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AH-6C, MH-6 photos from AH6C-SIP-PICS ARE BACK!


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While perusing a bunch of photos I had scanned from the Army Aviation Test Board I found these three pics that I had previously overlooked. Even though they aren't GT's I figure they belong here. A couple of curious things. Note the test boom on the skids, pink forklift, and little girl in a bathing suit! Some of these things just don't seem like they go together. Anyway, these are some nice shots so I thought I'd share em.

Ray

Oh yeah, check the guy with the rolled up jeans, now that's one stylin' fellow right there!

AH-6C%20test%20bird-1.jpg

AH-6C%20test%20bird-2.jpg

AH-6C%20test%20bird-3.jpg

Hi All, and thanks for posting Ray.

This may have been pictures of the testing done for our Airworthiness Release. Don't recognize anyone, but on picture 2, when I take it into Photoshop, you can sort of make out the tail number on the fuselage. Looks to be 054. If so this is one of the original six guns. Everything else looks like one of the LBG's from the paint job to the Omega Nav brick on the Tailboom. It appears that wherever they were it was warm. So,,,Edwards AFB? Also appears to have a lift link on the rotor hub. Just my two cents.

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Hi All, and thanks for posting Ray.

This may have been pictures of the testing done for our Airworthiness Release. Don't recognize anyone, but on picture 2, when I take it into Photoshop, you can sort of make out the tail number on the fuselage. Looks to be 054. If so this is one of the original six guns. Everything else looks like one of the LBG's from the paint job to the Omega Nav brick on the Tailboom. It appears that wherever they were it was warm. So,,,Edwards AFB? Also appears to have a lift link on the rotor hub. Just my two cents.

Good eyes. It is indeed 054. I see the lift link you are talking about as well. Can you give a estimate of the date?

Ray

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I think this photo confirms Graham's assessment that the photos are at Edwards AFB. I can't believe I even digitized this photo, but you can clearly read "Custon Engeneering Group Rentals * Sales 115 Roberts LN BAKERSFIELD ...." Bakersfield is just up the road from Edwards so I think that takes care of that question.

Ray

AH-6C%20test%20bird-4.jpg

Edited by rotorwash
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It looks like that Littlebird has a different radar warning receiver layout than the other C models I've seen pictures of. This one has antennas at the top rear of the dog house and in front of the pilot's doors.

The others I've seen had the antennas under the nose and on one of those avionics boxes stuck under the tailboom.

For such a small fleet of helos, there is so much variety.

Cool pictures Ray (as always), thanks for posting them.

Regards,

John

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Good eyes. It is indeed 054. I see the lift link you are talking about as well. Can you give a estimate of the date?

Ray

Hi Ray,

I don't have the two documents with me at home, but I think I sent you the .pdf's I received on the certification of the "wire strike protection" for the AH-6 and another airworthiness release on the mysterious JOH-58's. So the date should be somewhere in early 1981, maybe April. If I didn't send them to you, I'll do so on Monday. They are historically relevant.

PS. I was going through all my old slides today, and came across some additional Cobra flicks from B Co 229th at Ft Campbell. Some show our a/c in January of 1980 working in Petawawa, Canada in -35 below weather, and some of their UH-1N models. I you would like to take a look I'll send them to you.

GT

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Hi Ray,

I don't have the two documents with me at home, but I think I sent you the .pdf's I received on the certification of the "wire strike protection" for the AH-6 and another airworthiness release on the mysterious JOH-58's. So the date should be somewhere in early 1981, maybe April. If I didn't send them to you, I'll do so on Monday. They are historically relevant.

PS. I was going through all my old slides today, and came across some additional Cobra flicks from B Co 229th at Ft Campbell. Some show our a/c in January of 1980 working in Petawawa, Canada in -35 below weather, and some of their UH-1N models. I you would like to take a look I'll send them to you.

GT

GT,

I got the two PDFs, thanks! Regarding addition helo pics, do you really need to ask?! I can't wait to see em.

Ray

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  • 1 month later...
Hi All, and thanks for posting Ray.

This may have been pictures of the testing done for our Airworthiness Release. Don't recognize anyone, but on picture 2, when I take it into Photoshop, you can sort of make out the tail number on the fuselage. Looks to be 054. If so this is one of the original six guns. Everything else looks like one of the LBG's from the paint job to the Omega Nav brick on the Tailboom. It appears that wherever they were it was warm. So,,,Edwards AFB? Also appears to have a lift link on the rotor hub. Just my two cents.

Realize this threads been dormant a while. Happened to be searching it for something and came across these photos. I can shed a bit of light on them:

The location is Meadows Field in Bakersfield and the time period is 1984. GT is correct; this was during the AEFA Airworthiness Release testing. Bakersfield was our sea level test site (Edwards is 2300 ft).

The guy in the bright yellow shirt is Ralph Waratschek, the senior flight test engineer (FTE) on the project. He is currently a contractor in the PEO at AMCOM at Redstone. The guy pushing on the aft fuselage is CW4 Jim Webre, the project test pilot. Jim is now an FAA test pilot. The guy on the tail is Terry Peed, the crew chief. Terry was in prison, last I heard. The guy in flip-flops is Rick Walker, the flight test instrumentation tech. Rick unfortunately passed away from complications from alcohol abuse. The girl in the bathing suit was his daughter. The young guy in the flight suit is the junior FTE, Rich Adler. Rich owns an aviation business in Florida (he and I used to co-own an airplane). And our pink forklift driver is Big Bill Dehl, our ALSE technician. I later worked with Jim and Ralph on the MH-6E and the JOH-58C (OH-58X Surrogate).

The aircraft has just arrived in Bakersfield from Edwards, likely late in the afternoon and is being moved to the hangar.

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Realize this threads been dormant a while. Happened to be searching it for something and came across these photos. I can shed a bit of light on them:

The location is Meadows Field in Bakersfield and the time period is 1984. GT is correct; this was during the AEFA Airworthiness Release testing. Bakersfield was our sea level test site (Edwards is 2300 ft).

The guy in the bright yellow shirt is Ralph Waratschek, the senior flight test engineer (FTE) on the project. He is currently a contractor in the PEO at AMCOM at Redstone. The guy pushing on the aft fuselage is CW4 Jim Webre, the project test pilot. Jim is now an FAA test pilot. The guy on the tail is Terry Peed, the crew chief. Terry was in prison, last I heard. The guy in flip-flops is Rick Walker, the flight test instrumentation tech. Rick unfortunately passed away from complications from alcohol abuse. The girl in the bathing suit was his daughter. The young guy in the flight suit is the junior FTE, Rich Adler. Rich owns an aviation business in Florida (he and I used to co-own an airplane). And our pink forklift driver is Big Bill Dehl, our ALSE technician. I later worked with Jim and Ralph on the MH-6E and the JOH-58C (OH-58X Surrogate).

The aircraft has just arrived in Bakersfield from Edwards, likely late in the afternoon and is being moved to the hangar.

Matt,

That is awesome info! Thanks!

Ray

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Crikey Matt, the info you have is gonna make people short circuit around here. You gotta be careful throwing out all this good stuff, people like me are sensitive!

Really though, your experiences must have been, or still be, fantastic. Thanks again for posting, and as always, feel free to throw down some more. We are like sponges around here.

Brandon

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Crikey Matt, the info you have is gonna make people short circuit around here. You gotta be careful throwing out all this good stuff, people like me are sensitive!

Really though, your experiences must have been, or still be, fantastic. Thanks again for posting, and as always, feel free to throw down some more. We are like sponges around here.

Brandon

I'll second that! By the way, thanks, Matt, for ressurrecting this thread. Its aved me the trouble of having to find it again. While scanning some test board pics I came across this gem. It was taken at Hurlburt Field in 1980. The main subject of most of the photos in this set is the OH-58's in the background, BUT here you see two early AH-6C's. I assume these are still being tested. I guess armed Littlebirds were just too much for the project photographer to resist. I love the M-158 pods! Anyway, I scanned each aircraft separately so what you see is about the max resolution you're gonna get from the neg. I hope Matt, GT, Doug will chime in with any info. The project label says they are DARCOM images, which if I Googled correctly, means "Development and Readiness Command" Enjoy!

Ray

AH-6C

AH-6C

AH-6C

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Very interesting pictures. They have a different avionics rack in the back as compared to later Littlebirds.

As always, thanks for posting these. I think at this point, the ARC Helo forum takes the title as the worlds most comprehensive source of early Littlebird pictures and information.

John

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I'll second that! By the way, thanks, Matt, for ressurrecting this thread. Its aved me the trouble of having to find it again. While scanning some test board pics I came across this gem. It was taken at Hurlburt Field in 1980. The main subject of most of the photos in this set is the OH-58's in the background, BUT here you see two early AH-6C's. I assume these are still being tested. I guess armed Littlebirds were just too much for the project photographer to resist. I love the M-158 pods! Anyway, I scanned each aircraft separately so what you see is about the max resolution you're gonna get from the neg. I hope Matt, GT, Doug will chime in with any info. The project label says they are DARCOM images, which if I Googled correctly, means "Development and Readiness Command" Enjoy!

Ray

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_f8ldizutzFw/S15A0m7C...i3ng/s800/AH-6C

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_f8ldizutzFw/S15A1Ckr...JF20/s800/AH-6C

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_f8ldizutzFw/S15A1rqn...zi8Y/s800/AH-6C

The M158 pod and M27 armament subsystem is the configuration noted for the test JOH-6A aircraft that were eventually redesignated as the AH-6C. It would not surprise me to find out that these were some of those earlier JOH-6As. From what I learned from Graham the M158 pods were pretty quickly replaced by M260s. Given the time period those are probably the OH-58C Light Combat Helicopter prototypes in the background as well.

Edited by thatguy96
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Question for you Ray (imagine that!).

In the first pic, on the very far right side, you can see one full profile of a -58 and then a little of the rear door back on the one next to it. They don't appear to have doors on the back. I was wondering if those were rockets hanging off of them or if it is something else. It looks like something is there, but I can't be sure if it is a weapon system or some accessory piece not even attached. Man, those -58's sit loooow to the ground.

Sorry for the questions, this laptop in my car is cool, but not the best to look at stuff on.

Thanks for those pics too.

Brandon

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Question for you Ray (imagine that!).

In the first pic, on the very far right side, you can see one full profile of a -58 and then a little of the rear door back on the one next to it. They don't appear to have doors on the back. I was wondering if those were rockets hanging off of them or if it is something else. It looks like something is there, but I can't be sure if it is a weapon system or some accessory piece not even attached. Man, those -58's sit loooow to the ground.

Sorry for the questions, this laptop in my car is cool, but not the best to look at stuff on.

Thanks for those pics too.

Brandon

Brandon,

I believe those OH-58Cs are the subject of the other photos I have in the set. The one sitting low has the flat plate canopy and the LPH gear on it I believe and the M-158 rocket pod on the side is folded for transport as is the tail. Here's a pic of what I think you are seeing. Of course this is an OH-58D, but you get the idea. I'll post more as I scan the set but they'l probably go in Matt's Army Test Helo thread.

Ray

OH-58D0139%20floyd.jpg

Edited by rotorwash
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Question for you Ray (imagine that!).

In the first pic, on the very far right side, you can see one full profile of a -58 and then a little of the rear door back on the one next to it. They don't appear to have doors on the back. I was wondering if those were rockets hanging off of them or if it is something else. It looks like something is there, but I can't be sure if it is a weapon system or some accessory piece not even attached. Man, those -58's sit loooow to the ground.

Sorry for the questions, this laptop in my car is cool, but not the best to look at stuff on.

Thanks for those pics too.

Brandon

Brandon,

I believe those OH-58Cs are the subject of the other photos I have in the set. The one sitting low has the flat plate canopy and the MPLH gear on it I believe and the M-158 rocket pod on the side is folded for transport as is the tail. Here's a pic of what I think you are seeing. Of course this is an OH-58D, but you get the idea. I'll post more as I scan the set but they'l probably go in Matt's Army Test Helo thread.

Ray

OH-58D0139%20floyd.jpg

Edited by rotorwash
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The M158 pod and M27 armament subsystem is the configuration noted for the test JOH-6A aircraft that were eventually redesignated as the AH-6C. It would not surprise me to find out that these were some of those earlier JOH-6As. From what I learned from Graham the M158 pods were pretty quickly replaced by M260s. Given the time period those are probably the OH-58C Light Combat Helicopter prototypes in the background as well.

Personally don't know the history on this pic, but those are JOH-6A (AH-6C). Hopefully GT or Doug can enlighten us.

The Army has a tendency to affix "J" (Temporary Special Test) prefixes to specially configured aircraft before giving them permanent designations. This can become really confusing as a "JOH-6" or "JOH-58" designator can apply to all sorts of different configurations. It got really weird with our test Little Birds, as the flight test ships didn't normally carry mission equipment and we would test both the gun and special mission external configurations, so they had designations like "530FF (A/MH-6G/H)"

Yes, those are JOH-58C LCH's in the background. I have some experience with those and they were a real POS. If you want to see a real abortion, check out the "OH-58X Surrogate" LCH in my flight test thread.

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Actually, IMR The reason it was not adopted was due to the instability of the NOTAR system itself. We would have loved it from a stealth/safety standpoint. It couldn't maintain yaw control sufficiently when firing the mini-gun. The XM134 exerts a tremendous amount of thrust on the airplane. The trigger had 2 detents, Low rate-2000/rounds/minute and High rate-4000rounds a minute. We invariably used the High rate, due to wierd vibrations being transmitted at the low rate. The NOTAR also had yaw stability and power problems reacting to the sudden power applications of some of the more extreme landing maneuvers the slicks used.

Doug

NSDQ

SGDM

Missed this first time around and just wanted to comment.

I certainly appreciate the correction, Doug. It's not my intention to give out inaccurate information.

Until the later part of the '90's, us DT guys rarely got the opportunity to fire live ordnance during testing, unless it was a major new armed system for the 'regular' Army (like the OH-58D(I)) or to address some problem (like compressor stalls from 2.75 rocket gas ingestion), so we often missed problem areas like this.

My comments were based on the feedback we received as to why the NOTAR Little Bird was canceled. Obviously we didn't get the whole story.

The 160th tended to view the developmental testers with a certain amount of suspicion, if not disdain, as they saw us as an impediment to the timely fielding of their systems. This was probably justified to a certain extent, as some of the problem areas identified by our test methods were of little to no concern to the way they conducted their mission. I note that the 160th had now developed their own organic test capability, which it what the wanted all along.

NOTAR's have always suffered in directional control authority. I was part of the early LHX eval team and the losing Bell/McD design (which was a NOTAR) had to have a second fan in the aft part of the tailboom just to meet the directional control authority requirements of the specification.

Got only 2 flights in the NOTAR Little Bird, but it was a neat machine!

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Hi Ray. Thanks yet again for delivering a fascinating photo of early Little Birds. The photo at Hurlburt looks like it features ships ready to participate in some kind of head-to-head fly-off between the Cayuse and Kiowa for selection as the "Light Combat Helicopter" for the 160th. The paint scheme looks like CARC Green with standard black markings. Am I right? A CARC Green JOH-6A would be really interesting to build.

Thanks again, Ray and all the others who are contrubuting to this thread.

LD.

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Hi Ray. Thanks yet again for delivering a fascinating photo of early Little Birds. The photo at Hurlburt looks like it features ships ready to participate in some kind of head-to-head fly-off between the Cayuse and Kiowa for selection as the "Light Combat Helicopter" for the 160th. The paint scheme looks like CARC Green with standard black markings. Am I right? A CARC Green JOH-6A would be really interesting to build.

Thanks again, Ray and all the others who are contrubuting to this thread.

LD.

LD,

I believe those birds are both black. If you look in the background you can see a green OH-6. I could be wrong, of course, but certainly the AH-6C's were black leter on.

Matt,

Thanks for the info as always.

Ray

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LD,

I believe those birds are both black. If you look in the background you can see a green OH-6. I could be wrong, of course, but certainly the AH-6C's were black leter on.

Matt,

Thanks for the info as always.

Ray

Hi all.

Following on the "wow they sit low" thread. The first OH58's the 160th got had these weird skid tubes that allowed the ground crews to...get this...by using a regular speed wrench on all four points, you lititerally screwed the tubes up and down.

You can see this configuration on EDWMatt airworthiness pictures of the JOH58 here: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....howtopic=200876

This was due to air transportability problems, and the verticle fin also turned 90 degrees as you see on the Delta model. So you can picture rolling the a/c off the 130 or 141 and cranking the skids up to full height and rotating the vertical fin and tightening the bolts. Didn't make for a very speedy offload time till crank.

The 6's just roll on/off...you fold/unfold the blades, pin/unpin them and voila you are airborne in as little as 2 1/2 or 3 minutes from the time you are down the ramp and roll to a stop. We used to have contest! Also, you could load a LB much faster than you can believe. In the dead of night, zero illumination, you can load a 130 and be off in minutes.

The first 160th 6's had 260 pods. Never saw or used a 158 pod. Perhaps they used the 158's for airworthness test. But although individual tubes can be changed out on the 158, loading a unloading rockets is somewhat more difficult using a 158. Unloading especially.

GT

Edited by AH6C-SIP
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The first 160th 6's had 260 pods. Never saw or used a 158 pod. Perhaps they used the 158's for airworthness test. But although individual tubes can be changed out on the 158, loading a unloading rockets is somewhat more difficult using a 158. Unloading especially.

GT

GT's right, we used 158 pods during airworthiness testing at Edwards. The pods were merely "shapes" to provide representative drag, so we had several old unserviceable 158 pods that were no longer suitable for live fire that we used on test aircraft. I dropped a whole bunch of old junk 158's when we were doing asymmetric stores jettison testing on the Apache.

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I am trying to figure out the genesis of the MH (transport) version of the very first Little Birds and I have been reading "The Night Stalkers" by Michael Durant and Steven Hartov.

In it they mention that Delta snipers were initially carried in the rear of the Little Birds (which I presume were unarmed OH-6As). The snipers were having difficulty shooting from the rear cabin and Ken Jacobs and Mike Hoffman came up with the early "People Planks" to allow the snipers to perch outside the helicopter and shoot. The book also mentions that the helicopters struggled to get off the ground when out-fitted with the benches and carrying the snipers.

This would seem to indicate that the OH-6A was first used in the MH-transport role, carrying two soldiers in the rear compartment and it was then converted with the "People Planks". It was then found to be underpowered and limited by the original OH-6A transmission and TF158 then purchased the more powerful Hughes 500D which became the MH-6E. Can anyone confirm if this is correct sequence of events that led to the MH-6E?

The book mentions that around twenty Little Birds were in use by TF158 in the late summer of 1980 and that six went to Eglin AFB and became the AH-6C (They would appear to be the six AH-6Cs that appear lined up on an air base ramp and are mentioned throughout this thread by GT), so were the other fourteen converted in to early MH-6 transport helicopters and EH-6Bs?

If anyone (GT, Doug or Matt?) can help with this part of Little Bird history, I would be very grateful. Thanks.

LD.

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