For SeaKing Lovers........

[Guest Calb]

http://www.geocities.com/lucktam/awacs/skaew.htmand be sure to click the first link at the bottomCalhover long and prosper

[wsieffert 0]

I wonder why they never installed the larger horizontal stabilizer. It really flattened the pitch angle when flying at cruise speeds.Another interesting note is the static discharge wicks on the horizontal stabilizer were basically useless. The aircraft didn't fly fast enough to discharge any appreciable amount of static charge. A company wanted to sell light weight (grams) discharge wicks mounted on the trailing edge of the rotarblades. Problems with the amount of static charge became evident in the 1970s with the advent of MOS, CMOS, FET, and JFET chips.I was a crewman in a Test SH-3D aircraft sitting in a 15ft hover, when a JFET shorted the Gyro roll signal. The aircraft did a hardover to the right before the pilot was able to recover. A review of the Fleet indicated many failures of the above chips due to static charge/discharge.The CH-53s had a static discharge system putting out positive or negative ions. I don't know if it worked or not because the darn aircraft is so big, it still discharged on landing or dropping the rescue cable.I always enjoy seeing those film clips of people trying to grap the rescue cable before touching the ground/water. We always went out of our way to discharge the aircraft before they touched it, but they always wanted to grap it before it discharged. The U.S. Navy was testing a similiar AEW radar system on an SH-3 and the darn thing became stuck down. The helicopter was sitting in a low hover. A Navy Chief runs out to the helicopter to do whatever a Navy Chief does to a stuck dome. Well he wouldn't heed the crewman's waveoff and touched the dome before the crewman could discharge the aircraft by lowering the rescue cable to the ground. Well after the Navy Chief picked himself up of the deck, kinda did a "What the Heck was that shiver", they finally just set the helicopter down and bent the dome.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

and then there is the case of the Seal Team Member who not only got dunked, but shocked...An SH3 with a winch operator who will remain nameless, had a seal team member on the "hook" in a hover during trainings sessions off of the beach at Silver Strand. Helicopter lost doppler radar or the hydraulics went haywire, but whatever the cause, the bird started to fall. Seal team member got dunked, shocked, and then when the PiC got control again, yanked up to altitude in a hurry. When he finally was pulled aboard the bird, he thought that the winch operator had been playing with him. He was one very angry dude. It took his three or four team mates already aboard the bird to keep him from throwing the operator out of the plane. :)Static... You just gotta love it.But AO's are even worse! Had one guillotine two domes in one week while parked on the tarmac! AT shop chief was not impressed! And the XO had a few choice words too.