Guest Fred Bear Posted March 2, 2007 Posted March 2, 2007 While out at work last week (and having a few hrs up my sleeve) I visited Bankstown Airport in Sydney and had a look at the Kaman K-MAX helicopter. An interesting machine to say the least. Has a contra-rotating blade system. Jason, one of the pilots, was happy to show me around and give me a close-up look on the other side of the perimeter. He also explained to me there were 31 built and now only 21 flying. The other 10 have crashed. It is leased by the Aust Govt to fight fires here in the fire season. Also used for the same at its home in the US of A and also for logging/Dept of Forestry. These pics are not the best quality as again they were shot from my phone.
Ben Longden Posted March 2, 2007 Posted March 2, 2007 Love the P-Plate!! I take it that he is restricted to 100 knots then.... ;) Ben
Guest Fred Bear Posted March 2, 2007 Posted March 2, 2007 I was going to mention that Ben. Ha ha. Yes, the cruise on it is 100kts or so (funny you should mention that). Now, off to do some flying...:big_grin:
Allan Posted March 2, 2007 Posted March 2, 2007 Weird looking! More info at http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=258
Student Pilot Posted March 3, 2007 Posted March 3, 2007 One thing the photos don't show is the size of the thing. There were a couple of these out here a few years ago and I had a close look, I'm 5'14.5" and my eyeline is level with the bottom of the window. The rotor system is wacky as well. They have rigid heads with wooden blades, the blades actually twist to give varying control. Those tabs out the blades are actually servo tabs, they control the twist of the blades and it changes as the blades go round. I was working with a bloke on a chopper on the ground next to where the Kmax was parking, the bloke in the Kmax came in and dropped 1500 litres of water on his parking spot to keep the dust down. I was working about 50 metres away and didn't get a drop on me. The blades while flying have a fairly low rotation speed (I'd guess at about 300 rpm) and appear to be diverging in flight. It looks really wierd like it's about to fly to pieces. The ones that were here last were Jumping Jack Flash and Wild Thang, I think Wild Thang has since pranged with the loss of the pilot.
Guest brentc Posted March 3, 2007 Posted March 3, 2007 I've seen this chopper at Bankstown and have read a bit about them. Although many have crashed, they have been very high time machines, so much so that at the hours they had on them they were probably close to end-of-life. Add that to the extreme working conditions they work under potentially 24x7 accidents happen so it would be hard to say that they are an unsafe aircraft.
Student Pilot Posted March 3, 2007 Posted March 3, 2007 Also the work they do is at the dangerous end of the operating envelope, slinging logs and fire buckets, these are hard working machines.
pylon500 Posted March 11, 2007 Posted March 11, 2007 Totally weird things to watch fly, especially head on, with the angle that the blades are set to one another it almost appears to 'flap' instead of rotate. They look like a dragonfly when flying head on. Also very quiet, no screaming gearbox or tail rotor sounds, or even much blade 'whock', more like a wooshing sound.
Guest Fred Bear Posted March 11, 2007 Posted March 11, 2007 Kind of like your remote control plane hey Arthur :ah_oh:;)
pylon500 Posted March 12, 2007 Posted March 12, 2007 ike your remote control plane No, I thought that was more of a SPLAT sound!!
Guest Fred Bear Posted March 12, 2007 Posted March 12, 2007 We will get some video of it next week and post here. Ha ha
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