"28 weeks later" - Gazelle - questions
 

3 questions

- i didn't know the US military used Gazelles?

- since you can't have a Gazelle on an AOC in the UK, where did they get one from?

- in the big set piece (filmed on hampstead heath?) where the heli slices up the zombies; do you think this is possible in reality

Why cant you get a Gazelle oan AOC in the UK?

why not? :confused:

i dunno the exact details, but i seem to remember you can only get a "permit to fly" for private use. although that may be only for ex-mil ones.

can anyone enlighten me to the facts?

Exactly!

Not all UK registered Gazelles are ex-military. Non ex-military ones will be on a CofA. No problem getting a AOC using a CofA machine.

I think

Controller - 3 answers:

1. They don't but it wasn't the real US Military - it was a film remember:)

2. See previous answers above re CofA - they just used a non ex mil one.

3. The tip speed of a gazelle blade is circa 400 kts so yes it will chop through people but it might not fly so well afterwards.

Remember, films aren't real and are mostly CGI nowadays.:)

Military Gazelles are quite different from the original civie version. When they become ex-mil they are treated the same as any other ex-mil aircraft and are allowed to operate on a permit to fly only. Number of restrictions including how many pax and what it can be used for. Essentially only private use.:hmm:

why cant ex-mil helis get a c of a? whats the reasoning behind that?

Because they are not the same aircraft, they have different engines and the civilian ones have a slightly longer fuselage to give better back seat space.

ok, so they are different. but why cant they get a c of a? are they deemed 'unsafe' or 'uncertified'?

No, someone would have to pay a shedload of money to get the aircraft certified as a new type - the sort of thing only manufacturers can afford to do because they want to sell loads of them and recover the outlay. The mil Gazelle was given it's Military Aircraft Release by Boscombe Down for mil pilots to use under mil rules.

ah i see. thanks crab.

i dont doubt that any heli blade would slice someone up, i was just curious if you could actually get the disk so close to the ground and still remain in control.

I haven't seen the film myself but a rotor disc can get very close to the ground, especially during startup/shutdown when the Nr is low. Certainly a Gazelle blade, even at normal Nr, can be made to go low enough to take someone off at the waist.

Unfortunately film directors have to take things past the bounds of reality - one of the James Bond films had a Squirrel flying slowly up a shanty town street with about 50 degrees nose down, just so that the blades could destroy everything in their path.

yeah, in "28 weeks" it looked relatively believable.

maybe the pilot they used is here on pprune? care to enlighten us?!

ex uk military gazelles on permit are allowed to do public exhibition /demonstration flying
it says this on the the conditions of permit to fly

Pointless pedantry: It was Controller Aircraft (CA) Release at the time, and Boscombe only recommended it: MOD(PE) - or one of its predecessors - gave it.

Eh? What's that you say? Get a life, and go out to the flicks?

A main rotor blade might look blunt, but at speed the effect is like a sythe.
I was involved in the recovery of a crashed Gazelle from a corn field.
Where you might have expected the rotating blades to flatten the corn, they had cut through it like it razor.

You could see the exact angle the blade had been at when it touched the corn.

Numerous heads and bits and pieces have been hacked off over the years by main blades. I suspect that it is entirely possible to cut someone in half
but the aircraft would also suffer.

The military Gazelle had the same cabin space as the standard civil Gazelle.
The stretched cabin was an American civil modification. You can tell them apart by the vertical stabilisers. The stretched cabin aircraft uses reduced size vertical stabs.

The refusal of the CAA to issue a c of a for ex military Gazelles has always seemed strange to me.

The airframes came off the same production lines as the civil aircraft.

This might be compared with the Westland built Siouxs (Bell 47 G3B1).
Westlands never built this as a civil aircraft yet there was no problem getting them certified. The engines were overhauled by Alvis on a military contract and I do not believe they has a civil approval.

The engine issue could be resolved by fitting the comparable civil version of the Astazou.

I believe that the refusal to certify had a lot to do with politics and little to do with airworthiness.

I am sure that someone who actually tried to get them certified could tell us more.

There is an excellent description in "Chickenhawk" of a deliberate ascent under fire out of a jungle clearing using the MR blades to chop off the branches on the way up.

I was informed that the reason for difficulty is simply due to the incompatibility of servicing logs. The military do it one way and civilians another and the differences are unable to be resolved to comply with legislation. Also the military either cannot or will not release servicing history. Dunno if this is right or not.

There are many instances when a passenger or other has been killed after getting hit by the main rotor blade as a consequence of attempting to enter the disc when the aircraft has been landed on sloping ground. During rotor close and following rotor brake application, the MR disc will come down to chest height and lower in windy conditions.

Each blade has a tip cap which is deformed/other if there is a strike.