Forum: Rotary Wing Aircraft

The V-22 was mentioned in another thread, I was wondering what people here think of the Osprey and how many people here have actually seen a V-22 in person?

I think it is a wonderful technology that has been gold-plated to death. IMO the complexity and weight associated with the stowable wing have resulted in a protracted development program and done far more to endanger the program than the recent crashes and falsified maintenance reports. The XV-15 prototype first flew over 25 years ago, and the V-22 first flight was almost 15 years ago (March 19, 1989). That's older than a lot of the F-16s flying today!!!!

I first saw the XV-15 fly in 1981, I was at NAS Dallas when the first V-22 fuselage was delivered from Boeing (in a C-5!), and was at first flight at Bell's flight test facility (adjacent to Arlington Municipal airport in Texas). I watched both craft fly over my house several time a week until I moved in 1994. I've met and talked at length with several Osprey test pilots, and I even have a few hours in the V-22 simulators.

So what does everyone else think of the V-22? Come on elp, tell us what you really think... Wink

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I walked into the hangar at ED in 2002, to this sight:

Though I've never seen it fly. The aircraft is simple in concept, but extremely complicated in implementation. It's like any other platform, it has its problem to overcome. The only difference in this particular platform, is that one flight mode won't save the other when in danger. The wings aren't large enough to support gliding of the whole aircraft if need be, and the rotors aren't designed for autorotative capability. If you can't get the backup system to work reliably, then yes, the whole platform is no good. Unsafe. But other than that, it's a cool little...well not little as you can see...but cool, and amazing aircraft. I've also seen the mockup of the Bell 602 civillian version. It's smaller and has a T tail, and a sleeker nose. Again...great aircraft if you can get past the reliability issue. And even the FAA has created a new category for it -powered lift-. But I doubt anyone has that rating yet, unless they've gotten it on a sim.

Just as you said it, Habu2: gold-plated to death Confused

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Actually Habu, the V-22 does have a limited "autorotate" recovery technique. There is an interim nacelle setting that allows a combination of forward glide and autorotate for recovery. I've watched them practice it in the sim.

The smaller commercial adventure is the 609 (not 602). I've seen it fly too, and got a short turn in the 609 sim, which is actually made from the fuselage of the XV-15 that crashed.

To my knowledge reliability has not been an issue in any of the incidents to date. As you know it's usually not one thing but a combination of several things that leads to an incident.

I wish they would cancel it. Just because you have a new technology doesn't always mean you should use it.

It is sold to congress on shaky figures. That it is more efficient than a squadron of lets say CH-46 or CH-47s. Sounds good at first except that those airframes are proven. And while they are slower, I doubt that they are less versatile in other areas. Certainly we know now that the V22 has a different dead zone than a helo does. You have other interesting things like the V22 providing so much downwash in a hover that a PJ down below in the water cant do their work. So it is useless for rescue. I would love to see maintenance up times on it too when it comes to sustaining a squadron of these in the field. Should be very interesting

Like I said, with everything else that is competing for dollars, I would rather see this program killed and ramp up the production of the CH46 and / or CH47. At least we know what limitations those airframes have over time in combat conditions.

But I guess we will all jump off of a cliff and follow the V22 as a great system and keep coming up with appologies every time it kills 1 or 2 dozen people. If it was up to me and we had to use the thing, it would be a UAV and carry cargo only and no people. That way when you dump one of the things due to all of its quirks, its no big deal.

Obi-gums speaks!

Ok, you hamburgers. Some of what you say is worth discussing, other stuff.........

I have in my nicotine stained fingers a development V-22 Dash-One.

My outfit did the preliminary armament system concept and proposed design for the USAF Special Ops version. Seems the Marines would just use it like a Blackhawk.

Will provide some insight later, but for now:

- They did the climatic testing here in the big hangar where it goes from 120 to -20 degrees,or whatever.

- We watched the thing coming in and 'warming' up after it's environmental testing. Was flight testing a new system at the time and was on flightline in our 'shack'.

- We watched it leave for the 'delivery' to Pax river the day it crashed up there when transitioning from wing-borne to rotor-borne flight. Design problem in oil system allowed stuff to acculmulate in nacelles and when wing was 'tilted' up for transition to landing, the gearcases failed, or something like that. we can get details later. Nevertheless, the thing went from here to Pax River in 4 hours, and you can't do that in a helo.

- I didn't find it 'gold-plated'. The A-7D, OTOH, was really gold-plated and we'll talk about that on the other thread.

- the stowable rotors are standard issue on all USMC and most Army and USAF choppers. THAT AIN"T gold-plating.

- Fly-by-wire ain't new. The main forum here is about the first plane that was completely FBW, and the next was the shuttle.

gotta log as I just got back from a presentation (5 of them) at my high school. They wanted an engineer to talk with the yutes. hehh heh, they also got a fighter pilot in the bargain.

out,

Gums, I was in the sim when that V-22 went into the drink. IIRC it was a weekend and we were still in integration on the sim. All the sudden the place was swarming with program-related blue suits, they wanted to immediately start trying scenarios in the sim to figure out what happened.

All kinds of mistakes were made on that flight, including the skipped fuel stop, civilians on board, the showboating pass at Quantico, and a single-digits (hours) guy flying the craft at the time. But you nailed the fault that brought her down, a seal that failed in climatic testing, allowing fluid to pool in the nacelle.

The gold-plating I was referring to was not the folding rotors but the rotating/pivoting wing assembly. I realize it is necessary to allow shipboard operations (below deck) but that single requirement caused more design changes, weight increases and jumps in complexity than anything else on the bird. There are a lot of sharp engineers at both Bell and Boeing, but that kind of thing was a first for all of them.

Quote:

the rotating/pivoting wing assembly

Just to clarify, I am talking about the center wing/fuselage pivot, not the nacelles at the ends of the wings.

My fantasy is a complete largess computer simulation where you can take new technology / new ways of doing things like this and ... in this case have a virtual squadron in a computer doing all the day to day tasks. Ops, maintenance, sustainment, everything. A virtual unit, running virtual day to day business so fault times on parts, supply chain management, ops and training, personnel issues can be worked. So things can be adjusted in real life on how to field a squadron of these uberbirds. I am sure it wouldnt be anything like a total solution: "Look, the computer said so..." but it might help identify or help out certain trends that need to be worked. Might take a big linux cluster room to do it, but it might be useful.

Yep!

You got it right, Habu2. The swivel wing feature was much more of a problem than the folding tiltrotors.

We contractors do our best to meet the requirements of the end-user, and the storage space was a big player. So I 'feel their pain' for the Bell/Textron folks who tried their best. OTOH, with the swivel-wing Tomcat and F-111, I didn't see that much of a technological problem.

The biggie with the Osprey seems to be aerodynamic. When the thing is really low and sits there, all kindsa vortices form. The accident out in Arizona or Nevado or California was a good example. So the new training emphasizes the weird characteristics of the beast when flying in close proximity to another Osprey.

Funniest accident was when some hamburger wired one of the engine position doofers backwards, and the pilot tilted and tilted and tilted until one of the rotors made contact. Plane was just fine until the troop wired the thing backwards.

When we watched that thing zoom in and come to a hover within a few hundred yards, we were amazed. No pitch change like for a helo, and the guy slowed from about 200 knots to zero in 200 yards. When they would 'taxi' at about 50 feet, the thing looked like it was on wires. The FLCS was taking care of all the small corrections that we old pharts had to do with multiple control inputs and a good feeling in our butt.

The collective and cyclic are unlike any helo. The cyclic has two roller switches - one for left translation while in a hover, and another for commanding nacelle position. Really neat, and I think I could fly the thing without much of a briefing. Set throttle to 'fly' and move the controls around until you're going where you want to. Just like the Viper. manual back up is another matter, heh heh.

Biggest problem for us was the CoG. Any armament really affects the whole scenario. For example, you can't have a huge mini-gun on the tail ramp because all that ammo hurts. So we had to have the ammo drum under the wings and this really long chute for the rounds. Missiles and flares and such were no problem. The chin turret for the pilot and co-pilot also had the ammo drumback under the wings. We also had to limit the rotation so Joe Baggodonuts wouldn't shoot off one of his rotors!

Oh well, first special ops birds will be here shortly and maybe I can talk an old buddy into a tour.

out,

Quote:

Funniest accident was when some hamburger wired one of the engine position doofers backwards, and the pilot tilted and tilted and tilted until one of the rotors made contact. Plane was just fine until the troop wired the thing backwards.

Actually two of the three roll rate sensors were miswired. Had only one been miswired the other two would have voted the miswired sensor out, which it turns out was exactly what was happening on all the other V-22s flying at the time. Subsequently a problem was found in wiring connectors assembled years before (another artifact of a protracted development program) that allowed the gyros to be mis-connected.

Ironically we lost an F-117 early in that program to the exact same problem. Sad

This aircraft as Gums said is far from Goldplated. Its a new piece of technology capable of performing mythic feats of flight but its new and differnt so any small ripple in the program turns into a fiasco. Especially when one of those crashes(the one that killed the most people ironically) was the result of some fool in a Cessna taxi'ing into a closed section of the airfield with a V-22 doing a practice lightout rapid decent and comming down ontop of the plane.

As for maintainability. My Uncle is a Logistics commander in the Marine Corps, trust me when I say it couldnt possibly get any worse the the CH-46 is right now. The damn things keep breaking over and over again. And the airframes are so close to the end of their life rating that they cant even carry the loads they are spec'd to have. The only chopper in the Corp that really does what its supposed to and doesnt complain about it is the 53E's, which the Osprey is not intended to replace. And the idea of using existing technology sounds cost effective till you tell them that means retooling the plants for another production run and making a whole new batch of 30 year old designs based on 50 year old technology.

As for the whole wings folding thing heres a photo.Its fully automatic, and can be moved manually and locked into place should the system fail and the aircraft be needed.

Drew.

I don't have a problem with new technology per se. It is our track record of procurement that gets annoying from time to time. Killing a bushel of people before a system is even tested properly is just one of those problems.

Cool you mentioned the 53E, that is a great ship. As for the CH-46. I am sure a lot of todays mission up times can be part of what most DOD airframes suffered as a result of the 90's. We have just started coming out of that hole the last few years. The "Peace Dividend" ruined up times on lots of different aircraft in all services. DOD had a couple rubber stamps ( Les Aspin / Cohen ) at the wheel that refused to put less sexy, logistics and sustainment issues as a priority. Instead we do other ( fill in the blank ) stupid procurment decisions that aren't all that great and/or in some cases.... useful.

Forum: Rotary Wing Aircraft

V-22 Osprey