Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Carlton
When it falls over on its back, wouldn't the main gearbox be unloaded by definition? If you pushed on the cyclic you could potentially load the gearbox somewhat, but I'm not grasping how the main rotor would have difficulty if the entire ship and rotor is in free fall??
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For that short period of time that all is at zero over the top, and in very short freefall “together” (just over the top), all is fine. But that’s only if you can maintain enough speed going into and over the top. The rotor system on the 530 is not designed to have much of a load forcing down on the mast/head/transmission. As the ship falls over, fine. When it gets over on it‘s back (with zero speed) , you now have a load on the top of the system. Keep in mind its a big disk that doesn’t just fall through the air like the body of the ship wants to. By pulling full power/collective you can keep these loads low, but not without possibly over-speeding the ship as you go into vertical (straight down) and then enter into a “pull-out” that may put loads on things way beyond their limits. With some fancy collective work and enough speed and altitude, I figure it could be done. I’m just not willing to find out why it shouldn’t be tried. When you talk with the factory pilots about these things. And they say things like: “Well....I wouldn’t.” You take heed.
Something else to ponder. Have you ever seen a helicopter fly directly over another airborne helicopter? Not pretty, for the guy on the bottom.