UNDISCLOSED LOCATION -- The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19) recently hosted pilots and engineers from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 21, at sea, to help improve flying conditions for the UH-1Y Venom.
For pilots who fly the UH-1Y Venom, a helicopter also known as the Super Huey, the HX-21 visit couldn’t come soon enough.
“It’s been a known problem since the Marine Corps accepted the UH-1Y with the LPD class ships that the expanded spots have very small wind envelopes,” said Navy Lt. Jameson McCort, the air officer aboard USS Mesa Verde.
For the Super Hueys, which were certified by the Marine Corps in August 2008, there had been no previous testing aboard a San Antonio class amphibious transport dock, leaving pilots with only a generic flight envelope in which to operate.
The deployed 24th MEU wasted no time after identifying the issue in requesting immediate support from HX-21 while underway in support of maritime operations in the 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operation.
“The Marines and Sailors on this ship took action from the bottom up,” said Maj. Joseph Kennedy, an HX-21 developmental project pilot.
Kennedy also commented that the MEU’s sense of urgency got the attention of his program office.
“Never before, that I’m aware of, have we gone to an operational unit, integrated with them and conducted a developmental test,” said Kennedy.
Once the Patuxent River, Maryland-based team arrived aboard USS Mesa Verde, they immediately went to work familiarizing themselves with the wind dynamics of the ship and began planning.
“The biggest challenge is that this is a higher-risk test, and that’s due to not knowing what’s out there,” said Kennedy. “Our job is to push the envelope as far out as we can and still make it safe.”
HX-21’s flight test engineers, including Kristen Finnegan, who received an aeronautical engineering degree from Pennsylvania State University, teamed up with the naval officers and crew of USS Mesa Verde to adjust the severity of conditions experienced over the flight deck.
“We have the true winds and then we work with the bridge and request the ship to sail at different courses and speeds to obtain different relative winds across the deck,” said Finnegan. “We have the test pilots launch and recover in those winds and rate them as safe or unsafe.”
During their time at sea, their efforts were occasionally thwarted by fair winds and fallow seas.
“Some of the challenges were just based off the winds,” said McCort. “There were days when Mother Nature just did not cooperate and give us the winds we needed to operate in the regimes they had to fly, so it took a little more time than expected.”
Adding to the complexity, was the requested configuration of the aircraft. Carrying personnel and equipment increases weight, requiring more torque and lift, which the test squadron needed to simulate.
“We fly with the heaviest weight possible to figure out the maximum torque they would ever need and that it’s within aircraft’s limits to make sure they have a certain margin,” said Finnegan. “We worked with the MEU and their maintenance department and they were kind enough to configure the aircraft so that we were almost at maximum gross weight.”
The aircraft maintainers weren’t the only personnel aboard the ship the test squadron pilots relied on.
“We rely on the ship for their LSE’s, deck crew, Marines for METOC, so there’s definitely support for us, said Finnegan.”
During their time aboard USS Mesa Verde, HX-21 pilots were able to fly nearly continuously for two weeks, a testament the hard work and dedication of Marines and Sailors.
“It was an excellent evolution. I thought everyone performed admirably, especially the aviation combat element maintainers, who did an excellent job out there, and the flight deck crew who held in tough,” said McCort. “It was a long couple of weeks but they knocked it out of the park, so I think it was a good job all around.”
The 24th MEU hopes to receive an interim clearance to fly in the expanded wind envelopes once the data have been analyzed.
“The short-term hope is they give us a product we can use for the next few months, but that’s like an icing on the cake,” said McCort. “The big picture is the Marine Corps as a whole is going to get operable wind limits for the UH-1Y on LPD class ships, which as we are starting to see is becoming more and more the norm.”