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| Press Release Number: EPX200302272 | 27-Feb-03 |
Pax shipboard testers respond rapidly to fleet need |
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| By JIM JENKINS NAS Patuxent River Public Affairs PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, MD-It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which tossed the boat about like a toy. The team was thankful they found such ideal conditions. No, this is not Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's notoriously cliched opening of the novel Paul Clifford. It is a story about Oscar Austin - USS Oscar Austin (DDG 79), and a combined team from NAVAIR Rotary Wing Ship Suitability and Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 21 in their search for the perfect storm. The goal was to complete dynamic interface testing of the MH-60S Knighthawk aboard Arleigh Burke class flight IIA destroyers. Responding to an urgent request from Commander Carrier Group 2, the DI test team scrambled to pull off one of the quickest, yet productive, tests they've ever had to perform. With the Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group about to deploy, the fleet needed to have her escort destroyers - more specifically, Oscar Austin and her sister ships - ready to host the Navy's newest deployed helicopter, the MH-60S. There was one small problem: the MH-60S had never been on the DDG flight IIA before, and no launch/recovery envelopes existed for the helo/ship combination. The DI team got the phone call on a Monday, with the request that the at-sea tests be completed by Thursday. "Normally we're given a couple of months to take care of all the planning and logistics," said Pete Heasley, test director. "We got the call from the destroyer squadron and they said, 'We're running short on time, our carrier group is deploying, and we need these envelopes to be operationally suitable to our logistics missions. Can you and your team be out there in 72 hours?'" After some pretty fast maneuvering by the test team, a plan was put together to tackle the assignment. Due to the time constraint, the team decided to use the existing envelopes for H-60s aboard Arleigh Burke class flight I destroyers (without hangar decks) as the starting point for flight IIA class destroyers (with hangar decks). "All these ships had envelopes for H-60s," said Lt. Cmdr. Andy Lynch, project pilot. "The big difference is that the normal H-60 wheel [base] is 14 feet. The wheel base on this [MH-60S] is 29 feet. It is a long helicopter in terms of landing." Recovering an MH-60S Knighthawk on Oscar Austin is difficult because there is very little room for error, according to Lynch. When a pilot lands and puts the main wheel mounts in the painted boxes on the deck, there is only three feet between the tail wheel and the edge of the flight deck. "So it's catastrophic if you miss by three feet," Lynch said. "The center of gravity is typically farther aft in the MH-60S than a legacy Seahawk. So it flies more nose up, making it harder to see [when landing]." With signed test plan in hand, the team got the test gear together and packed everything aboard the aircraft. The crew was ready to go, in a very short time. The rotors were turning, and everyone was onboard, ready to fly out to Oscar Austin somewhere off the coast of Virginia, when, according to Heasley, the helicopter "went down in the chocks." The instrument panel showed a tail-rotor servo malfunction during the pre-flight and forced the crew of Oscar Austin to wait another 12 hours. But with the help of the HX-21 maintenance crew's fast response, the team was able to get going and meet the destroyer the next day - the last day of the allotted window of opportunity. "Kudos to the maintenance guys for fixing the problem overnight," Heasley said. Once aboard ship, the test team put the plan in motion. While the helicopter was taking on fuel, bridge coordinator Sean Collier briefed the ship's captain, Heasley briefed the flight deck crew, and Andy Baker readied the test equipment and aircraft. All they needed now was the "perfect storm" to help get the largest launch/recovery envelope possible. Lynch, who has more than 10 years of flying experience with two years as a test pilot, and project officer Lt. Ben Teich spotted a squall line on the horizon and requested the ship to head for it. "We did go and chase storms that night," Heasley said. "But that's what we do in order to maximize the ship motion, and get the winds up where we need them." Besides the wind-over-deck testing that the storm helped out with, the team wanted to produce an envelope for maximum ship roll as well. But the seas didn't cooperate, so the helmsmen, working with the engineers, created an artificial roll. Basically the helmsmen rocked the boat left and right as much as he could to produce the "desired" effect. "We're doing it under controlled conditions with experienced test pilots and experienced crew," Heasley said. "These are the tests that will determine what envelope the fleet ultimately receives, so we try to get the most extreme conditions Mother Nature can provide." Such is the life of test pilots. They fly aircraft to the most extreme limitations to determine what is safe and unsafe for the average fleet pilot. Lynch explained that a test pilot is not only trying to fly and land aircraft, but also record engineering data as he or she notices different readings of instrumentation. The average fleet pilot may be just trying to land or fly. "While we're doing the testing we're checking other instruments so that we can give [the engineers] performance numbers like torque, and watch for control displacements and other handling qualities," Lynch said. "So if we're able to do these other tasks, which really are beyond what the fleet [pilot] would be doing, it takes up so much of your spare capacity that you're back to being an average fleet guy. For example, if you come in and you're flying so hard you can't look at your control displacements, or you can't look at the torques, well then you can automatically say that, 'Well, this is probably beyond the capabilities of a guy who needs to do this and talk on the radio or do other tasks at the same time." After six straight hours of flying, landing again and again on a pitching, rolling deck on a dark stormy night, their mission was completed. Oscar Austin had its envelopes and the DI test team had its own stories of "the perfect storm." -USN- Photo by Andy Baker Project pilot Lt. Cmdr. Andy Lynch and project officer Lt. Ben Teich recover the MH-60S aboard USS Oscar Austin (DDG 79) during dynamic interface testing. |
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