He joined in 2007.; five years ago at the age of 42. That makes him 47 now and in 1989 he would have been 24 years old. He would have been able to afford Benson & Hedges by then.

I'm not sure which I miss most - being 47, working Decca or smoking Woodies before they were unhealthy

Because in 1989 I was a 19 year old spooty faced new co-pilot on the S61 in Aberdeen!

Hidden messages
 

S61-S92
We did see those messages and it makes you think about the history in these old girls. A fellow who works at our company was a mechanic at the time wrote his name in their and we made him get in their and see for himself his message from 1982 or whenever it was. He said it went to Holland for mods and that's where they spent many hours. It was a fun project..

Ah, the years roll back...............

I remember OG had a Flight Director too. I was also involved in CAA sponsored and recorded trials at Prestwick in August 1980 with OG flying it down to 50' Rad Alt behind the screens and clocking up 12 ILS's in a day!!!

Well the spots have given way to wrinkles now! Too many earlies. If only I'd stood the test of time as well as the S61 :ok:

Earlies? What are those?

Oh yes, I remember now. Retirement is great :ok:

Life begins at 50 for upgraded sea kings
 

Frank Carson said he thinks there are at least 20 to 30 years of life in his rebuilt S-61s.
Life begins at 50 for upgraded Sea Kings | Aviation International News

No proposal for replacing the white metal bearings in the high speed input section then.

However, she was a joy to fly!

Jim

As this thread has come back to the top, I'll try re-posting this question that I asked a while back with no answer (......think I asked it after the first 225 "Oil-pump/Emergency lube" failure !!)

Good point JimL...When our white metal bearing decided to quit one morning at Sumbergh the bang was heard 3 spots away in another rotors running 61....and HIAB weren't too impressed with all the gearbox oil all over their dispersal!
Being positive however, better then than a couple of minutes later when we would have been 20445 lbs on climb-out with in effect a double engine failure.........
And on an even more positive note, it was May so the North Sea would have been fairly benign.....if that's a appropriate word for the North Sea we know and love.

Ant T - I'm pretty sure your S-61 ELS is the same as our Sea King one. As far as I can remember, the ELS mod was definitely a post-production issue, there were a number of MRGB oil leaks which resulted in ditchings when the SK was in first in service with the RN.

Since operating a helicopter in the maritime environment with so many pipes external to the MRGB that could split and pour all the oil overboard is not so clever, the ELS mod was born.

What I don't know is if it was a Sikorsky produced mod or if it was Westlands producing it under licence because they built the brit mil Sea Kings.

Perhaps the history of the S61 MRGB was what drove Sikorsky to try to produce a MRGB without external pipes (the S-92) so that such failures were removed for ever - unfortunately that came back to bite them in the a*se as they invented a whole new type of failure.

Crab,

The transition from the S-61 MGB featuring external lines started with the S-65 model with mostly cored passages. The next iteration was initiated by the US Army requirements documents ( the original Material Need document, followed by the official Request for Proposal ) for the UTTAS helicopter. The documents required rigorous ballistic survivability standards addressing the standard Russian weaponry from 7.65 thru 23mm sizes. There was also a 30 minute dry run requirement, at best range speed. From a general configuration viewpoint, the S-92 MGB looks like a larger version of the Hawk box.

To be honest, I never heard anyone recite the background behind the FAA dry run standard. Just assumed that the FAA saw that one company ( actually two, because I believe the Boeing UTTAS MGB made the requirement as well- if they hadn't, we would have heard, I feel certain ) had demonstrated the technical feasibility, so they decided to raise the bar. Perhaps Mr. Coyle can check with his FAA connections if he is reading this thread.

Ant, The first time I saw it was on G-BDOC when she arrive, with nothing on the clock but the makers name, in UK. That would have been 1977 at a guess. Sorry the grey matter's a bit hazy when thinking that far back.
As for the reason for fitting I've no idea, I can't think of anything happening that would have started it off around then but the Mil weren't talking much about what was happening to them and they were by far the biggest operators.
Maybe Crab will have a date for it's intro to the Sea king?

Thanks for the replies about the Emergency Lube System. I guess it was as a result of specific incidents in the 70's but just hadn't heard the details of the events.
Did have one of my own in the late 80's here in the Falklands (flying with David Mallock) - about 5 minutes after taking off from Mt Pleasant heading west, a brief sound of squealing metal followed by a loud bang, engine oversped and ran down, oil pouring down the outside, and inside in the cabin throught the shrapnel holes in the roof !! There was (sort of) suitable ground beneath us so we landed immediately.
The aircraft was recoverd to base the next day underneath a Chinook (just before the phone call from Head Office saying "under no circumstance undersling it - not covered by insurance" ......)
It was a high speed input bearing failure, never heard any subsequent suggestion as to why it had failed.

:D:D:D

Thanks TTO Was just thinking it would have been nice to have a photo of that. Did you have any of the damage to the gearbox input ?? Or the holes in the cowlings.......

No, I was there when you had the incident but was offsite when the photo was taken. "Outspan" gave me that copy.

BIH S-61's
 

With BIH rapping up operations so to speak what are they doing with the S-61's they have left..?

Tesco's are using them as flower beds in their car park...:E