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Blue Ridge Expands Horizons

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS060921-20
Release Date: 9/21/2006 4:07:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tucker M. Yates, USS Blue Ridge Public Affairs

YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- The U.S. 7th Fleet flagship, USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19), conducted tests to expand its wind-envelope for recovering H-60-class helicopters from Aug. 23 to Sept. 1.

Blue Ridge currently embarks Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron Light (HSL) 51 Det. 11 with its SH-60F-class helicopters, known as Blackbeard. HSL-51 recently retired Blackbeard’s predecessor, a UH-3H class helicopter. With a completely different class of helicopter taking off from and landing on Blue Ridge’s flight deck, there was a requirement to determine the allowable wind limits for H-60 helicopter operations on an amphibious command and control ship. The intent was to try to meet or exceed the former limits of the UH-3H.

Blue Ridge Commanding Officer, Capt. Jeff Bartkoski, an H-60 pilot, felt the testing would help increase the ship’s capability to operate in various environmental conditions, thereby aiding in mission accomplishment.

“Every helicopter has a particular envelope for varying winds that it’s allowed to operate in, and that’s determined by the type of helicopter and the type of ship,” Bartkoski said. “This ship has never had any kind of testing done for the H-60, so because we’ve never had a specific envelope for the ship, we have to use a generic envelope that is kind of the fallback for this class of ship. It’s very restrictive and even if the weather is not that bad, we still couldn’t land the aircraft within prescribed limits.”

Prior to these tests, the ship would spend a significant amount of time chasing the wind to obtain acceptable conditions. A less restrictive wind envelope resulting from these tests would alleviate the need for perfect weather and wind-over-deck conditions, allowing for more efficient and expedient flight operations.

The ship embarked three engineers from Dynamic Interface, Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., as well as two test-pilots from the Naval Rotary Wing Aircraft Test Squadron (HX) 21, the primary air test and evaluation squadron for all Navy and Marine Corps helicopters.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Amaral, a test pilot, and Sean Collier, project engineer, led a team consisting of test pilots and air crewmen, as well as engineers. The ship suitability team, which involves the engineering aspects of the tests, coordinates with the officer of the deck (OOD) to control the ship’s movement and generate varying conditions for wind-over-deck. They also work with the helicopter control officer (HCO) in the control tower, monitoring communications from the pilot house and the helicopter to inform the flight deck crew of their intentions.

The HCO is responsible for the safety of the flight deck, the flight deck crew, and landing and launching the helicopter. The ability to allow take-offs and recoveries in varied weather conditions makes his job of controlling flight operations much easier, while still ensuring it is a safe environment.

“We maintain communication with the aircraft to make sure they understand what the winds are, their direction and speed, how fast the ship is going, what our coordinates are, and we advise them of any changes that occur with the ship,” said Chief Navy Counselor (SW/AW) Charles Traufler, one of the ship’s HCOs.

Due to the fact that Blue Ridge is forward-deployed to Japan, the air-test team was unable to bring one of its own aircraft for the tests.

“On this particular test we don’t have any [helicopter] instrumentation, because we’re using [Blue Ridge’s] aircraft,” Collier said. “With the allotted timeframe, we couldn’t put any in the aircraft, although we did instrument the ship a little bit. We have some systems that record ship motion and wind. We also installed some extra cameras to take data,” he said.

The team used video and still camera equipment to gather information for review and in-depth evaluation.

Night launches were included into the test phase to analyze the visual cues pilots use during various conditions. The night launches and recoveries judge what the pilots can see on deck and the HCO from the control tower, in respect to their location, relative to their landing point.

“[The engineers] monitor ship’s motion, safety parameters, and things of that nature,” said Amaral. “[The pilots] go out and incrementally adjust wind-to-azimuth and intensity to check for any problems you may have with aircraft handling, and basically determine whether or not it’s safe to recover the helo at that profile.”

Mother Nature brought some challenges to the expedition by providing a two-day lull in the winds, forcing them to use the helm to manipulate movement and provide better testing conditions. The test-team did not get the opportunity to do as many night launches as they had hoped.

Even with a few challenges, Bartkoski said he is pleased with the results.

“The Dynamic Interface testing for the ship turned out very well. It was a challenge to get the amount of wind that we wanted for conditions over the flight deck so as to test the maximum wind,” Bartkoski said. “We did well with that during the daytime, but we didn’t do quite as well at night. The bottom line is we were able to significantly expand the envelope for both day and night operations. This will increase our ability to conduct flight ops in a variety of conditions, which will allow us to conduct Blue Ridge’s mission of providing support to 7th Fleet.”

As the flagship for Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, Blue Ridge provides the highest quality capability for seagoing command and control of theater level forces by naval and joint commanders during peacetime or conflict, and provides preeminent naval support for U.S. diplomatic initiatives and objectives.