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Posted on 11/11/2011 10:42:31 AM PST by ImJustAnotherOkie
The Islamists have been very active in Mexico recently, the open border into Great Satan is probably very attractive.
Mexico effectively has an insurrection in progress and its neighbor to the north is positioned re Mexico as Iran is positioned re Iraq, geographically, politically, and militarily. Mexico just doesn’t have a foreign buffer army pulling out its protection. The difference is that our Ahmadinejad is not looking to just control and eventually absorb our own Iraq/Mexico. Our regime is looking to use the collapse of Mexico to collapse the home country, too, in order to bring on the sovietization of the continent.
It looks more and more every day that you are accurate in your assessment. Now, pass the oven grade tinfoil.
This incident is perhaps another indication that the bloodlusting mooselimbs are getting into bed with the bloody drug cartels. I wonder, were there any surface to air missles funneled Southward by Fast and Furious Holder?
Is tracer ammo available for the .50 cals?
I guess we should call them “litlle Shiite heads” then!
Mexico's Interior Minister dead in Helicopter crash.Ironically, this happened outdoors.
I don’t know, but I suspect there is. There are some restrictions on components from what I have read. Like the armor piercing type.
And the other to are?
Fascinating. I wonder if it's true. It's logical, and certainly with a helicopter the standard for alertness seems to be higher. Take your foot off the pedals for a second (I believe that is controlled with pedals) and you're in trouble.
There is such a thing as auto-rotation - barring some catastrophic failure with the tail rotor assembly (rare). That leads me to suspect foul play in this particular case.
Prayers for the families of the deceased :(
My beef with Bush, many Republicans, and most all Democrats, is that they acted as though the money available to them for use in operation of the federal government and the many entitlement programs it administers was endless(this is beside the known fact that the Treasury can print as much money as they choose regardless of and quite often without regard to the long term consequenses). When you're in a hole you stop digging. For some reason, they thought they could dig a hole that would bring them back to a zero deficit.
Was he better than Gore or Kerry would have been? Yes, I'm sure he was... We he perfect? By no means...
Reminds me of a story from years ago... Having flown on Army Hueys, CH47's and Blackhawks many times, on a unique occasion I was all set to fly out on a Marine Corp CH46. My attitude had been "if I can get on board a helicopter out of here, I'll live." I took a seat just forward of the aft rotor and settled myself into the webbing. I looked back toward the cargo door and noticed a pool hydraulic fluid on the floor. Looking up at the panel above the puddle, I could see that it was coming from above, and had not been left on the floor from any cargo that had just been transported. A young Marine looked over at me and noticed my concern. (I had just realized that what I had thought to be my saving ride out might be my death.) He pulled out a rag and wiped up the floor and then wiped the drips from the ceiling, smiled and said "we'll be fine sir, we don't have to worry until it stops dripping..." Yeah right. When you're young you think you'll live forever and that a little leak won't hurt anything. With age comes wisdom and a better understanding of the fact that engineers write up maintenance schedules for very good reasons. I volunteered to get shot at and to be able to kill the enemy. I didn't volunteer to die in a chopper crash because of a leaky hydraulic hose. I let our a big sigh of relief when we sat that CH46 down on the tarmac. I've never gotten back on a CH46 since that flight...
Which are followed to the letter. As long as it is leaking, there is fluid. As long as there is fluid, there is lubrication. Very few maintenance related fatal crashes. Doesn't help those that were on them, but if you are in combat on the ground, you got bigger things to worry about than if the frog taking you home that day is going to crash on its own.
As for the scattered wreckage, a helicopter always has something moving, when it breaks apart in the air or from contact with the ground parts get 'scattered'. Hard to find a helo crash contained in one hole.
But when we were in "open country" we had to fly at high altitude... My concern upon seeing the hydraulic fluid was the size of the existent puddle, the question of how much had been wiped up previous to my boarding, how much was left in the reservoir, and the question of whether or not the last drop would hit the floor of the aircraft while we were at altitude.
Understanding that while with fixed wing aircraft altitude is your friend, in rotor wing aircraft too little or too much altitude can be a problem during a power loss or loss of transmission of power. Should loss of power or transmission of power occur, the pilot goes to the auto rotate procedure. During autorotation you bottom the pitch and try to keep the rotors moving (creating a saving amount of lift) all the way to the ground... When at altitude, with no power applied to the rotor, you have a limited amount of time before the rotors loose forward momentum and then you drop like a rock.
I'm very familiar with maintenance procedures and that they are, for probably 99.9% of the time, performed at or prior to schedule. But then there is that 0.1%. I've got in more than a few hours of flight time... I lost a very good friend that was probably the most desciplined pilot that I've ever known when his AeroCommander came apart at 27,000 AGL over Georgia. Any pilot that commands an aircraft that doesn't keep in mind the possibility of a mistake being made in a maintenance procedure has linited his mental reference sources available during an emergency.
I also have a collection of tools in my garage... They are in a special tool box that I pull out to show my friends. These are tools that I or my father recovered from runways at Metro Nashville International Airport and a couple of other public airports here in middle Tennessee. Tennessee is not special when it comes to tools being left in wheel wells and cowlings... It happens at all of them. If tools didn't make it back to the tool box in flight maintenance, what else didn't get completed before the panel got buttoned back up?
LOL. I'm only laughing because being a 46 pilot I never really thought too much about what the guys I had aboard thought about this. The 46 has a low inertia rotor system. Which means that once power is removed the rotor rpm drops quickly if the collective remains up. At low altitude/low airspeed collective pitch needs to be reduced much more quickly than at high altitude. The good news is that the rotor rpm (Nr) is easier to control to avoid an overspeed. The inboard section of the rotor blades is what is operative in autorotative flight. Higher onset altitude gives the pilot many more options for landing safely. Bottoming the collective only saves rotor rpm, as there is no lift at flat pitch. The 46 has a 3 degrees detent position on the collective that keeps that much pitch on the system. High inertia systems make Nr monitoring more important because they can and do build turns in an auto.
The hydraulic fluid you saw on the ramp and leaking most likely is from the utility hydraulic system. Total loss of fluid in that system greatest risk is a fire from the pump overheating. There is alot of fluid when topped off and the drips you see don't account for much as a little goes a long way and makes a hell of a mess.
Any pilot that commands an aircraft that doesn't keep in mind the possibility of a mistake being made in a maintenance procedure has linited his mental reference sources available during an emergency.
Duration of a fluid-loss caused inflight emergency is measured in a few minutes before you have to be on the ground and all are 'land as soon as practicable' save for a #1 Boost failure which is 'land as soon as possible'. Whether the tank was serviced correctly was a matter for the preflight as are all maintenance issues. Real hydraulic leaks in a 46 are epic events as the sytem operates around 3000-3500 psi. None of the systems are serviceable inflight.
If tools didn't make it back to the tool box in flight maintenance, what else didn't get completed before the panel got buttoned back up?
All toolboxes in a 46 squadron are painted, so if a tool isn't there, the Maintenance Action Form (MAF) can't be signed off until it is located. QA checks the work, a smart pilot inspects as well. The best check is that the crewchief who is with you during the flight did the work.
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