Great topic! I’ve been reading WIX for years, first time I ever felt like posting, despite being in aviation as a pilot and mechanic for the last 36 years, from Army Aviation, to Part 91, 135 and 121 ops.
But anyway, yeah I’m another 67 November, served with the 2/17 Cav attached to the 101st Airborne from early in 1976 to late in 1978. Reminiscing about the Huey makes me feel old though, like I have one foot on Fiddler’s Green - it’s been a long time gone.
All of our Hueys were “Slicks”, the Cobra’s carried the serious ordnance, all we had were door mounted M60’s. I remember the gun mounts for those made it hard to attach the ground handling wheels since the clearance was small. The Hueys were transports for our blue platoon (infantry), the OH-58’s served as scouts, and the AH-1G’s were the gunships.
I dimly remember school at Ft. Rucker in 1975: fun times with WACs in bars and cheap motels in Dothan - met my first wife there – the Eagles on the radio, and “Lyin Eyes” by a great cover band in a redneck bar, and the Boll Weevil statue in Enterprise. I think I was assigned to the 42nd on Tank Hill, but could be wrong about that. Some things that I do remember about school are “Soldier On TAC Sergeant”, which we were required to declare whenever we passed a training NCO; and a crusty old CW4 (Name long forgotten) who taught at the school and impressed upon us the fact that “Naracotics” (his pronunciation of “narcotics”) and aviation don’t mix, followed by a disturbing and hopefully apocryphal story about the time in the Southeast Asia war-games when a “doper” turning wrenches on a Huey made a mistake due to his foggy state of mind, and killed the CW4’s best friend “Big John”. The “doper” was promptly given a ride with the CW4, and kicked out of the door at 3000 ft; summary military justice at it’s finest. A cautionary tale…
At Ft. Campbell, like everyone else, I started out as an E-2 with a grease gun - in those pre-elastomeric bearing days, helicopters like the Huey ran on JP-4 and GOB (Grease Oscillating Bearing) - and I progressed to Spec 4 and crewchief, but spent the last 7 months as an acting E-5 squad leader for the Huey team in the organizational maintenance platoon. The buck sergeant assigned to that slot had transferred from duty in Korea, spent about 3 weeks at Ft.Campbell, apparently took a dislike to it (a not uncommon reaction) and went AWOL, never to be heard from again.
Went through some big paperwork and inspection requirement changes in my time there, saw the DER check change to a HIT check, and the old time-expired inspections that dated back decades, 25HR, 50 HR, 75 HR etc. were replaced by phase maintenance schedules, but this was pretty painless for me.
Memories of my time there and the technicalities of the Huey are a little hazy, but who could ever forget main rotor tracking with a metal pole and canvas flag? A ground run, the pilot moving the cyclic forward to dip the rotor towards you, then bringing that pole up so the tie down tabs on the blade tips, which were covered with a liberal application of red and black from grease pencils, red on one blade, black on the other, came into contact with the masking tape that stood out less than three inches from the canvas flag, leaving red and black marks where the tabs hit the tape to indicate the blade tracks. Low track wasn’t too bad, but the high track, where the pilot pulled enough pitch to load the blades and get light on the skids, was a windy, buffeting event, and pure misery in cold weather.
From the marks on the flag, for minor variations (I forget the spec) you could bend a trim tab on the blades. Anything more and we would adjust the PC (pitch change) links to “fly” the low blade (the lower mark on the taped flag, could be red or black, and considered to be stronger or less flexible than the high, weaker one) up to meet the same track as the high one, then test fly to check for vertical vibration. The most scientific method we had for that check was to hold a pen between thumb and forefinger while flying, rest your wrist on your knee, and observe the motion of your hand and pen. Sounds primitive, but it worked.
For lateral vibrations, Direct Support took the job. Coming out of major maintenance, where the rotor had been removed for scope and balance, a bad lateral was a rare occurrence, but laterals did develop in service, and if severe enough were a red X (grounding) item. I loved to help the DS platoon rotor guy with the alignment and balance, for some reason that process fascinated me. Setting the rotor up on the balancing arbor and adding weight to the blade pins to get an all black circle around the arbor, using the rifle scope to align the blades, adjusting the drag links etc.
Just before my ETS, they received a Strobex type unit for main rotor tracking. A pickup was attached near the swashplate - I think on one of the trunnions, but my maintenance team leader, a butter bar 2nd lieutenant, was so impressed with the new toy that he made the hookups so I’m kinda vague on that – then the cables were taped down and led inside. A metal tab with reflective tape was bolted to each blade tiedown, and then we cranked up and pulled pitch. Flew around for about 15 minutes trying to make it work, but only got a brief result and then nothing. Turns out the reflective tabs
MAY have been installed with an incorrect torque applied to the attaching hardware, and both had departed early on in the brief flight. In other words, my enthusiastic but inept Team Leader forgot to tighten the nuts on the tabs, if he put nuts on the bolts at all, and the Hueys main rotor happily shed bolts and tabs, one probably went as we passed through translational lift, and the other sometime later. Out Front Sir!
("
Out Front" Our Squadron motto, to be recited as we saluted an officer, and widely interpreted to mean “First to Be Killed” while scouting for the 101st)
There weren’t any spare tabs, so we went back to the Stone Age with the pole and flag.
Speaking of boneheaded officers, a CW3 of vast experience was showing one of the guys in my platoon how to bend a main rotor blade trim tab with the trim tab bending tool. He’d been watching this guy bend it carefully and gently, and climbed up beside him saying: “
No, no, you’re bending it like a sissy, you have to show it who’s the boss”. He then smacked the tool handle smartly with his open palm, and that tab bent like it knew a really masterful guy had hold of it. It bent so much that I, standing below, was showered with OD green paint chips and blue Scotchweld epoxy fragments. Aircraft grounded, lesson over, he sheepishly ordered us to put it in the hangar and start on the blade removal. Fun times….
Tracking the tail rotor was another job that used a primitive but effective method. A length of wooden broom handle was used, with a plastic oil sample tube taped firmly to one end. A grease pencil was pushed into the end of the tube, and standing on the opposite side of the tail boom from the tail rotor blades, engine running, blades turning, you “shot” the tail rotor by laying the broom stick on top of the tail rotor drive shaft cover, and pushed it forward until the grease pencil marked the blades (hopefully both). This had to be done quickly and deftly, as the heat from the tail pipe could, and would, melt the plastic oil sample tube leaving you with a drooping grease pencil that assumed a 90-degree angle to the blades. It was easier with an IR tailpipe installed, but we only had two of those. I can’t remember any adjustments ever being done to the tail rotor after tracking, so it must have tracked okay every time I did it. You could get a high frequency vibration from it that was felt in the anti-torque pedals, but I don’t remember any squawks about that either.
Reading the above leaves me with the impression that Army Aviation in those days ran on grease pencils and masking tape. There may be some truth to that....
Another maintenance screw-up occurred when we replaced a transmission. The overhauled transmission came from Aradmac in Corpus Christie without a generator drive quill; the SOP was to install the drive quill from the old time expired transmission. I couldn’t get that thing to install IAW the TM, it just didn’t want to seat with anything less than brute force. Consulting with my platoon sergeant, he analyzed the problem, and then concluded that brute force was
PRECISELY what was required. The infamous “bigger hammer” was procured, along with a short length of hardwood, and he proceeded to show that quill who was the boss (yet again!). You can probably guess where this is going, though mercifully not into the air. That transmission had a really bad grinding noise on the ground run, and on shutdown it sounded like a clothes dryer full of glassware. It had to come out again. It was universally agreed at the Troop and Squadron levels that the fault was with Aradmac, a bad overhaul, and not with any unauthorized maintenance procedure. More fun times….
Working on it could be trying at times, but flying in the Huey
WAS fun at anytime, even if you were dead tired. We deployed to Ft. Stewart to give the Cobras some time on the range there, and did some wild NOE looking for a huge alligator said to reside in one of the backwoods ponds. Our pilot was the DS platoon leader, he came over from flying the AH-1G, had a lot of combat time, and could really fly. We were going down dirt roads in the Georgia woods at about 110 KTS, following the directions of a “local” civilian who looked like a character from “Deliverance”. We were going along
BELOW the tree line, and those trees were
CLOSE to the road.
I distinctly remember looking up at the tops of those pines. After a short time we came to the pond in question, and sure enough there was a big gator there. We pulled up out of the trees, did a quick return to target, and that reptile looked big even from the air. This was food for thought - since I was at that time sleeping on the ground under two shelter halves, and since the pilots had commandeered the Hueys for their own use as hotels.
We lost a Huey while we were there, a night re-supply mission was returning, and they became disoriented on landing and flew right into the ground. Newby pilots…. No one was hurt, but the crosstubes were pushed up into the belly and it sat pretty low looking sorry for itself. The next day, my aircraft was detailed to fly over to main post and pickup a photographer to document the scene for the accident report. We landed on the lawn outside headquarters, and I got the civilian photographer on board and strapped down. Our Sierra Hotel pilot from the Great Alligator Hunt was in the right front seat again, and he turns around to look at me and says over the ICS: “
Make sure his belt is tight, I’m going to give him a ride”. Well, that poor guys eyes were as big as saucers as we zipped along NOE to the scene of the crash. I had him on the troop seat along the pylon, the doors were open, and I bet he remembered that short ride for a long time afterwards, since it included several steep banks to his side of the aircraft and a view nearly straight down. After we landed, I got him out of the aircraft and he asked me: “
Do you guys always fly like that?” I replied: “
Oh yeah, it won’t fly much higher!” After he took his pictures, he went over to the TOC and had them radio main post for a car ride back!
That Huey was a mess, we pulled the floor up to check the damage and the crosstubes and saddles were ripped right out of the supporting structure, and so it went out on a lowboy. Getting a screw out of a floor plate was always a fun chore on the Huey, they were packed with dirt from many pairs of combat boots, and that dirt had to be dug out before a screwdriver bit would take hold. Screws in the inspection panels on the tail boom were another chore to remove, there were always a few that were so tight they defied normal efforts with a speedhandle to remove them. Funny thing was, they might be right next to several “smoking” rivets that had loosened up from vibration!
The Huey was a great aircraft, but it was definitely power limited. I remember departing from a confined area during an FTX, we had 5 aboard, three crew and two troops, plus our gear and two cases of soda. The torque meter needle was right at the 50 PSI redline in a three foot hover.
Interesting to read about that crazy looking HF antenna, we had nothing like that on our H models, and I’ve seen that in photos before and often wondered what it was.
To tie down the main rotor we had a doubled red nylon strap with a steel hook in the middle, and two shot weighted nylon bags at the ends. You’d throw one of the shot bags up and over a blade, grab the bag, and pull the blade down. Then run the hook through the hole in the tiedown tab on the end of the blade, walk the rotor over until it was aligned with the aircraft centerline, then use the straps to tie the rotor down. We were taught in school to pass each strap left and right around the tail boom, then tie them together at the bottom. But nobody did it that way; we’d pull it tight around one side or the other and wrap it around the tail stinger (tail skid). On startup, you unwrapped the straps, then you’d “swing the blades”, by walking the rotor around until it was 90 degrees to the centerline, then unhook the tiedown and stow it.
Speaking of the stinger, it was a great maintenance tool in itself, but not intended as such by Bell. You could, if agile enough, place one hand on the vertical just above the tail light, the other on the stinger at the far end, and pull up raising your inside leg until your foot reached the skid. Once your foot was on the stinger, it was easy to raise yourself up and stand on it, perfect for checking the 90-degree gearbox oil level, or the safety and security of the tail rotor crosshead etc. It was also the perfect spot to “steer” with the Huey up on ground handling wheels while six guys pushed on the gun mounts to move it around the ramp or hangar.
Anyway, I’ve chattered on for long enough, so I’ll end this. Long live the Huey!
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