Meanwhile, in Canada

[james_davis_nicoll]

Canada to replace helicopters unfit for service with helicopters unfit for service.

The important thing is the people making money from this transaction won't have to fly in the new helicopters.

Comments

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

A few of those requirements should have been non-negotiable...

In Canada these should be no-brainers.
"Crew comfort systems during extreme temperature operations."
"The ability to self start in very cold weather."

And I would think this would be on par with airbags in cars. Simple.
"A system to automatically deploy personnel life rafts in emergency situations."




Sikorsky should have had its pants sued off, not given concessions. I also didn't notice a 'shipping date' for these inferior choppers. How many more years is it going to be?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I worked on helicopter safety systems in the (US) Marine Corps. I'm on board with all of those _except_ for the auto-deploying rafts. The CH-46 was built with such a system, and eventually they were all removed. The problem was inadvertent deployment in flight, and now the helicopter is dragging around a bunch of inflated balloons which is very bad for aerodynamics.

The obvious solution is "prevent inadvertent deployment!" but helicopter flight over water involves a lot of spray, and an automatic system sufficiently insensitive to reject false activations from being soaked with spray, is also likely to not activate sufficiently quickly when it is actually immersed in water due to an emergency.