Agusta AW109 Detailed helicopter review startup flight

[Music] hey everyone today we're at sikorsky airport here in bridgeport connecticut i'm here with my good friend andrew hayden who is irish so we probably can't understand anything he says but i'll translate for you this aw 109 which is part of your fleet it is tell us a little bit about your your company what do you think uh company is azimuth aviation we are based right here at three wing aviation at sikorsky memorial and the company is less than six months old and we are focusing on public uh public transport 135 charter market uh which is executive split from one vip transportation new york city to the hamptons to boston to wherever they want to go yeah and as a point of interest three-wing aviation are the people that taught me how to fly the fixed-wing so allegedly allegedly yeah no actual license yet yet to be proven yes so the 109 is a very interesting aircraft very popular light twin isn't it yes even the new zealand air force has five of these as their training aircraft yeah that they didn't know what does the irish air force have some sort of hand glider they currently have ec145 i believe all right so we'll uh we'll do a tour around the aircraft and we'll have a look at all the many buttons and dials and and pulleys and wheels you know and then we'll we'll take it for a quick flight okay so starting at the nose what have we got in the nose andrew well we got the nose the nose in the front from this aircraft we have the battery compartment and on the other side we have an avionics bay where there's uh some of the heli pilot systems and the transponder etc so there's a nike battery up the front here and as you can see on the other side we've got some of the avionics equipment so the gps receiver antenna on the nose we've got the actual transponder receiver in there as well and some of the the heli pilot system and this is the quick release there's a quick release on the battery so usually the end of the day we will disconnect that right quick release easy connect easy disconnect sure and that's being a turbine helicopter we like to have a full charge yeah so a fully charged battery prior to flight is a good thing i mean the aircraft last few last flew three days ago so no concern today but if it was sitting for any longer than that we keep it trickle charged yeah it's interesting isn't it aircraft wire is always this the standard white impossible to know yeah and those harnesses there's an awful lot of an awful lot of stuff going on there yeah i have no idea where they all go [Laughter] we'll just cut this one and see let's not do that all right it says gps so that is one of the two gps antennas the other one is mounted on the top of the vertical fin of the back of the aircraft oh right up there so being that this aircraft is uh ifr capable single pilot ifr capable there's two of pretty much everything okay so uh that was a two gps antennas we can have a look at the avionics bay so we've got uh flight director interface unit enunciator test uh annunciator unit we have some what else we got here uh the garmin gps units and we've got the gtx 333 es i believe is the transponder which remotely connects into the avionics system in this by that i mean i have touch screen gps's in there that i can just punch in the code right on the screen which interfaces with the the unit down here and what's this big black box who knows that is the symbol generator for the uh 40 sim uh system which is the the attitude indicator okay yeah help help the pilot assistance correct stuff right very cool pilot primary flight in the car yeah flight display yeah they're secured now one of the cool things about this aircraft is under here it's got retractable landing gear doesn't it yes we have tricycle landing gear two main and one nose wheel yep and the maximum operating speed and maximum blow vle maximum operator and extending speed is 120 knots so we must have the gear retracted prior to 120 knots and on the landing we will not drop the landing gear until we are below 120 knots at a habit i do that at about 100 knots so what do you think the having the retractable gear what how much speed does this give you do you think it's it's quite a noticeable amount of drag when we drop the landing gear so you when we do that in flight you'll feel it's like putting the brakes on a little bit definitely allowing us to go that extra 25 or 30 knots quicker with the barrel yeah okay so substantial substantial okay so walking around we won't go in here yet but we've got a refueling port so we have two main and one auxiliary tanks on the aircraft this is the left main uh filling point the right main and auxiliary tanks filler ports are on the other side um up here this is an access panel to get to the transmission deck if i open this one up you'll be able to see this is where we have the two engine oil tanks so i can check the engine levels right there right they're checked this morning about about midway which is so how do you check do you actually take the uh there's there's a sight glass there that you can see if i shake the aircraft you might be able to see the fluid level down a little bit yeah there you go oh very cool okay so speaking of the transmission should one engine fail yeah two engine operation if one engine should fail the other engine will ramp up uh to be able to continue flight this aircraft we can't sustain crew speed but we slow it down yep so you can slow down you have sustained flight capability with single engine so one engine and opera we can continue flight right and you would never notice you would notice that the all matter of noises and beeping going on in the cockpit but yes all right i won't be demonstrating that for you today okay fine okay this is the number one engineer intake so engine feeding engine number one here engine number one is under this access panel here which we can have a look at the engines are allison 250 c20r engines right because there's a variety of engines that come in this aircraft aren't there now there are the later models have pratt whitney's i believe yep so engineer engine comes in here goes through the compressor comes off through the diffuser down the side of the engine into the combustion chamber forward through the turbine and out the exhaust on both sides it looks almost identical on the other side it does right they are identical engines that is cool so what is this intake that is the cooling air inlet for the number one starter generator so the starter generator is in operation right the whole time we used to start the aircraft and then it's running to provide electric electrical power to some of the systems so uh to prevent it from overheating there is a little intake here right sucks area and keeps things cool yep so there are actually four exhausts up there there are two for each engine uh on either side of the turbine the uh there's an exhaust stack that comes out from each engine so it's two two per engine what you're seeing here is uh there's a cooler oil cooler oil yep right and in here you can see the drive shaft coming out of the number one engine right which goes into a combination unit that drives the tail oh okay oh so this is this is what's driving the tile correct okay so how far back does the luggage compartment so the cargo bay starts here at the front of the forward uh the cargo bay door and goes all the way back to you that's going to say that it seems to be a lot of birmingham so there's quite a bit of room let me uh see what mess i've got in here not a whole lot you can go in there and you can see that the cargo bay goes quite a way oh yeah right back there that's the elt yeah over there mounted oh yeah that's a 406 megahertz elt give that a try today let's not do that let's not do that okay okay this is not fun no absolutely not um so this is a stabilator as opposed to a stabilizer uh stabilizers being fixed units stabilators moving so when i lift the collective this will move at the same time and the purpose is to allow the aircraft to fly level in forward flights as aircraft like other twins in this market is designed for passenger comfort comfort right so i'll go lift the collective for you you can see this thing move ah yes not a lot of movement it's not a whole lot but it makes all the difference you notice the aircraft flies level in most of its range of flight oh so instead of being a nose-down attitude at speed it's much more it's going to keep the aircraft i see it interesting and then we get to the tail rotor yep so the other gps antenna that we were talking about earlier on right up on the top of the vertical fin um two bladed yeah it's kind of stubby isn't it yeah it actually the terror authority in this aircraft is pretty good um the uh there's an access panel here a window that we can see through to the tethered gearbox oil level quite a lot of attention paid to the tail rotor on the 109 in a pre-flight make sure everything is good we don't want anything going on with the pitch change links here yep the rubber boot the safety wiring is actually an airworthiness directive that has to be checked prior to every single flight right um this here like i say that every single day um so a lot of attention given to the tail rotor before on a pre-flight which was done this morning yes okay around we go to this side we can get access to the very aft end of the tail rotor control rod through this access panel here and the underside of the tail order gearbox that's the filling port for the tail rotor gearbox okay so we can we can add oil there and then you can see that the tail rotor control rod oh i see yep there's actually also a place you need to go and check there's a little as you're pushing your pedals this is back and forth that's correct and that's that's all unassisted that's there's no hydraulics there is there is uh the main the collective cyclic and terror pedal and terror are all hydraulically boosted in this aircraft yeah there's actually two hydraulic systems in the aircraft for redundancy okay and both systems are fully redundant on all controls no the number one system uh does not drive the tailor order one of the systems does not drive the taillights so you've got collective cyclic and tailored pedals on one system and just collective and cyclic on the other side strong legs that fit yeah a little bit of pressure yeah bit efficient yeah so at the bottom of the tail the vertical stabilizer you got the stinger uh stinger as a last chance defense mechanism in case the uh we were dropped the tail too low it would help us level the aircraft and protect the tail rotor from striking the ground which would be bad let's just feel here how many times have you struck this lately oh i'm going to go with nothing oh really [Laughter] nothing that i'm aware of once again today maybe refuel ports this is the number two engine right side fuel cap auxiliary fuel cap we can add an extra 40 gallons in here um it's 210 it's actually 213 kilograms of jet fuel in each main tank which would give you what sort of ah that's like about two hours right two hours of flight time um and uh some extra if you wanted any auxiliary see now we also have an access panel here give us a look into the right side main landing gear bay you can have a look in there so this is the bay up into which the right main landing gear retracts it's quite rough sucks it right up in there yeah so what happens is this door actually opens up wheel comes up and it all closes up again oh so this door here opens up yeah see the hinge the hinge points here so it's quite a complex mechanism it is it is the later models don't have the same they have the e-model and onward have a slightly different configuration which is a little simpler so we can also see in these here that is the number two airframe fuel filter and some more avionics magic going on in here yep some of the links for the flight control systems you can see them there yep i see yeah so where are the hydraulics so the hydraulic reservoirs are just up here so you can see the hydraulic fluid levels here so oh yeah there's a normal and an emergency hydraulic system so one tank is slightly bigger than the other you can see the levels are nominal yep hydraulic fluids there's also some filters up there with bypass indicators that are required to be checked before flight which again was done this morning so that's where the tanks are the uh and with uh a lot of helicopters you get a little bit of hydraulic leakage is it true of this aircraft you do get a little bit of hydraulic leakage it's it's very minor on this aircraft i'll show you the drain points in just a second but on the topic of the hydraulic uh the actuators i can show you one of the actuators right here oh they're way up there yeah so so this is for the that the rain rider is one of the one of the hydraulic servos right okay there's another one on the other side i see so there's three in total yeah and they're vertical yeah yeah the vertical because you can see the rotating stationary swash plate is what it's pushing on there to to change the that's cool change position oh well when we make this when we make a cyclic input that's what's going to move yeah yeah yeah let's talk a little bit about this uh rotor system as well yes so this is a four bladed fully articulated rotor system yep um so we should have no trouble flying upside down well yeah no no flying upside down not a rigid system not very many helicopters can be flying upside down so four blade is going to be a great deal more smooth a great deal smoother than a two blade for a start isn't it yeah so they tend to be um a little smoother they're a little more complex to do the track and balance on right but once they're uh properly track and balance they tend to be extremely smooth this aircraft is actually really well balanced so it's extremely smooth and cruise flight which is great for customers [Music] uh you got two pitot tubes at the top of the the top of the uh forward canopy here to make it look angry to make it look angry yes uh with the pitot heat on you don't want to touch those they get a little bit warm oh okay okay and this is a an outside air temperature gauge let's have a quick look in the cabin this is where the uh that's where nick stores all this camera that's where i can store my camera equipment so excuse me passenger number one is already on board we already have uh mr gorilla so ideally you're four or five people in here this aircraft the 109 is originally configured for six in the back the interior on this particular aircraft was uh refurbished about four or five years ago and the rearward-facing middle seat was removed to provide some storage space um and actually in this aircraft the seat bases were shortened slightly to provide a little bit of extra leg room so we do have five seats five seat belts in the back three forward facing and two rearward facing and three-way yep we've got a shoulder harness with a lap belt right for each passenger and air conditioned yep air conditioning and lights overhead uh for passengers yeah very nice yep all right you comfortable back there william yeah executive and it's quiet enough back there that you could have a conversation without the headset on it's yeah it's not it wouldn't be the first choice but there are people who sometimes choose to take their headsets off in flight all right let's get in and have a look at all the steam gauges [Applause] okay so starting at the top here we have the caution and warning panel oh yes okay so originally this aircraft had a bunch of radios here number one number two com radio number one number two nav radio dme and transponder right so upgrades to this particular aircraft those have been replaced and now we have a an intercom control panel in the center and we have two garmin gtn 650 touchscreen yeah navcom units so these talk to each other and we can uh this radio frequencies navigation frequencies transponder and moving map this aircraft also pulls in xm information for weather etc this is a garmin gmx 200 unit which provides a bigger map for us we can also pull in on the xm you're going to see tfr information up there okay it can display ifr uh charts up there as well and other aircraft uh you won't see the other aircraft on actually you want the aircraft on the gmx200 you'll get the traffic warning on the gtn 650s the way this one's going to be configured tomorrow so on the left side we have co-pilot set of flight instruments which are basic flight instruments with an attitude indicator airspeed indicator altimeter uh navigation so we can do an ils that's uh those are both navigation and then we've got a vertical speed indicator right there moving across we've got a number one and number two engine fuel quantity you'll see that it's configured in kilograms so 20 would be 200 kilograms on the left tank and same on the right tack and then the auxiliary tank information is at the top oh i see oh they're looking right so that little tiny needle then we've got the uh number one and number two uh ammeters yep which uh and then we've got hydraulic pressure so number one and two hydraulic pressure system pressures fuel pressure number one and number two transmission oil temperature and pressure so these are number one and number two engine indications gas producer in one speed tot turbine outlet temperature and engine oil temperature and pressure right okay so let me just ask quickly so with the with the engine speeds um there's no way of separating them i assume everything whatever you're doing with the throttle is is it is i do have the ability to control um the torque matching between the engines by left right on the switch here and the collective which would change the engine speed slightly so i can make number one lead number two oh i see uh and i can also forward and back i can increase and decrease the engines the engine speeds to get to keep the uh keep the speed 100 right generally don't have to mess with that but you do have to play a little bit with the matching of the torques they sometimes split a little bit when you're taking taking off atlantic and on startup are you always starting number one first and then number two or you keep doing reverse so they're staying the same amount of time there's a convention so today is the 26th it's an even number so i'm gonna start engine number two first today because it's an even number we've got a standby attitude indicator okay this is my um my rotor attack which you can see the r and the number one and number two engine tax so this standby this is a standby to this that yeah this is the standby yep that's copilot's primary and on the e40 system you've got a fancy one yeah yeah they're on top right we'll get to see that when we start i'm in the posh seat over here yeah yeah yeah you got all the fancy yeah i got here i got all the you know 1960s stuff right here exactly okay and then um pilots pilots flight indications on uh fight excuse me pilots flight instruments on the right here so this is an ephesus 40 system so i'm going to have an eadi up here and an ehsi down here so is this what the uh that big black box was controlled correct right it's a symbol generator for that right okay then this is the uh this is my airspeed indicator and the same instruments as on the other side altimeter vertical speed got a rad out here as well yeah so the radar actually uh feed is feeds into this so i it can set a decision altitude on there and the light will come on oh i hit the decision out right right and then uh and where is that radar it's in the the antenna the antenna it's underneath yeah right right yeah okay this is the uh elt controls so for the um the ack or 406 megahertz elt that we have installed and um there's the ipod controller you've got the ipod controller here um so i can feed in some audio there yes uh interestingly there's one there was one installed in the back for the passengers too yeah you could you could play a nick murray youtube channel yeah you could you could and there's a clock here as well nice all right all right so you'll see when we start up this is primary worn as the warning and caution panel if we get a warning light flashes yellow okay caution light flashes yellow yep warning light flashes red and these can reset them okay that's how we stop the noise and just about all of these have got something behind there everything has something behind it so it's pretty cool at night correct uh we we we like we like dark oh we like dark we like dark oh you you want to have many lights clean enough as possible yes yeah no lights no lights okay so so something new here this is not uh common on the helicopter this bit um it's common on some helicopters landing gear uh landing control so you can see it's in the down position right now uh as soon as we get airborne past vtos take off safety speed we can bring the gear up and you just pull pull the handle out a little bit lift it up it has a third position which is down emergency which if we needed to um if the gear didn't go down on its own we would have to break the wire here i see this is uh shear wire so it's actually fairly easy to break this it's in the normal position right now but if i wanted to drop the gear down in an emergency i can flip that over and then drop the gear all the way down sorry that's going to use the emergency hydraulic hydraulic accumulator to add an extra visibility but it could could it drop with just gravity it could but i don't know that it would lock that's a good question actually i don't know if it's going to be so while we're down here i guess everyone's going to wonder though if you're on the ground and everything's running and you push up will it lift the will it drop the aircraft on the ground uh the former augusta techcraft says no it will not i will not be trying it okay and the reason that it's not going to do that is on the left main landing gear wheel and i'll show you the switch in a little bit there's a thing called a weight on we will switch we call it a wow switch so it knows that the aircraft is on the ground okay and that serves a number of functions one it will not allow the gear to go up if we were to raise that lever it also triggers the emergency hydraulic hydraulic system to recharge for 30 seconds every time that switch is engaged so it permanently keeps the emergency hydraulic system charged you'll notice that they're they're both just a hair under 500 psi of pre-charge pressure that's the pre-charge pressure in the hydraulic accumulators and those are under the nose under the battery compartment here on the right right front of the aircraft these are my brakes your brakes my brakes that's my my parking brake oh yeah parking braking downhill the only problem is that because these systems are discharged right now it requires hydraulic pressure in order to uh to work so if you are the owner of an augusta 109 um you should probably chalk the aircraft when when you when you land as you have done as i've done because if you over a period of time if that hydraulic pressure discharges the brakes won't hold anyone right so you don't even turn it on normally i noticed it it wasn't on because the aircraft was in rolling around um when we when we start up i'll put it on for the startup and as soon as the system charges up it's going to put the brakes on the nose wheel lock here is off right now because the aircraft has just towed out it should be up and locked for flight and there is a pin that drops down to keep it to the to the nose wheel which stops it from turning really so if it's locked and you are taxiing how do you turn the air before taxing the aircraft we would leave it off right for a flight it is locked it is on yeah and then for a running landing uh in the event that we need to do that we would do that with it on there is enough authority by pushing the tail around to steer the aircraft if it uh so we don't want it fluttering around when we're flying around okay so uh co-pilot has his audio control panel here pilot has his audio control panel here and down here we've got two sas systems stability augmentation systems um aircraft's significantly more stable with both of those on they will not stay on i can't turn those switches on right now we need the vertical gyros to be up to full speed before those those systems will stay on we also have um couplings so these are making you seem like a better pilot yeah uh yes make it making up for your shoddy my chardonnay flying yeah yeah i like to call it pilot and juice smoothness i didn't trademark that turnout with someone else okay and then we can couple and decouple the flight director from the autopilot um and then we have an auto trim system which uh keeps these apis trimmed out so that the the system doesn't doesn't reach full authority on the uh hydraulic actuators okay and an attitude hold which is all part of the the autopilot and water flight system so there's a lot here to keep this aircraft absolutely and to reduce the workload on the pilot correct now that is also true uh for general handling of the aircraft in that i don't move the flight controls without depressing the four stream release button so when we're flying oh really in order to move the flight controls push and hold the switch manipulate the flight controls to the position that you want them in release the switch and they will stay wow and they're they're held by magnetic brakes okay um so once the autopilot is engaged um uh i can just if we're let's say on altitude and heading hold which i can control from the the autopilot control here so we've got altitude hold engaged and heading hold engaged this is the heading book all i have to do to turn the aircraft is turn the helping bug so this is a truly hands-free uh aircraft it can be yeah yes you can take a sleep single pilot i have our capable so it is um have you flown at ifr i have not flown this one if i know down here we'll get to this in just a second before we get to that the collective yes so i have my landing light controls here and my hands are dirty because we were down on the aircraft few minutes ago um so you see it's in the retracted position right now that would be the on position off retracted it actually retracts up into the belly of the aircraft once again streamlining once it's on the light is on then i can use this to control the position and direction that the landing light is facing so it's extremely useful for coming into to land in say east 34th street or one of the heliports in manhattan and i also have when airspeed hold indicated airspeed hold is turned on in flight i can increase and decrease that in small increments right using a knot at a time okay and then there's the uh the go around button yes the go around button let's say we are making an approach and we decide we don't like that approach because we've now got a contaminated runway or we're told to go around by terror and i can obviously fly the aircraft away and execute the go around but there is another method i can push the go around button what that will do is it'll bring up the command bars on the uh 40 system i'll get pitch roll uh pitch cue roll cue and a collective cue so the aircraft will pitch wings level it will pitch itself for a climb and all i have to do is pull the power in to match the collective cue on the on the instrument making sure that i don't exceed any limits torque to t and one so let me ask you every time you hit to go around have you actually used that or did you just fly yourself i've used it in practice many times really that's the current training is an excellent thing i have never had to use it for real right okay um so moving down here we have the hydraulic system controls so uh both systems are on right now if i do that that's the number two system off that's back to both that that's the number one system off and we'll do that test on the run-up okay to make sure that both sides feel the uh the weight on the on the pedals you'll feel on you feel the weight on the pedals when we're in the when we're when we switch to um the number one off which is not boosted by so we're on the number two system meaning we're only boosting the the uh cyclic and collector okay so we go back to both there this these lights will show us when the normal and emergency hydraulic uh normal main and emergency hydraulic systems are charging right there's a test button here which uh illuminates the lights make sure the lights are working then we have fuel control panel here it draws a map from where the fuel goes tank number one tank number two these are the fuel pumps turn the fuel pumps on there are fuel electrical fuel boost pumps providing positive pressure for the fuel system up through a fuel valve number one to engine number one so is there a cross feed there is a cross feed wow so to turn the pumps off um what i could do if i have an imbalance of fuel between the tanks um either by uh by accident say maybe over fueling of one engine right i can leave these say number two was low i can leave number two fuel pumps off open the cross speed under power you'll see that little symbol will turn indicating that we have an open path between the number and uh feed both engines right so so and then you can monitor it with the your monitor with the fuel gauge your gauge is over here and there's 120 kilograms i think it's 120 kilogram difference permitted between left and right i see so if you got too close to that then your users cross feed and even it up yeah we like to fly them even yeah that's cool they should be floating as well okay moving back we've got landing gear position indicators left main nose wheel right main transit green green green red so when the when the landing gear is in motion or not lock that light will be illuminated will be red when all three wheels are down and locked we will get three greens okay again test button allows us to test the lights before flight right uh we can switch to slaves or or not mode uh what is this cyber enslave uh on the uh on the directional error okay just toggles on yep okay um intercom system on off radio master on off force trim on off the force trim is that system we were talking about on this guy here and the cycling here that um uh actually allows this button to actuate so if i if i turn the force trim system off i won't have to push the button right you're manually flying that's correct yep and then when the autopilot is engaged the force trim is on force trim should be on for the most part there's no reason to turn it off uh then we've got some of the uh navigation controls so we can switch around the modes on the eadi and the ehsi and the eadi so we can switch from number one or number two system this is gps number one and have number one gps2 nav number two and i can toggle between the two i can also show the range on the uh hsi i can change that up and down i can switch from a full compass to an arc there's also you'll see there's a radar test button there system reference button there and then i can set my decision height here i can set the brightness of the screens with this this is my obs indication and nick being a budding pilot should know what obs is that's the little needle on the ehsi oh okay okay i'm the only bearing selector yeah and then i've got the air conditioning controls vital in the sun yeah so i've got the fan in higher low mode i've got a test button to eliminate the light to show the compressor is working and we can be in fan mode off or air conditioning mode and then there's a uh a rear stack there that controls the let's have a quick look at these cyclics so we we talked about your this button correct and we've got it's your trigger for your firing of cannons missile firing yes so firing alternatively talking to atc oh okay right yep um yeah this guy down here this one uh doesn't do anything in this aircraft it looks good yeah and this one is the uh flight director standby so if i am in if i have any other flight director if i have the flight director on autopilot system engaged right so autopilot on a couple to the flight director pushing the ass we'll turn it off and i go back to manual flying okay so how's that different then so four stream just allows me to release the magnetic brakes on the side to move the controls release that and they they hold this one turns the autopilot system off effectively and this is just a trim this is a trim uh button so if i'm flying in attitude hold mode by that i mean i'm just flying along attitude hold mode so manually flying release the force trim they stay where they are if i'm a little bit nose up or a little bit nose down and i want to level the aircraft or a little bit left and right i can do that very much i can fine tune the aircraft with the cooling hat on the top of the cycle very cool okay but hang on a minute we haven't finished we're not done we're not done not done overhead here ahead so we have um kit from knight rider yeah we've got a bunch of circuit breakers here yeah we probably probably don't want to go through what all of those do but most of them should be in they should all be yeah okay yep um and then moving forward uh the wipers have been removed from these aircraft but this would be the wiper controls i see this will be the instrument and panel light controls we have anti-anti-collision lights and position light controls heater switch okay here i've got the uh engine anti-icing number one and two and the pitot heat number one and two and the vent switch to open up the vent without some fresh air in here and just to explain the wipers people hate having wipers on the helicopters because it's a perspex isn't it it just ends up damaging the perspex it does so most a lot of helicopters have been removed if they were originally installed yeah because it's very very rarely that you need them because you it's blowing there yeah you mean the speed of moving on most of the waters disappear yeah and then the front row switches here is my battery switch on the right my generator number one and two the generator bus number one and two and three inverters so there are three inverters for redundancy we actually uh don't need the multiply so let's say number one two and three are all switched on and number one inverter fails number three is going to take over right and it's going to do that automatically give me an indication on the on the warning panel so the inverter is providing power for what inverter is providing ac power so it's taking a dc system inverting it giving us ac power and some of the avionics run off ac oh okay the the uh the efus 40 system runs off um ac power some of the other avionics run off ac power yeah if you have a kettle in here you'd run it off right as well if you wanted to do that there are a few more circuit breakers over my head which are related to gyros the hsi and vertical drivers and the flight director system and there is actually a an auxiliary power outlet above your head behind you up top there so we can hook in the for example we would use that to power the the vibrational analysis equipment yep and for those porsche fans watching look at the carbon fiber trim on the vents that's pretty fancy yeah pretty fancy pretty fancy pay extra for that yeah air conditioning for a pilot co-pilot up yeah and then not finished yet this is my rotor brake okay so we got rotor brake here so that would be rotor brake engaged oh yeah and obviously we want it off for a flight right power levers engine number one engine number two starter button number one starter but number two in flight these would be in forward mode everything is forward for flight inverter switches generator buses everything is forward for flight okay so let us understand why we need these you don't if it's got a freewheeling hub while you're starting the engine this is it this is effectively engine at idle right and then we're going to run it all the way up to full to 100 speed 100 for flight so this is a this is like a throttle pretty much oh okay so how's this different than the throttle on the collector no throttle on the car this doesn't turn this doesn't have a throttle oh okay so once we are at 100 we're in flight yep see it says flight on the side we're all the way forward we're at 100 nr 100 number one engine 100 number two engine helicopters are basically a a a constant speed machine and then we're just varying the amount of power we're pulling from the engine in the form of torque so there's no uh there's no twist grip throttles that's all taken care of for us all we have to do is make sure that number one and number two engines are balanced which we can do with left and right on the uh on the incredible here and about match the torques on the torque gauge here so there's an inkadinka anchor dinker right finger tinker ah so this is really the throttle that's cool correct and it starts you're starting the engine so in this aircraft that's off if i'm going to start engine number one yep i'm going to push and hold the starter button yeah i'm going to look for 15 on the n1 gas producer when i hit 15 i'm going to go to idle that's going to introduce fuel that's going to light off the engine and i'm going to hold that button until i reach uh about 60 n1 then i can release it engines that idle that's it started oh nice and then the same procedure repeat the procedure for number two engine and are you looking for the same turbine telltales that you are and other manual turbines like the absolutely these being allison 250 engines it's almost exactly the same as uh as the jet ranger right that you've flown before so you're looking for yep temperature guy you don't care for n1 first 15 then you introduce fuel and you'll see light off you get two peaks on the t.o.t tot and not to exceed those limits then you'll see that oil pressure starts to rise or temperature will start to come up excellent wait till you get to idle something doesn't seem right go to the off position right and the the rotor brake how effective is that at slowing the rotor the rotor brake is only supposed to be engaged below 40 percent nr so 40 percent is down here so when we shut the engines off rotor's gone engines are going to come down roader's going to start coming down when we get to 40 we can we can apply the rotor brake and that will it's it slows the rotor down pretty quick to get it to a full stop um again it's driven by the hydraulic system so even if i pull it on right now because the hydraulic system is nothing is uh it's discharged it doesn't it's not having any effect yeah and we won't try that during flight i know okay it's not gonna be good okay okay uh i have my oet gauges up here i got some heater controls it's just three little switches oh yep okay mixing number one and number two so i've got shutoff valves or heater number number one number two up here and then i've got a little rheostat here which controls the uh the heater temperature the heater switch is here the main heater switch and then i have one little black button here secret button secret button what does that do it turns the light on so i can see the uh the temperature of the oet gateway fancy very fancy that's what that does all right okay let's um there's just just to finish there's a collective friction control here cyclic infection is down in my foot well right here oh yep and uh my vna chart is here yep and the button to pull your scene forward and uh yes a lever pilots pilot gets again i don't get one no you don't get one oh yeah uh luxury for the pilot i get to slide my seat forward and back yeah you can however we do allow the co-pilot to put his pedals in and out so you might want to oh i see him yeah turn that that's going to push pedals away from yeah there we go there we go and then we've got our harnesses here oh yeah it's a four-point harness which all clips together yep twist in either direction to open um and our headsets are hanging up above very cool all right let's take this this puppy for a ride ready go for a spin yep okay let's do it [Music] [Applause] [Music] well let's do it okay all right so we're here with the checklist uh chucks have already been removed uh somebody knows where we're going fuel pumps are off fuel valves are on cross feed is closed tail rotor pedals have been adjusted seat belts are secured on the right secure on the left sort of okay nose wheel lock comes on auto trim switch is on sas 1 and 2 are off parking brake is on cyclic stick is centered collector stick is down friction is on landing lights are off anti-collision lights are on position lights are off anti-icing and pedal heater off battery is off generators are off gen buses are off and inverters are all off power levers are fully aft rotor brake is fully forward and off altimeters are set to field elevations about sea level which they are yes and i just heard the 8 it was 299 or 4 i believe so i think we're good there uh the landing gear lever is in the down position it's in the landing gear emergency uh landing gear lock is in the normal position and wired the servo hydraulics are set to both and we are onto page two okay so we can switch to headsets now all right let's do it back to it's the battery on okay power okay check check check nick you you should be able to hear me over there i can hear you all right i know i can tell you that the engine one is low okay warning so that's and betty she'll stop talking shoot um okay so we turned the battery on the generator buses number one and two are on and i reset the master cautionary warning switches the clock is going to be tested see if it's running it is go back to test and reset um so radio master is off force trim is on instrument lights are all off we don't need those caution walking panel okay here we go with the full audio warning that you're going to see so here's all the lights oh yeah look at them okay it's the secondary panel here as well which shows us that uh dia anti-icing pedo heats landing lights so she'll run through a full sequence of audio tests oh we're saying this is going to start to fire up while she's doing that i'm going to test all the this is the n-1 t-o-t all the lights come on i get ones and eights and the needles all top out then i'm going to test the lights on the hydraulic system to see that those are charged that the lights are working then we're going to test the lights on the landing gear position uh and the these other lights down here and then we're going to test the one for the ac so we've got to make sure all the lights work perfectly okay so they're all working why aren't the garments coming on because i haven't turned the radio master on yet they won't fire up until we get the engines running okay so we're going to check we've got 100 kilos of fuel inside we're only flying for a few minutes so that's plenty rotor engine beep is already done engine number one and two fuel valves are on and like i said earlier on we're going to start engine number two first today so if you're ready for an engine start let's do it i'm going to shout out the door here and scare brian okay i'm gonna close my door we're clear all around there's nobody on the ramp here other than brian so what's going to happen if you're ready while we're doing that you can see overhead here i've got 24 volts on both systems which is a good sign oh i see so that's dc volts and ac volts you'll see zero until so what's this guard this is the the bar that turned that turns off absolutely everything all together oh now we've started here again okay you ready for engine number and just start engine stop okay so we're gonna turn one of the fuel pumps out we've got fuel pressure here to start the clock i like to do this camp no rush we're going to wait till that says 10 seconds i'm reaching up i got engine number two power lever 9 10. i'm looking here for 15 on the n1 there it is light off you'll notice that we get engine number one tot you'll notice that the blades are turning outside oil pressure is rising we go above the 810 count to ten one one thousand two one thousand three we're already below eight hundred and ten which is good yeah we've seen both peaks [Music] you see the oil pressure still rising we're coming up on 60 n1 release the starter accelerate forward just to get up to 50 to 60 percent on the end the rotor speed here and then go back to idle engine number [Music] notice that the hydraulic systems are now almost fully charged the emergency utility system is still charging and when that light goes off we know it's fully charged uncaged stand by us you don't care [Music] transmission all the temperature pressure coming up so the oil temperature is coming up uh the pressure's still a little bit low because we're only filling that we're only spinning pretty slow at the moment okay so we've been up and running for more than a minute we're gonna go to 100 on engine number two here and you notice the engine and rotor speeds are coming up and i turned on the number two generator we're going to recharge the battery a little bit here so you just ease that up yeah number two engine number one is still at zero and we're at about 98 on the uh engine number two and the rotor system which goes together [Music] so what we're going to do is we're going to wait for the ammeter to come down below 70 percent here this means the batteries had a chance to recharge at which point i'll switch that generator off and i'll use the battery to start the second engine oh really why the battery uh the manual says to do it that way guys um we could start straight away both better to give the battery a bit of a recharge yep but we're already down to 80 percent i'm going to reset the clock if the batteries are never large in the aircraft are they enough we'll save weight we're at 70 for a 70 ounces so we're gonna pull that number two generator off you'll know that goes to zero we get a warning we're gonna start engine number one to put on some uh fuel pump we've got some fuel pressure reset the clock start the clock we're gonna start engine number one which is our second engine today okay the eyes on the n1 looking for 15 there it is let's go to idle we've got light off watch the tot stays below 8 10 oil pressure is coming up there'll be a second kick so when you're watching for those peak is there any other yeah there's some limits that cannot be exceeded go above 8 10 1 1 2 1 3 1 3 4 1 7 5 1 10 6 we're below and we're at idle second engine started we wouldn't know if something has been exceeded one of these lights would remain oh the little lights yeah i see it correct so if i exceed if i exceed some of the limitations uh there's a telltale that's gonna oh that's cool it's gonna tell on me yeah yeah all right nothing like that in the jet ranger hey no hey the later models there is a tot over tampa so now we've got that we can turn the generators on yep maps come up now we can turn the inverters off right yep one two three and you notice the inverter lights went down we're going to turn all fuel pumps off because we're going to do a fuel test in just a second and notice our transmission noise pressure has now come up to something more accessible okay so we've got all that done why do we have less amps on the left engine ah there's a mismatch in this for some reason i don't know why that is today okay so now that we're up and running we're gonna go 100 on both engines you'll notice the torque indications that one is joining two they're going to come together and i will match them there one and two are pretty much the same now i'm going to do an anti-icing check so i'm going to do the anti-icing number one and if you look on the tots you're gonna see a rise on both that's one and two on you'll see them come up about 25 or 30 degrees okay those are both working i'm going to turn them both off again okay then i'm going to do pedo heat if you look at the ammeter here if i turn keto heat number one on yup you'll see that needle jump here we go boom small jump turn it off pedal heat number two boom small jump and you'll notice the the advisory light came on those are good now we're going to check the hydraulic system to check the hydraulic system we make sure we're in both we look here and we're going to move the push the button and i'm going to move the cyclic around and i'm looking i'm not allowed to see more than 70 psi drop on those gauges they didn't move at all up and down on the collective and a little left right on the pedals as soon as you pull up on the collector smooth right out right so then i'm going to turn number two off and you notice number two drop it's gone to zero we've got the light which says servo number two and i'm going to reset the caution now i'm going to do the same thing and make sure i don't there's the cycling small drop that time lift the collective small drop pedals are still working go back to both pressure's restored now go to number one off there's a little kick and i'm holding a little pressure on the left pedals because the pedals are not boosted now same thing no more than 70 good cycling collective back to both pedals relax and the pressures come back up that's that finished but you'd have no trouble bringing it in for landing with no pressure on no hydraulic pressure on this yeah it's a little bit of a little bit of effort but it's definitely magical right we're gonna do a sister a fuel system check i'm going to go through this real quick number one on three on shows the pressure lights go off cross speed open runway two both sides oh i see how it switches yeah yeah and three go on and three go off pressure drops two and four pressure both sides cross the close the cross feed pressure drops on the number one side leave all four pumps up that's really cool fuel system check done now we're going to check the sas system the vg lights have gone out which means the vertical gyros are up to full speed i can turn the sas systems on now we've got a clean panel up here except for the parking brake now did you turn on the radio master there i did there just a minute ago yeah so now if you look at the little apis which shows you the the indication should be centered there it's automatically going to trim them to center so what i'm going to do is i'm going to push i'm going to turn um attitude hold off okay and then i'm going to push slightly forward on the cyclic you'll see the api for the cyclic and i'm going to push slightly left and then a little bit of left pedal now if i push the force trim watch they all go back to the center now i'm going to check aft right and right pedal push force trim they go back now if i turn sass number system number one off it's now showing me the number two indications i'm gonna go forward and left reset center both back and right force trim hold it down the center push sas number two off and the attitude hole switch will automatically pop back up and now i can put the sasses on the check is complete just while these are booting up i'm gonna let them do their business okay we're almost ready for flight so um the last check we've got to do uh before we start attacking numbers is the autopilot check so altitude hole switch goes off horse trim we verify is on three might push the standby we'll see all the lights come on which is correct now i push the go around button which we talked about earlier on you'll see that the command bars come up pitch roll and collective okay so these are what you're following that's correct now i'm going to use the heading box the center of the heading bug there it is oh look at that now i'm going to push heading hole the collective cue goes away it might turn left you'll see the heading both turns left and the the roll bar goes the man where goes left right goes right recenter again now set the vsi to 500 feet up push vertical speed hold we get 500 feet per minute rate of climb indicated and a pitch up on the command bar okay now to finish the sequence push the flight director standby and this the command bar should go away all the lights light up job's done attitude hole switch comes back on set the rat out to 50 feet the light comes on push and hold the test button the needle goes to 100 yep i get 100 indicated on the the adi release goes back to zero set it for 200 or whatever you choose wow and that's it really we are ready to taxi so remaining things we got to do listen to the adus real quick and talk to tara and get out of here so light says required you know he's not icing power to pull forward caught in a warning panel lock is off and we are ready for taxi okay oh set yep all set okay i'm going to let us listen to the adas real quick they must be reset all right well we got it a couple years ago it was quebec so we'll stick with that all right we're on comp number two here we're both on radio number two and i'm on ground you ready to go yep all right bridge four grand good morning august the two trees julia bravo [Music] running ready for taxi requesting a vfr departure to the west we're just going for a local flight moves back in less than [Music] [Music] all right brought the map up on uh gps number one bridgewater's information romeo's now current one two three zero one zero three two nine four all right ready to go yep all right taylor's clear both sides clear all the way around warning crossing lights are all extinguished temperature pressures are all within normal limits and we've got 100 kilos kilos aside here we go we've got one guy out here feels good right coming forward so pull a little bit of collective start to roll forward little left cycling a little left pedal around she goes have a look on the taxiway we're left and right on the taxiway okay we'll switch the tower a little bit of airflow coming out above you by your head there so you're steering with uh i'm starting with the pedals but i'm also uh using just a little bit of left cyclic so a little left cycling at the left pedal they got toe brakes down here to stop the aircraft oh you did it yeah you don't have those i'll hold it short of two four i can also pull this up using the parking brake close our windows uh so if i was if i was flying i could slow us with this you could okay three four targets the two three julia bravo's holding forward two four on bravo ready for departure two three julia brought over support uh tower okay or uh wait two for me bravo cliff take off and then like we're shooting on course all right two four being bravo never take off on course two feet up we go there we go up and stable looks normal feels normal you notice the torques are nicely matched it's about 75 percent for us to hover say let's go right we're going to take a quick look around here make sure there's no traffic we're going to stay away from the runway just before departure lights are all extinguished temperatures and pressures are within normal limits fuel is still about 90 kilos a side which is ideal and we're ready to go you ready to go ready to go all right we're gonna pull it up about 85 percent of torque i see the radar altitude is working yep i'm going to get to about 70 feet 50 60 65 70. drop the nose accelerate forward air speeds alive there's 40 knots that's take off safety speed the gear come up you'll see the red transit light is on down there and below 150 feet she's going to tell us this is the stop you from landing on the valley just a second right so here we are we're climbing away 600 feet there the light's gone up oh it flickered all right so about 90 knots climbing away at about 700 feet per minute center the heading boat heading hole comes on so it's trimming itself on its own you're not look at this i know i'm not doing it hands off this is unbelievable so i'm going to set the power to about 85 percent on the torque it's super smooth here comes a thousand feet push altitude hold aircraft's gonna level itself off so now the aircraft is on altitude hold and heading hold i am guarding the controls with the aircraft displaying itself yeah this requires no piloting skills at all this aircraft does it sure this is a cheating aircraft we will test you later why is there a uh discrimination there's a little bit of fine tuning that happens when i take off so if i want to turn 10 degrees nose left yep i'm just going to turn the heading bug reset it to a number that i like let's say 250 and boom the aircraft's gonna turn at standard rate three degrees per second we're at 130 knots um if i pulled 85 we'll be happily cruising at 149 we are rocketing yeah uh so that's what it all crew's at a very this aircraft's very very happy at about 140 knots indicated wow she's a fast mover huh she is she's italian you know italian yeah they make it they're pretty we go fast so there we go we've already cleared uh bridgeport's airspace and if we were going to new york city you got a great view of the skyline of manhattan air off the nose all right are you ready to make a right turn here let's do it it's very difficult i'm going to turn the heading bug all the way around to about zero six zero and you can see the background see the boat going around set that right there so what determines how much angle it's going to use to get around there it's going to always turn at a standard rate three degrees per second so the heli pilot computers are going to calculate that but somewhere around you know 15 degrees a bank is probably not not unusual 15 to 20 degrees of bank carry helicopter two three julia bravo south side of the delta to the west of a thousand feet inbound requesting a uh a short approach and a low approach runway two four if that's possible and uh bravo okay enter right down from week two four and uh report midfield right down with two four report midfield two three julio april thanks wow yeah so you'll notice we've come around we're doing 140 knots yep everything's nice and happy and we've got a little tailwind right now so we're doing the best part of 150 knots of ground speed and we've got oodles of power in reserve yeah i mean we're at 85 of torque plenty in reserve and can you pull past 100 for short periods yeah there's a 100 to 104 is a take-off limit oh yeah so if we had five passengers on board with some luggage we wouldn't be able to go full fuel yep and they wouldn't be very big people in this particular aircraft but yeah i mean we would still be pulling 85 percent of torque and doing the best part we got bridgeport airport in sight right off the nose there we're going to enter right downwind for 2-4 and hopefully brian is there waiting to see us get some pre-landing checks out of the way here nick warning caution lights are all extinguished temperature pressures are all within normal limits fuels down to about 80 kilos per side i'm at a thousand feet which is pattern altitude which is ideal we'll turn the landing light on i'll start to slow down let's take the friction off a little bit i'm going to release the flight director standby button i'm going to release that notice the controls are still staying where they are because they're my credit brakes are holding them and then i can lower the collector push the button lower the collective after the cycling a little bit a little bit of right pedal car two three junior panel midfield right down with runway two four flow over this three drawing bravo short approach two four clear low approach and uh same tensions after that short approach slow approach two four intentions after that one four round the pattern back in full stop it's really can you only go all right okay so we're gonna decelerate we're below 120 so officially we could lower the landing gear i like to do that at 100 knots or less here we come around on two four we're going to drop the landing gear you'll feel the brakes come on a little bit did you feel that yeah so the landing gear is going down what we're looking for is three greens that will get the landing gears down and locked we'll level out over the runway pull back in a little power we'll give brian hi at 150 feet you'll notice the warning system came back on and told us low height that's 150 feet agl [Music] we decided we're going to abort the landing so if you like you're going to push around button yep i'll just pull the collective up to match the cue i can release the code all i have to do is not exceed any limits she'll put herself in a climb pull the gear up easy as that yeah it'll put the aircraft in a wings level situation in a climb if you pull the power to the right uh the right amount you're good to go okay that's that so we've cleaned it up the gears have been stowed again we're in the right traffic pattern clear right i'll hand flies around the corner right turn you look at you actually flying the aircraft for once it's amazing yeah so it's beginning to wonder so i had to knock the autopilot off there so it doesn't take over watch the torques coming through 700 feet tower helicopter two three julia battle midfield right downwind full stop request alpha charlie mr joe bruh protects your weight being charlie clearly being fairly all right nick you want to reach forward drop the landing gear for me all right landing it coming down pull it out a little bit there you go let me know when you've got three green lights transition one one green light noise three grains agree to this as a good habit when you hear the the warning for low height at 150 feet that is our double check that's the trigger for the double check that we have the gear down and locked right way square 80. thank you the vibrations we come through etl that'll smooth out like that on the ground lower the collective knows where luck comes off so we can taxi a little bit of power and where we go that is very cool isn't it what a what a pleasure an aircraft to fly it is just no skill involved whatsoever is there thank you appreciate the confidence in your flying abilities [Music] okay we're going to pull up right where we were before play this clear [Music] we reach the full stop the audience put the parking brakes on neutralize the flight controls reach up power levers come to idle reset the warning start she's an urgent sounding woman isn't she back to our checklist after landing brakes as needed parking brake is on nose wheel lock is off we're going to be ground handling that's correct collective down friction on cyclic centered friction arm tail repels adjusted air conditioning is off power levers are idle for two minutes engine instruments within limits everything looks normal so we're waiting for we're heading for a cooldown basically we're waiting for a two minute cooldown we're at 40 seconds already i'll open the door without a bit of air in here i'll do the same oh look this fits uh carbon fiber as well yep that's so cool andrew what a neat aircraft to fly what a smooth fast aircraft it is and it really takes all of the stress off the pilot doesn't it you could fly this for hours without it's a it's a comfortable aircraft to play the complexities of some of the class revo airspaces like new york when you have a little bit of automation um it does help offload the pilot yeah for the most part if we can like to play with two pilots one person takes care of the hand flying the other takes care of the rest of the business like the radios and that adds an extra level of sap as well so now that we're coming up on the end of this we are we started engine number two first so when we get to two minutes here we will both engines will come off then we'll take the field pumps off we can be ahead of ourselves we can take the fuel pumps off now cross speeds remain closed we didn't use that okay there so the fuel pump's off it's still able to suck the fuel through yeah and it's still got the engine driven pumps these are the electric so we're over two minutes reach up pull down the back decrease decrease reach up stand it back decrease decrease now we'll monitor the tots make sure nothing unusual happens right engine number one and two needles coming down rotor speeds coming down if we wanted to now that we're at 40 percent nr we could engage the rotor brake on the last flight of a day i don't engage the rotor brake i let it coast down because if i use the rotor brake i will get an erroneous indication on the main rotor transmission fluid level because it's combined with that system i see and what would we be watching for on there we're looking for it any sort of spike in the tots here which might indicate we've got an engine fire okay um these will they've come down we're into wind but these will creep back up to somewhere in the mid 300s it wouldn't be surprising if i saw 350 370 just because there's not enough passing through to keep it cool they'll then stabilize there and they'll start to cool off checklist cross speed pedo heat cabin lights external cockpit lights external lights miscellaneous switches are off rotor blade we're not using radio master inverters three two one and then we wait for the battery bar gps's so um so anybody that uh is looking to take your services where do they go azimuth aviation in the coming weeks will command service to you pretty much anywhere within the northeast region for example for us to go to new york city from here it's about 22 minutes the hamptons from here is about 25 minutes under an hour flight from uh downtown manhattan to the hamptons is about 40 minutes well yeah it's a quick way to get around let's go all right rotor blades have come to a complete stop as soon as we pull the gang bar here we're going to lose power we're going to lose intercom so i will say we'll say thank you very much [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Nick Murray

Views: 218,224

Rating: 4.8902001 out of 5

Keywords: helicopter, flying, AW109, Agusta AW109, chopper, how to fly

Id: gfl9mzWvgD0

Length: 75min 38sec (4538 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020