Over Tq. Try the Paris Lyon high speed trains, they used Turmo engines.
EF is right. There is no way you can fit a proper anticipator to the 3C4 because it is a mechanical/hydro system. The shaft from the power turbine to the fuel control unit is the governer, it tells the fuel control unit how fast the rotor is turning and that's it. You could, feasably, put a mechanical linkage from the collective to the governer but I doubt if you would ever come up with a correct collective input/engine acceleration balance. Other manfacturers have done it but their designs are different from the Turmo.
The Makila has three fhonn rings just aft of the power turbine that tells the engine control unit what to electonically. Once you have a handful of wriggly amps you can piss about with them and make the engine do anything you want. Anticipators, overspeed protection, the list goes on.
It's not foolproof. On the 332 the Makila has two idle stops, ground and flight idle, about 2.5k rpm apart, so in flight their engines would never back off below about 25k. Full chat goes up to 34k so 25k is about 73%. What it does mean that when you enter autoration, you have to apply collective to control the Rrpm. Quite a lot if you are heavy, not too difficult too lose it, pass 310 Rrpm and have a rotor overspeed.
The Puma IIRC only has one idle. A second idle would solve the antipator problem to a certain extent but it would introduce the risk of rotor overspeed.
Personally I would rather think ahead for five seconds or so, the alternative could very noisy. Again I am not now flying them so I cannot, and would not, give any advice.

The fitting of Makila engines to the Puma has been thrown around for decades. Thinking beyond that, was there ever a case for Rolls Royce to provide engines for the beastie in the late sixties when the type was procured? Any of the old and bold residents here know?

Like it or loathe it, the 3C4 seems to be the nemesis of the RR Gnome.

Turbomeca's web site provides the answer I believe.
The Turmo was developed jointly by Turbomeca and Rolls Royce!!!!!!!!!

The Turbomeca Arriel has a mechanical anticipator system which works fairly well in the Dauphin (it also has overspeed protection). Not sure what the N3/EC155 have, given they have electronic fuel control systems.

If a new FCU had to be built from scratch for the Turmo with an anticipator I suspect the cost would be way out of proportion to the production run, but thats never stopped the MOD before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Realistically they should either crank up Merlin production or buy something off the shelf.
Putting in Makila's might not be a daft a solution as it sounds. The engines would have a decent resale value (in theory!!!!) and it would be a quick fix.

The lead times on the off the shelf types seems to very long.

Why? Merlin can't replace Puma for reasons gone into numerous times on this site.

Romania has Puma's in Aviation Museums, and almost every country in Europe is using NH90:
http://www.vtol.org/news/NH90grec.jpg
Including Greece, as in this case. You would think for an expeditionary force that common spares & cross training would be important. But then I know what 'Ample Gain' means so I must be a Cold War relic.

It is rather telling of the contempt this and previous goverments have for the armed forces of this country that "an air force that strives to be person for person the best in the world" and "agile, adaptable and capable" is still using such out-dated helicopters when other 'lesser' nations have long since invested in more modren fleets.

Although they are operated by some of the most professional folk I have ever met (as are all the SH fleet and the wider RAF fleets) they are well past their sell-by date and whatever upgrades can be thrown at them are purely putting off for a short while a decision that should have been made years ago.

US DoD order for 537 new Sikorsky 'Hawks - $7.4bn; $13.8m (£6.8m) each

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...-seahawks.html

I first flew the Puma in the late 1970s; there was a test pilot's report from Boscombe Down Handling Squadron doing the rounds before then which criticised the lack of anticipators on the engines. It advised that this was a priority which should be addressed BEFORE the aircraft entered squadron service..... 1971? - more than thirty six years ago.

There are two types of Puma HC1 pilots. Those who have already severely scared themselves by getting caught out by the lack of engine response, and those who will do so in the future.

The best HC1 I ever operated was one in Northern Ireland where the engineers couldn't get the engines to match at idle. I think the maximum "mismatch limit" at low power was 10% N1. This one had a red line Form 700 entry because it had at least a 14-15% mismatch and was much nicer to fly due to the high engine being much more responsive to collective inputs. I didn't want it fixed :p

There was also much talk about the Turmo engines being replaced with Makilas even way back then.

These aircraft have done the UK Forces proud and owe the country nothing. It's time we bought our pilots something more modern and safe. It's the equivalent of asking someone to go to war in a Ford Cortina Mark 3 (or even worse, a Citroen GS Pallas)!

Puma fleet
 

As a recent civvy convert to the 330J Puma (Helog Sudan 2005) perhaps some of the more erudite members of this forum could enlighten me as to why we did not support the NH90, which would appear to be the answer to the RAF's current SH requirements?
Also, as an interim measure why were the surplus Puma's available from the Bundesgrenshutz in 2005 not purchased by MOD? Please don't say it was cost, I believe they were being sold on the open market for something like 1.0 to 1.2 million euro at the time & very low airframe hours too! :confused:

Because the money available to rotary has been so whittled away by the demands of Typhoon, Nimrod MRA4 etc, that it has never had enough to be able to afford NH-90.

As to the Bundesgrenshutz Pumas, even if they appeared on the MoD's radar, it would have been the cost.

€1.2m they may have been, but when all the extra cost of creating extra supply chains, QinetiQ clearances, changing the engines back to 3C4s, refitting the avionics so there weren't 2 seperate cockpit types etc etc etc was factored in, they wouldn't be so cheap.

Shytorque:

So very true!

i though the AW149 was being developed to be the puma replacement and the puma fleet was being upgraded to give it life till this aircraft comes along.
NH90's or more merlins would be a good solution though

The Bundesgrenshutz replaced some of theie 330's with ex North Sea 332's.

Why is it that everything is too difficult for the MOD?

We keep hearing about problems with mixed fleets, yet civilian operators do not seem to have a problem e.g CHC's S76A and AW 139's operating from the same base. S76C, 365N and 365N2 operating from the same base.

In the past the airforce operated successfully mixed fleets of aircraft.

Nobody says this is ideal but there are times that you have to do what works and not necessarily what is best.

Puma fleet
 

Well put ericferret.
In the early 80's I was operating with BCAL out of Sumburgh with a fleet of five S61N sourced from worldwide. I recall three different nav/comm fits & differing instrument layouts, there were no incidents/accidents attributed to lack of standardisation as far as I can recall.
Are we talking here of the MOD being unable to operate variants of the same type or that the crews are unable to get their heads round more than one variant at a time or both?
Plactic Cab Driver - why should the engines have to be changed?
with fraternal greetings,
ambi:confused:

If the Makilas were left in, we would end up paying QinetiQ vast sums of money to do the flight testing to certify them. The J4 chain would bleat about 'fleets within fleets' and all the additional logs & engineering work they would have to do. Are the Bundesgrenschutz Pumas NVG compatible? Do they possess a DAS that meet UK spec? Does the comms fit meet op needs? Are the instruments and warning systems in German? All that would cost money to fix. And we have none.

We could have bought them, but given the amount of money it would have cost to make them useable, was it worth it?

I wish we had done that in 2005, because the Makila is going into the Puma Mk2 and the safety case work still needs doing.

Looking at the other FLynx thread. Some would accuse you of 'tinkering' with the airframes. But I totally agree with you, they were not useable to us at the COTS cost of E1.2E

Puma fleet
 

Plastic cab driver,
Thank you for your response & my apologies for labouring any particular point!
The initial two pumas operated by Helog were not fitted with Makilas' but Turmos, which are standard for the RAF fleet are they not? I can't vouch for the remainder. They were also fitted with sponson fuel tanks.
Yes, the Bundesgrenshutz machines are NVG compatible, we had the kit fitted in Sudan.
Yes, the instruments and warning systems are in English, they had to be because the majority of the pilots on the Sudan op. were former French Army!
It seems to me that the MOD missed a trick by not purchasing these machines.
with fraternal greetings,
ambi:ok:

A Puma is a Puma is a Puma, irrespective of where it comes from. My fleet has fast ones, 250 indicated cruise. Very steady ones, takes ages for the two needle altimeter to move. Some have enormous hydraulic pressures but as long as the needles point in the same direction as the others it doesn't matter. Flight instruments? Sometimes the Zero is at the top, sometimes at the bottom. Some radios and navaids have knobs, others have flip-flops. We havn't got confused and crashed any yet. No reason why we should.

Fareastdriver

250 what???

250 km/h, which is about 135 kts

"A Puma is a Puma is a Puma"

So so glad we never flew together................:ugh: