performance the second it breaks sea level and I think that's the right track to follow.

Mike

Edit: From what I understand the "400" series T700s are marinized, with some better corrosion protection inside and out.

[Lonewolf_50]

I agree, twinhueyman, the CT7-8 (S-92's engine, right?) is IIRC a 2500ish hp machine. Would be nice to see it fitted to a Seahawk, but I wonder if there would not be significant transmission limitations. I recall the T-58's on the SH-2. The original H-2 was single engine. When it got two T-58's, , when it went twin.

I found on the GE website no page for "marinized D" (401D versus 701D). This has my curiousity up. I'll try and email a few friends who (still, I hope) know what NAVAIR has in mind for the Romeo, in terms of engine upgrade ... if anything. The T700 401 to 401C upgrade was a good idea at the time.

Yes, 401 was marinized version of 701. :ok:

[Ian Corrigible]

The decision to stick with the 401C for the R wasn't a cost issue, it simply wasn't part of the requirement. When originally developed in the mid-1990s, the LAMPS MkIII Block II upgrade was primarily intended as a SLEP to keep a consolidated Seahawk fleet (consisting of reman'd Bs and Fs) flying until 2015, the focus being on mission equipment.

The M actually derived from the L+ effort, not the X (aka FUR, for which a 3K engine was planned). Being again a mid-1990s project, the L+ was conceived long before 6K/95 became a requirement, hence the minor power improvement offered by the 701D. The more significant improvement offered by the 701D is in terms of engine life, the result of a joint effort by GE and CCAD.

There is one section of the Hawk community already benefitting from a more powerful engine: SOCOM's new MH-60Ms are equipped with the 2,600 shp FADEC-equipped T706-GE-700 (CT7-8B5). There are no plans at this time to migrate the T706 to the vanilla UH/HH-60M (Block I retains the 701D, with the Block II intended to jump straight to a 3K class engine in the shape of the GE3000 or HPW3000).

I/C

[Lonewolf_50]

The decision to stick with the 401C for the R wasn't a cost issue, it simply wasn't part of the requirement. When originally developed in the mid-1990s, the LAMPS MkIII Block II upgrade was primarily intended as a SLEP to keep a consolidated Seahawk fleet (consisting of reman'd Bs and Fs) flying until 2015, the focus being on mission equipment.
I am somewhat familiar with why the Deputy Secnav put that program back into R & D when the SLEP program ran into some non trivial fit issues in the late 90's. You are right, it was intended as a remanufacture. (So too was UH-1 -> Y and AH-1 -> Z, and we see how that's worked out, right?).
The M actually derived from the L+ effort, not the X (aka FUR, for which a 3K engine was planned). Being again a mid-1990s project, the L+ was conceived long before 6K/95 became a requirement, hence the minor power improvement offered by the 701D.
Thanks for that, didn't realize that. :ok:
The more significant improvement offered by the 701D is in terms of engine life, the result of a joint effort by GE and CCAD.
Which is a good thing. Good on them both.

There is one section of the Hawk community already benefitting from a more powerful engine: SOCOM's new MH-60Ms are equipped with the 2,600 shp FADEC-equipped T706-GE-700 (CT7-8B5).
Too bad they can't (won't?) put that on the Romeo ...
There are no plans at this time to migrate the T706 to the vanilla UH/HH-60M (Block I retains the 701D, with the Block II intended to jump straight to a 3K class engine in the shape of the GE3000 or HPW3000).
Neat, thanks for that! :ok:

[TwinHueyMan]

I agree, twinhueyman, the CT7-8 (S-92's engine, right?) is IIRC a 2500ish hp machine. Would be nice to see it fitted to a Seahawk, but I wonder if there would not be significant transmission limitations.

That's the hot point in our eyes right now as the aircraft are going through testing. The H-60L transmission is a damn good one now that the problems have been sorted out, and it will continue to be good if the extra power of the CT7 is used for performance in nonstandard conditions. But similar to the contingency power setup, if it's there, a lot of people want it all the time - even if its supposed to be for reserve... Fingers are crossed on my hands for FADEC controlled limits on par with a 701D H-60L across an expanded envelope, and some amazing OEI performance. It would be nice to damn near forget about the TGT gauge during all but the most extreme environments, and be able to power out of just about any situation if one of the donks quits, even on our lead sleds. That would make the Hawk an even better combat helicopter.

Mike

[Lonewolf_50]

Agreed, twin, particularly as the high hot and heavy seems the standard operating environment in, for example, Afghanistan ... :cool:

[GeorgeMandes]

Navy: Facebook pics motivated helicopter dip into Tahoe | TahoeBonanza.com (http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20101222/NEWS/101229966/1061&ParentProfile=1050)

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The crew of two naval helicopters that dipped into Lake Tahoe in September were hovering close to the water at Emerald Bay to get photos for their commands' Facebook page, according to a naval official.

No punitive actions will be taken against the aircrew and squadron, a Navy investigation concluded, but administrative measures are in progress to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Two unidentified Navy pilots were on the return leg of a cross-country tour on Sept. 13 when they attempted to maneuver their MH-60 Romeo helicopters into a “hover” a few feet above the water in Emerald Bay, according to the investigation. The aircraft did not have sufficient power to sustain the hover and slowly descended into the water before summoning enough power to regain altitude and land at nearby Lake Tahoe Airport.

The incident was recorded and posted on YouTube.

“The investigation found that the mishap was entirely preventable had the aircrew followed required directives for conducting cross-country flights and applied more vigilant operational risk management,” according to a Navy release.

The cost of repairs for both aircraft totaled $505,751.20.

“The investigation identified the decision of the aircraft commanders to conduct hovers over Lake Tahoe without completing the necessary engine performance calculations as the causal factor for the mishap,” according to the same release. “The report also identified several contributing factors, including the aircrew's complacency, lack of flight discipline and lack of command oversight in planning and executing cross-country flights.”

The investigation also made several recommendations relating to training and procedures to prevent future incidents of this nature, said Lt. Aaron Kakiel, media officer for the Naval Air Forces command at North Island in San Diego.

The Maritime Strike Helicopter Squadron (HSM) 41 will review the way pilots and aircrew are trained, specifically to identify training events that are compatible with cross-country flights, Kakiel said. The crew will formalize a deliberate operational risk management process, which identifies all potential risks of a mission and what can be done to mitigate those risks, Kakiel said.

Instructors will use a more formal process and documentation when training, Kakiel added. Cross-country flights will also be added to topics for officer training and instructor syllabi.

The command that oversees this squadron and other squadrons like it will also develop a policy regarding photography in flight. The September incident stemmed from “a desire from the people in the aircraft to get photos for their commands' Facebook page,” Kakiel said.

“That's why they were trying to go into the hover where they were,” he said.

Members of the squadron went to a field naval aviator evaluation board, the results of which are not available for release Kakiel said.

However, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, because of the incident two Navy instructor pilots were stripped of flying status and two student pilots will have to repeat training.

According to www.signonsandiego.com (http://www.signonsandiego.com/) “the loss of flight status as a pilot means he or she will have to seek a non-flying job in the Navy. With tight competition among naval officers for job slots, this action could be career-ending.”

[Stuck_in_an_ATR]

Um... What's FacePPRuNe?:confused: