Airframe life of S61? Plus how much is an S92?
 

hello,
Having spent some of my time hanging from wires and flying in big yellow helicopters and seeing how old the mk3s are getting. I was wondering what life was left in the civilian S61s? Being that some of them have been flying for a very long time too. Plus if the S92 was a good replacement and how much do they go for?

Thanks in advance.

The S61 can keep going safely so long as the airframe is free of corrosion and cracks and spare parts are still available at commercially acceptable prices. Helicopters tend to become difficult to support technically which makes them too expensive to run, thats what usually kills them. Remember, there are still Bell 47s flying daily.

S92, depends what you want in it. Offshore, $19m SAR $25m.

Thanks, the S92 would be used for passenger flying. Having seen the cracks in the frames im amazed how well they are doing so far!

Currently flying a S61 that has 40K hours on it, very sweet tight ride still, Carson Blades make it a pleasure to drive. I beleive the old girl is a early 70's frame.

Our 92's have a sticker price in the vicinity of 20M CDN in offshore config, you have to love the "new car smell" though.:D

MAKILA1A
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Tell us about the Carson blades? I've read all the blurb, how's the reality?

I do know an s61 flying SAR out of waterford in Ireland (ex Bristow) machine that had over 43000 airframe hours up over ayear ago, and add to that its usual 50 hour monthly flying rate and you have a high time current machine, as far as I am aware the only s61 in the UK that exceed this total is the s61 used on the Scilly Isles passenger service out of penzance in cornwall, it does somewhere in the region of 1300 hours annually.

Mr. Toad,
The Carson blades add a solid ton of lift for the same power, and some speed as well (less drag at the higher weight). The net efficiency of the new blade is roughly that of BERP, so the difference between them and the old 1959 NACA 0012 airfoil on the original 61 is stunning.
A plot of power vs hover thrust would show the Growth Black Hawk MRB and S92 to be about 2% better, the BERP/Carson blade in the middle and the old 0012 to be about 5 or 6% less than the BERP/Carson.

Carson designed built and certified that blade by themselves (they hired several key retired Sikorsky engineers and pilots). The US Navy adapted the blade, and asked Sikorsky to test and qualify it (be sure it was safe and that manufacturing was consistent.)

British International had two airframes IC and JL that broke the 40000 hours in the late 90's not sure if they're still gracing the skies if they are I think BIH from Penzance would own them possibly flying their Falklands contract now?

I know the S-61 was designed before safe life calculation was used . Am i right that the Blackhawk has a retirement life of 10K hrs , I am almost sure that the AH64 does . Does the S-92 have a retirement life ?

widgeo said, "I know the S-61 was designed before safe life calculation was used ."

Widg, I don't know what that means, since the S61 and the S76 and the S92 were all designed to have no life limit on the fuselage. This is perfomed by designing the fuselage so that the stresses are low enough to assure no fatigue failures, and then the monitoring and updating in areas where field experience proves this not to be true. I believe at least one S76 has also reached 40,000 hours.

Mr. Toad,

What Nick said;)

scatstar,

JL is currently WFU and the fuselage is stored at Longside.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y20...head/gbejl.jpg

Wonder what the future holds for the airframe?

What a shame to see such a great sexy machine left like that. But maybe with the current North Sea and World shortages off Helis there still might be a chance for a her!!:ooh:

Long time since i've seen JL looks as good as it always did when it flew for BIH the way things are going they might revive it to help out its old friend G-ATFM which is up here on wet lease to Bristows:suspect:

IC went through 43,000 hours in 1998, it was and I believe still is the highest logged airframe hours S61 in the world. I think it went to Venezuala.

http://www1.airliners.net/open.file/0791782/M/

Jl in Better times

thats more like it, any idea what happend to some of the others like OO, BJ, EA etc?

BJ and EA are still with BIH at Penzance and "double bubble" went to the states in 98, JL has been de-registered and permantly withdrawn from use.

I'm currently flying a 1962 vintage 61 with 44800+ hours. SN 61222.

Is there a Vne increase or MGW internal increase with the Carson blades?

bb

You are flying G-BEIC, the afore mentioned aicraft !!