CH53 Nose Gear Problem
 

Doing the rounds on Rotorheads, not sure if its been aired here yet

"Can we have the nose-gear-prising-out team to the helideck asap"

http://shock.military.com/Shock/vide...27&ESRC=dod.nl

P1

There was a similar thing on here about a chinook some time ago. The US technique was to do some delicate hovering while the gound crew fixed it... the RAF just chucked out a few sand bags, landed on, shutdown and then sorted it out in slow time. I know which method I would prefer as a pilot and I reckon the engineers would prefer to do their job with the rotors stopped too!

I hope the blokes that were brave enough to get under the nose in that video recieved their weight in Beer bought for them at the next port of call.

Having not being able to view the video due to MOD nanny state computers, this happened in Afghanistan when a German CH53 came into land with the nose wheel not deployed. It hovered a few feet off the ground and some ground engineers came out and lowered it down. I got some good pics of it and ill try and post if i can find them.

On a deck - at sea..........

B:mad:R that!

Sod that for a game of sailors.

What was it I was taught many years ago on my LPC course? "Never bend down to work beneath a hovering helicopter because if it loses height for some reason you can't drop any further to avoid it" or something like that.

We used to practice a wheels up on the Sea King Training courses.

You had to pull a pin out and the wheels used to free fall (provided the circuit breaker had been pulled and gear selected down). You also had to ground the aircraft first to avoid the static shock!

Had the same problem in a 76. Built a pile of sandbags, lower the nose, shutdown and don't touch the rotor brake (brake was either all off or all on in this machine, no modulating).