We Found a Big Dangerous Crack In My Blackhawk Airframe

we found a problem and it was a fairly big problem this is a lifelong dream coming true and it's coming true and happening and coming together in a way that is better than i ever expected and at the same time i'm going to try to make it as educational as possible because i know some of you are watching these videos because you have you know the goal of owning a helicopter or even a blackhawk yourself i want to show you how it's done all right my friends welcome back to the vlog and welcome to the video that many of you including myself have all been waiting for blackhawk update time now listen this video is something that many of you have been asking for and wanting more details on and trying to figure out just what the status is of the us army blackhawk helicopter that i purchased back in june now you guys may remember in the last video we basically left off where we went down to alabama picked it up and delivered it to thoroughbred aviation out in lexington kentucky so since we dropped the helicopter off joe and his team down at thoroughbred aviation in lexington have been very very busy getting to work on it you see when you buy something like a blackhawk from the us government there's a lot of stuff that goes into being able to use it that stuff includes tons of maintenance tons of inspections tons of paperwork and just a lot of work in general so basically the first step in being able to move forward with the blackhawk was to bring it in for inspection and maintenance which is what this video is going to be all about but if you're hungry for even more and you want to be able to see more nitty-gritty details you can head over to the thoroughbred aviation youtube channel the link to their channel is in the description below so as you guys may remember when we picked the blackhawk up the blades were off of it and there was some parts and pieces that were disassembled to make it easier for transport so the first thing that thoroughbred had to do in order to kind of verify the overall condition of the helicopter was put it back together so that meant they had to put the blades on they had to put fuel in it they had to charge the batteries they had to go through and check all the systems to make sure that it was complete and to make sure that everything was there so once they had the blades on and they had the whole helicopter assembled then came the day for them to do the first run up that means they're going to take it outside the hangar and start it up to see what's going on with the engines the transmission just to do a full systems check it ran perfectly the first run-up was an absolute success with zero issues actually i think there was one tiny fuel leak not a big deal they were able to fix that and you know a very short amount of time they figured all right everything looks good now we can bring it back into the hanger and completely tear it down now guys this is where the maintenance gets really really heavy uh we basically decided that we needed to do a pmi-1 and a pmi2 so what a pmi one and a pmi-2 are are basically huge inspections there are inspections that you do every four years it involves essentially tearing the helicopter down to pretty much the nuts and bolts i mean you leave the airframe together and usually some pieces intact but the engines come out blades come off all the major systems get torn apart and looked into so as part of that inspection you go through the engines so for the engine inspection what they did is they had the guys of a timberland helicopters come down and do their inspection on it now timberland is a very important name they are the ones that are putting their stamp of approval and their rules and regulations and guidelines that have been approved by the faa on my helicopter all right i'll explain a little bit more about that once we get into the paperwork side of things but basically they worked with ty and joe and the guys over at thoroughbred aviation and they tore those things down they did full inspections looked inside outside they did what's called hot section inspections and that's very important because the hot section is basically what you're looking at right here these are uh turbine blades what we're checking for inside the engines is the hot section and the compressor the compressor sits on the front of the turbine and spins and basically pushes you know pressurized cool air into the turbine which then turns the turbine wheels these turbine wheels spin at like 60 000 rpm somewhere every engine's a little bit different but they are spinning really fast under immense amounts of heat 700 to 900 degrees celsius that's hot that's really really hot so what that means is these tiny little fins and blades on the turbine wheels if they are abused or overheated or mistreated or have you know particles like dust and and uh foreign materials that enter into the turbine well it can nick and damage these wheels or they can stretch and become distorted they can become cracked and any tiny little microscopic imperfection whether it be a crack distortion even discoloration can mean that you're about to experience a catastrophic engine failure so this inspection is designed to make sure that there are no imperfections at all in either of the engines which is always a little bit of a nerve wracking experience for a helicopter owner because if there's anything wrong for example one turbine wheel can cost you 40 grand keep in mind these engines have multiple wheels so if there's a problem it could be 40 100 150 200 500 000 really really quickly over something stupid in fact this right here is a piece from an engine from one of my old helicopters it's called the pt support i sent this engine in for a routine inspection and they found right here some tiny tiny little imperfections i'm telling you like smaller than the head of a needle that's no good anymore it will not pass the inspection we will not give it our stamp of approval and the helicopter is not safe to fly so you need to replace that this one piece was like 35 thousand dollars that's a bad day engines and aviation parts and components in general are not cheap so with that said the guys tore into both engines i was crossing my fingers hoping for the best and boom both engines came out with flying colors zero imperfections no problems in fact they came out better than anybody anticipated and that was the first sign to us that this blackhawk is in better condition than we even realized meaning we believe that the helicopter has never been deployed according to all the records the helicopter has spent its whole life here in the united states as a training helicopter for the army so like i said timberland came in did their full inspection and said boom these engines are both solid so that was fantastic news for us and a huge hurdle that we had to get out of the way before we can move on to the rest of the inspections so after the engines were done the guys at thoroughbred continue to tear into the helicopter to finish the rest of the pmi one and two inspections checking all systems all components the transmission the tail rotor gearbox the drive lines all the parts and pieces and one of the biggest things they have to check is the actual structure of the airframe of the helicopter we found a problem and it was a fairly big problem part of the airframe there is a bunch of different beams and components that are in there that hold the helicopter together they hold the transmission in they hold the engines in and we found that one of the main beams had a crack in it that means it either had to be repaired or replaced well joe at thoroughbred he does things the absolute over-the-top best way possible and he said we're not going to repair that he says we're going to go in there and modify it improve and upgrade it to a bigger better beefier faa approved fix that's going to make sure that this doesn't happen again in the future so they did that and after that my friends i've got fantastic news for you actually fantastic news for me and my wallet that was the only major squawk that we found in the entire inspection process if you're an army and p and a helicopter or an aircraft mechanic and you came across serial number 7923311 i just want to say thank you because you my friend friends community group of maintenance guys did a phenomenal job in making sure that this helicopter was in tip-top condition and i've had a bunch of people reach out to me and a bunch of other owners and operators say dude you got a really really clean ship like that thing is way above average i'm super grateful for that because i could have easily gone into this inspection and this maintenance process and ended up you know a million two million sometimes three million dollars worth of repairs if it's you know an engine or a big problem with the blades or transmission because those big components add up really quickly so as i'm talking to you guys we're going to be inserting all this different footage of uh the work that was done down at thoroughbred now these guys were awesome enough to not only do fantastic work but they also set up cameras and documented the process for us and for their youtube channel it took joe and his team at thoroughbred took them roughly about a month to do the whole pmi inspections and the engine inspections and everything they had to do these guys are digging through thousands and thousands of intricate complex parts and pieces and airframe and rivets and all sorts of stuff that was built and installed back in 1979. so after the major inspections were done the next thing we need to do is start the refurbishment and the modifications and the upgrades that we want to do to the helicopter during the inspection process joe and his team were able to remove approximately 250 pounds of military wiring and electronics and really since we're not going to use them i want to shave off as much weight as i possibly can even though weight really isn't a big issue when it comes to a blackhawk because this thing has the ability to haul approximately 10 000 pounds of weight on top of the weight of the helicopter so these things are absolute behemoths the team put the engines back in they kind of started to reassemble the helicopter lightly just enough to be able to put on the truck and then joe and his team transported it over to the paint shop because that's the next step and so i told joe that i wanted the paint job on this thing to be perfect and joe obviously probably wouldn't let me have it any other way i mean everything that they do down there has to be done exactly the right way it has to be done perfectly so this means that the helicopter goes into paint for five weeks they have to tape off different areas that are sensitive so the peroxide doesn't get inside the airframe and destroy you know the old the rivets and the seals and stuff like that so the process of masking the helicopter off just to be able to strip the old paint off is brutal it takes forever there's lots of nooks and crannies you have to disassemble all the cowling the doors all the different components make sure the blades are out and away from there and uh anytime you see an aircraft that has not been painted it's going to look greenish yellow that's what they call a green aircraft that's because the the primer that they use is green just looking like a lemon kind of like a lemon mixed with a watermelon it's just this crazy bright green color and that is the primer which is the step right before you apply paint so once they have the primer done they laid down another coat of what's called hide build primer which is basically it goes on a little bit thicker than the yellow primer and it helps kind of fill any imperfections now we got lucky like i said since this helicopter was never deployed it didn't have any bullet holes it didn't have any major patches in the skin everything was in really good condition i mean typically when you see an old army helicopter or army aircraft there's dents and dings whether it be from combat or just getting shuffled around the base and tools and people working around them this helicopter didn't have any of that it's just super clean inside now so that made it a very uh easy canvas to work with for jim and his guys over at the thoroughbred paint shop so right before paint they apply one more coat of a cell fetcher that's basically a product that goes on to the surface of the primer and makes it nice and grippy and makes sure that whatever paint you spray on it sticks and doesn't go anywhere and it seals the primer seals the uh body of the aircraft and makes sure that it's that paint job is going to last forever because if you don't do it this way the paint job is going to fall apart so i wanted to make sure that this paint job was you know a 50-year paint job it lasts me for the life of this helicopter which brings me to the color guys this was a hard hard hard choice i've gone through a bunch of different colors my aircraft and when i originally bought the blackhawk i thought you know i can do this really cool paint job like if you go to google and search blackhawk paint jobs there's some really cool looking civilian like firefighting blackhawks that have wild paint jobs and i was going to go that route until i started thinking about the essence of the blackhawk like where did this thing come from what was it designed to do what word is part of its actual name black hawk and so then it came down to my two favorite colors black or gray i put a poll up on instagram i asked everybody kind of what they thought but black ended up winning i think it was like 60 40. and i was already leaning towards black but i didn't want gloss black i didn't want some flashy color and this is already a very big overwhelming presence anywhere that it goes whether it's parked in front of my hanger or flying around where we fly people see this and instantly it just it just brings too much attention anybody who is on youtube or an influencer or out there with their aircraft and they're showing the world has to deal with this what i'm getting at is if i have a lime green blackhawk flying around and somebody doesn't like my videos they're going to say oh lime green blackhawk that must have been dave we're going to call the faa and then that just deals that's just more paperwork that we all have to deal with that it's completely unnecessary because we fly within the regulations we fly legally we spend a lot of time energy and money to make sure that we are in compliance with the federal aviation regulations and all of the rules that come along with you know owning and operating an aircraft overall being black just helps us kind of blend in a little bit better with the military blackhawks and the government blackhawks and the stuff that's out there so i come from the world of you know paint and body work and stuff like that and i know when someone's rushing and i know when someone's doing an absolute perfect job and these guys are just doing it they are just absolutely crushing uh the prep and getting this thing ready for the best paint job i could possibly get which is what i got it's black so we decided to go with the ppg aerospace paint with about a 30 gloss so basically it's going to have a satin finish i didn't want matte because matte's really hard to maintain and keep clean i didn't want glossy because glossy doesn't really fit you know a military aircraft i wanted it to have like that menacing you know dark look but at the same time be classy and and be something that people would look at and you know understand that it's a private helicopter and uh you know we're proud of it and we're we put a lot of time and energy and money into making sure that this thing looks good because it's gonna go to air shows it's gonna be all over youtube all over tv and uh it just had to be perfect so we may add some graphics and decals and different things uh once we get it back to utah but for now basically the way you see it black is the way that it's gonna be flying home when we head out to pick it up which brings me to my next point after paint the helicopter gets loaded back up on the truck and trailer and hauled back over to the main thoroughbred aviation facility in lexington from there they are going to start reassembling it you know thank you for joining us as well and for families across the country you know where they can start to reassemble it that means they're going to put the blades on uh they're going to install some of the avionics everything we've got in there is going to work perfectly however we are going to upgrade to a garmin 750 gps unit uh we are going to upgrade the intercom system and the radios so what we're going to do is we're going to add 16 passenger intercoms and that's about it when it comes to what we're going to do for you know the dash and the cockpit area once we get it back to utah we're going to 3d scan the whole interior and we're going to install gator step now you guys know you've seen the gator step that i've installed in some of my other helicopters this stuff is like the boat flooring but it is legit it uh it puts up with literally any abuse and it gives you a nice foam pad and it kind of a sound deadening and it's just it's it makes it look way better and it's way more comfortable for passengers and it quiets everything down and lasts forever and you can do your own designs in it so that's why the floor looks bare in the videos that you're seeing but it is not going to be that way once we get it back we will also have all of the seats installed it does come with the standard troop seating which i think is 10 or 11 seats and there's a good chance we end up getting some new cushions upholstered for those because right now it's basically just a canvas bottom and a canvas back designed for troops i do want to make that a little bit more comfortable but we're still trying to decide on what to do for the upholstery options because everything that we do and everything that we add makes this process longer and as you guys can probably guess i'm really anxious to get this helicopter back home to utah to start training and flying in it so the helicopter has to meet its final boss which is the d-a-r designated air worthiness representative so since this helicopter is no longer owned and operated by the army somebody else has to be responsible for it and that means that timberland helicopters who created the type certificate for it they're the ones who created the ops manual and the maintenance manual and the program that i am going to put the helicopter on so that we can be compliant like i said to be able to create a type certificate takes years and timberland is uh well known in the industry for having a phenomenal program they create a manual we then take that manual and we submit it to the faa and say here is our plan here's how we're going to fly and maintain this helicopter from there the dar faa representative will come down to lexington and he's going to do a full inspection he's going to check the aircraft he's going to check the maintenance records he's going to check all the work that jonah's guys did he's going to check the timberland books to make sure that everything is the way it's supposed to be and that's going to take two or three days once he's done he's going to sign it off and say boom you guys are good to go and then the helicopter will be moved into what's called the restricted category there are a few different categories that they fall into one is standard category that is basically the category that all the commercial airliners all the like robinson helicopters all the stuff that you see on a regular basis they fall in the standard category then you have what's called the restricted category now restricted category was developed pretty much specifically for military aircraft as they were being decommissioned as far back as like world war ii and being sold to the public so what the faa had to do was figure out how to create a program that would support the maintenance and of the operations of these aircraft since the military was no longer doing that and that's where these restricted type certificates from companies like timberland come into play a restricted type certificate uh has a bunch of different regulations around it and that has rules uh regarding what you can and can't do with the helicopter or the airplane you can't just go out and fly passengers around you can't go fly people around for money and each program has its own set of different rules so it's not like one size fits all the next category is experimental experimental is a category that i love i've played with a lot of experimental aircraft and the owner is the builder and the factory and the maintenance and everything so if you buy a kit airplane like my first helicopter ever was a rotorway a little cheap put together kit home built uh aircraft or helicopter you're responsible for the way that helicopter operates and flies and you have to create your own manual and own maintenance program that you then submit to the faa and they say yep that's gonna work or no you need to change this and this and then you're legal to fly what we're doing with the blackhawk is we're putting it in the restricted category on the timberland type certificate which is going to allow us to do certain things but we're also going to have the ability to move it into the experimental category now the reason for that is because we are creating what's called a movie manual a movie manual is something that the owner of an aircraft creates uh picture hollywood right when you see aircraft flying around in in hollywood movies they are flying under the movie manual which basically is a program that you write out exactly what you want to do the helicopter or the airplane how you want to do it when you want to do it do you want to you know have a guy hanging off the skids for a movie from you know 10 feet off the ground or do you want to have uh aircraft you know buzz the tower really low um top gun would be a good example of a move manual a lot of the aircraft in that movie had to operate under their specific manual and since we create videos and you know motion pictures and all sorts of different media content with this helicopter the movie manual is what's going to allow us to do those things we submit a notification to the faa saying we're going to do this we're going to go here we're gonna go there and we give them a heads up and they say okay you're good to go or no do it this way or do it that way so it's constant communication back and forth with the faa especially the local office here in salt lake city um all the stuff that we're gonna do with it we work directly with them so they know what's going on pretty much all the time for those of you who understand aviation and these different categories just know that it's going to be restricted category but it's also going to have the ability to go into experimental and it could bounce back and forth with that said maintenance done upgrades modifications pretty much done we're waiting on the final inspection which should happen here in the next week or so and once we get that done then joe's going to call me and say hey come pick up your blackhawk and from there me jt and my guys are going to fly down to lexington kentucky jump in the black hawk and start flying at home and i cannot wait that brings me to the next video that we're going to release which is what do i have to do to legally fly this thing me personally we're going to be doing some simulator flying we're going to be going to a national guard base and meeting with their training program to see how they do it now i'm not getting training from the national guard but i am becoming familiar with their process and learning how they do it so that i can be as familiar with the aircraft as possible because keep in mind in order for me to be able to fly it i have to receive all my training and then i have to pass what's called a check ride and that means that i have to get in the helicopter with a designated faa examiner and do everything perfectly from the exterior inspections the checks the walk-arounds the pre-start the start-up the flying the shutdown i have to know everything inside and out and it's a lot guys the systems on these blackhawks are insane this right here this giant book is kind of the operator's manual this is like the handbook just to be able to start and take off i kind of got to know this thing inside now before i'm able to get my license this is a life long dream coming true and it's coming true and happening and coming together in a way that is better than i ever expected the helicopter was in better condition than we anticipated it's cleaner it's healthier it has lower time and overall i found a good one and you guys are going to love what we do with this thing because we plan on doing all sorts of different content you know whether it be picking up vehicles out of you know treacherous mountains or you know helping with natural disasters or searching for missing people or just having fun we're going to show you guys what a blackhawk is really capable of and we're going to be able to do things with it that you probably haven't seen done before in you know the military or those different operations because we're going to be operating under a different standard a different handbook and and it's going to be done privately so buckle up because this journey is just getting started and i promise you it is going to be highly entertaining and at the same time i'm going to try to make it as educational as possible because i know some of you are watching these videos because you have you know the goal of owning a helicopter or even a blackhawk yourself i know a ton of you have reached out and turns out i wasn't the only one with this on my bucket list a ton of people would love for this to be something that they could accomplish and i want to show you how it's done finally the last thing i want to say is one of the main reasons i bought blackhawk was because i wanted to give military veterans the opportunity to fly in the blackhawk whether it's for the first time or whether they were a door gunner and they've got thousands of hours in them flying is something that i found most of these guys still want to do and they want to go up and they want to experience it and they want to experience it in a way that's not necessarily the way the military does it because the military is very go here go there stay this height you know follow this line whereas uh where we're doing it privately we can we can be a little bit more flexible and and uh just kind of make it more of a laid-back enjoyable experience so we're gonna be setting up a non-profit uh that's going to pretty much allow veterans we're going to create a program where you can submit your information to come out and fly with us and i'm going to do that for free we're not going to charge anybody i just uh we want to do it as a way to say thank you for all the men and women who have served us and give you an opportunity to get in the helicopter for the first time or get back in it and experience the freedom of flight that you may have experienced in the military so that is like i said one of the main reasons why i bought this it's one of the main inspirations for me to be able to continue to invest my time and money into it because the look on someone's face when they jump in a helicopter for the first time or even for the you know one millionth time it's always the same just sheer joy sheer happiness and that's what i want to try to bring to our veteran community as a thank you for your service whether you're active duty or veteran uh that's gonna be the program we put together so with that said guys i'm done talking thanks to the guys at thoroughbred aviation i have a ready-to-fly fully refurbished fully inspected pretty much perfect helicopter and i want to you know finally end by saying thank you to joe and the team of thoroughbred aviation those guys absolutely dominated if you need any uh aircraft maintenance or repair whether it be a plane or a helicopter reach out to them there's a link in my description below they also have awesome t-shirts which i think every single one of you should go grab because they're sweet and these guys are awesome and i stand behind them so thanks for joining us and buckle up because next time you see us we're gonna be learning how to fly blackhawk

Channel: HeavyDSparks

Views: 2,717,451

Keywords: susan powell, true crime, trailers, family friendly, no swearing, Recovery, Diesel, Diesel brothers, Heavy equipment, Caterpillar, Whistlindiesel, Cleetus McFarland, Demolition ranch, Matt’s Offroad, Adventure, For you, Heavydsparks, Sparks motors, Freedom bus, Dirt, Dirt work, Tractor, Machine, Dave sparks, Diesel Dave, Dieseldave, diving, murder, mystery, racing, tow truck, wrecker, blue collar, adventure, missing persons mysteries, csi, blackhawk, helicopter, army surplus, trucking, kenworth

Id: gJBCrYfvTcA

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022