US Army converted S-55 into Mil Mi 24s…

If you have a two bladed system you can overlap another one and have 4 blades, Bell comes to mind.

I understand the Bell two and four-blade systems are completely different.

5 bladed hub for S-55….how?

I was thinking along the same line, but the S-61 weighed more than twice that of the S-62 and even more so for the S-55.
Therefore the hub would have been “huge” compared to the older one and also what about the weight of the hub and the Transmission Mast fitting, etc, etc?
Who knows the answer?

If you have a two bladed system you can overlap another one and have 4 blades, Bell comes to mine. But from a three to five?

Did they build new hubs for the 5 blades?
Were they tested and approved, etc.
Since the S-55/H-19 and S-62/HH-52 had three blades how did they attach two more rotor blades to the hub?

Good question. One I’ve wondered about.
The 5-bladed system must have been approved for the Whisper Jet which had a civil approval…and I’m assuming it was the same system fitted to the Hind look alikes. However, if the S-55 Hind had a different unit, it would not have to be FAA-approved because it wasn’t a commercial aircraft.

Since designing, building and approving a 5 bladed system must ave been expensive, I’m wondering it it isn’t an adaptation of the S-61 unit?
Then again, Hughes 500s went from 4 to 5-bladed rotor heads…so perhaps it’s not that great of change…but I doubt it.

3 to 5 blade….hub

Did they build new hubs for the 5 blades?
Were they tested and approved, etc.
Since the S-55/H-19 and S-62/HH-52 had three blades how did they attach two more rotor blades to the hub?

The S55 & S62 used many of the same components for the rotors.
Both were three bladed except for a 4 bladed prototype.

The Orlando Helicopter group was involved in the Hind look-alike program.
When interest (funding?) died. the firm (or a successor…I ve read where the original firm had some legal issues) whent on to convert a few surplus airframes into “Whispern Jet” with the five blade rotor system seen on the “Hind” above.

The idea was to convert them to turbine, fit new rotor systems, and use them for sightseeing use. Dubbed the S-55QT it had nine seats and a odd feature was the removal of the origin Sikorsky fuel cell and fitting a “glass” floor for sightseeing use.

They did a few which were used at the Grand Canyon. I saw one at the HAI convention back in 2003-4.

The firm had a comound full of surplus airframes at the remote Chandler Memorial Field –(home of many firebombers and not to be confused with Chandler Municipal)– south of Phoenix.
They were recently moved to Casa Grande, AZ.
I guess hope springs eternal and a few more “Whisper Jets” might be built.

theres a film on youtube purporting to show a hind being shot down in afghanistan by a stinger, however it is not a hind as it has a 3 blade main rotor and 2 blade tail and as it breaks up you can see the engine is in the nose, could it be one of these?

Thinking back, that may have been the fate of the Thruxton one

Sticky847,

Yes. Some of the missile test/helo footage is in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wobG_68P_LE

theres a film on youtube purporting to show a hind being shot down in afghanistan by a stinger, however it is not a hind as it has a 3 blade main rotor and 2 blade tail and as it breaks up you can see the engine is in the nose, could it be one of these?

Who knew that the US Army converted S-55 helicopters into fake Mil Mi -24 Hinds..

Most readers of Flypast should as they ran an article on it.

I remember seeing a British Whirlwind mocked up in the same way at Thruxton in about 1983. I doubt that one ever flew.

also note that the normal 3 bladed main rotor was replaced with a five bladed one.

The Hind A helicopters were definately made from SA330 puma helicopters with a fake nose bolted on in front of the cockpit were used in red dawn but the pilots complained about the lack of forward vision as the fake nose extended out about a metre in front of the real cockpit that is why when they were used in Rambo 2 & 3 they were just standard puma’s with fake markings.

The US army studied making a Hind copy in the 1980’s for training but did not do it in the end as they got the real thing from Iraq during the gulf war.

Curlyboy

There were 19 S-55’s being converted very publicly at Sanford, Florida in 1990. The work was done by Orlando helicopters and they were very acessable, saw one on a test flight. The nose was ‘false’ with the cockpit being where the normal Hind engine intakes would be. No idea what happened to them but assume they were ‘consumed’ by the US Army.