Even though it didn't have the ending he wanted, he pointed Of nice things, and we gave them one heck of a demonstration," Jay Minutes of that, it was on total automatic controls. Proving capable, too: "One test flight - 19 minutes long - for 18 They could lose boost and still be flyable." The systems are 'It's stiff, but flyable.' That's a great confidence builder, that We lost boost pressure one time, and the pilots merely said, Jay reverted to his usual, wonderful 'optimist' mode: "We justįinished some really neat tests- our boosted controls worked It wouldn't give that nuisance alarm." Everything else was going so well, too. "They promised me, they wouldn't forget!" In retrospect, Was annoying," Jay said, "so I disabled it." He laughed, wryly, 'flying' takeoffs, and that alarm was annoying. Every time we got over 50 mph, the alarm would go off,Īnd freeze the display: 'Lower Landing Gear!' They wanted to make Last week." More explanation was in order: "A lot of our testing Mr Carter explained, "We have a gear horn, and we disabled it Put the wheels down, and rolled it on the trailer." Rolling on the wheels it went there with - we just lifted it up, Instrumentation and controls are salvageable. Wings are fine the gear was well-protected and most of the On the 'good' side, the main rotor is OK, the The fuselage and booms are badly damaged the prop is wrecked Late." It was a case of too much information, during anĪlready-stressful phase of the flight. Was so much noise, they didn't know what we were saying, until too "We were screaming at them on the radios, 'gear up!' but there Half-revolution before the second blade came off, did some bad damage." So much screaming, so little time. Rotational mass] was severely out of balance. "When the first blade came off," Carter noted, "it [the "Ten fps descent wouldn't have done anything to the landing 'crash,' except that there was no landing gear to absorb the Tried to power out of it - they hit so hard the tailboomsĭeflected so far, that the prop hit the ground." It wasn't a They were on-plan, all right: "They hit pretty hard - they had With almost no thrust - showing the capabilities of how quiet, how Was mostly for show, this time, even though a lot of data areĬollected on every flight. Was the second time in seven months they retracted the gear." It What else? "All theįlights in this test cycle had been with the gear extended. Gear." These guys are top test pilots, though. Jay explained, "The pilots just forgot to lower the landing Witnessing the test flight, that this was, 'the most impressiveĭemonstration had ever seen.'" (One of our friends at theįactory said we'd have to confirm with Jay, but added, " I That iffy machine still moving slowly, Carter said the assembledīrass was enthusiastic. Osprey always a question mark, and with the 20-year gestation of in fact, they were there to see us fly." With the V-22 Often spell the difference between 'straight' and 'busted.' TheĪrmy Aviation Association was meeting in Ft Worth (TX) last week,Īnd, as Jay explained it, "There's a lot of interest in our That a lot of enthusiasm, and some high-pressure mistakes, can "what happened?" to the Carter Copter last week.Īs always, Jay Carter was open to our questions. Simple answer to the expensive and temporarily painful question of "They just forgot to put the gear down," was the There Are Those Who Have, and Those Who Will
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