MV-22 Osprey

[GNEP]

Saw a couple of tilt-rotor aircraft yesterday flying over my house. Never seen any before, so I did a bit of Googling. Apparently they were MV-22 Ospreys, on their first visit to the UK...

To be honest, this surprised me slightly: when I saw them I thought that they were something from a museum - these things look like they were designed and built in the 60s

I looked out of the window for them because they really didn't sound like normal helicopters - and lo and behold they weren't... noisy beggars.

Anyway, looks like these are being rolled out to the US marines at the mo.

Interesting. Would you call them a plane or a helicopter? Or just an "aircraft"?

[Dr Mordrid]

More pictures....

You call them a tilt-rotor VTOL (vertical take off and landing). They take off/land vertically like a chopper but fly like an airplane. Their design is meant to be functional, not pretty, and is similar to the XV-15 tilt-rotor demonstrator of 1980;



The wide/long/flat fuselage is typical for troop transports and the bubble window is for maximum visibility. The dual tail is for stability and redundency and the wings/rotor can't be done too many ways other than this.

The Osprey tilt-rotor had a difficult gestation due to hydraulic problems that forced a redesign, but is now set to replace the CH-53E Super Stallion and CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters for rapid deployments and on carriers. Like the choppers it replaces it can be folded for stowage on a carrier or transport.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/v-22-bld-wing-seq.htm

A mission that would take the choppers 2 hours to insert could be done in a fraction of the time with the much faster flying Osprey; 248 knots vs. 130 knots for the choppers. This makes it sensitive to enemy fire for a much shorter time, plus it can drop & scoot much faster than a chopper.

[cjolley]

It used to be something of a death trap.
Have they gotten the bugs ironed out?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. The hydraulic problem that caused early failures was found/fixed in the redesign. Another crash was found to be pilot error.

[GNEP]

Cool. I guess these would be useful for air-sea rescue further out to sea? (I mean out of range of normal helicopters - presumably the downdraft on these things is pretty extreme making conventional helis still preferably in the coastal regions?)

Also I wonder would a variant of these be able to land on the water? Like a float plane? Doesn't look like it would take much modification, and you'd be able to cope with much rougher water than yer average boat-plane.

[borat]

Lush peice of kit, saw it in the flesh at fairford air show yesterday and thought it was awesome.

One thing though, a normal chinook has a rotor at each end of the load so its always going to be pretty stable. As all of the lift is across the middle of the load on this won't it be unstable if the load is not distributed almost exactly evenly?IE too much at front or back?

[Dr Mordrid]

It uses fly-by-wire (digital flight controls) like modern fighters. This makes 'em very, VERY stable in hover...as in station keeping.

Its range depends on the configuration & load, but the max is 500 nautical miles or 2,600 nm with one air refueling & addon tanks. This allows it to self-deploy, something choppers cannot do.

Imagine what that would have meant during last years hurricane season. One of the main problems was having to ship in choppers. Flying them that distance would mean repair first, rescue later.

There will be a ton of 'em; the Marines will be purchasing 360 MV-22's, the USAF 50 CV-22's (special ops), the Navy 48 HV-22's (air-sea rescue) and Israel is very interested.

[DGhost]

I'd ride in one any day. Shame i'm in the wrong branch to do it...