melsman
Senior Heliman
Location: Atascadero, CA
| Well, if you insist...
We used to practice water landings on a lake outside of San Diego. The CH-46 (nick named 'Frog' because of the way it looked when sitting on the ground. We, being Marines, called it a 'battle frog' ) would float on water somewhat well as long as the blades were spinning (gyroscopic effect kept the heavy, above center engines and tranny from swapping places with the landing gear), so just in case we ever had to ditch at sea, we would practice by going up to a freshwater lake, set down on the water, and taxi around the lake! You had to be careful about how fast you taxied because you didn't want to implode the chin bubbles and swamp the cockpit. It taxied very easily on the water, by the way.
As for wind gradient effects from translational lift, in a hover, it manifested as simple pitch up or down, which you corrected with fore or aft cyclic. You really didn't notice it. In transition to forward flight, both disks go into translational lift at roughly the same time, so the effect is similar to single head helos.
With retreating blade stall, since the heads are turning opposite of each other, the stall occurs on each side of the helo, thus the net effect is simple loss of lift with slight yaw and a lot of scary noise (as the blades start flailing around). I didn't ever experience this first hand because I did not exceed the Vne. I'm not disappointed that I did not experience this...
Ashley |
