Blackhawk maintenance trainer earns its keep

A relatively small investment in a highly detailed Blackhawk maintenance trainer is expected to increase both aircraft availability and the skills base of Army's helicopter maintainers.
Parts from three separate helicopters, and a few which had to be built from scratch, make up Army's Blackhawk maintenance trainer, which Brisbane-based Helitech Ltd delivered last October - ahead of schedule, below budget and exceeding Army's functional requirement. Remarkably, it is the first training aid Helitech has ever manufactured.

The Blackhawk Maintenance Training Aircraft (BHMTA) is located at the Aeroskills Division of Army's Aviation Training Centre at Oakey. It delivers a number of key benefits to Australian Army Aviation, not the least of which is that it puts serviceable Blackhawks back on the flight line, rather than being used to train maintainers and supervisors.

The Defence Materiel Organisation's BHMTA project manager, Kevin Bailey, said, "The Blackhawk is a maintenance-intensive aircraft which requires aircraft tradespeople to be trained with a high level of hands-on experience. Previously, operational aircraft had to be taken from flying duties for extended periods to provide this, which decreased overall fleet availability for operational tasks."

According to Helitech the BHMTA costs one tenth of an operational aircraft (approximately $3 million, ADM understands) and as well as releasing serviceable aircraft for operational duties, it helps achieve ground crew training objectives faster, helps maintain proficiency levels at lower cost, and it vastly reduces the risk of inadvertent damage to serviceable aircraft and components during tradesman training.

In Army parlance, the BHMTA is Tier 1 training aid, enabling hands-on skills training. Tier 2 training, which focuses much more on analytical and fault-diagnosis skills for senior and supervisory personnel, tends to be carried out in more of a classroom environment using computer-based training aids.

The BHMTA is used for ab initio and continuation training of tradesmen; however, according to Helitech's contracts development manager, David Dowling, it offers a level of fidelity and functionality which allows trainee pilots, aircrewmen and loadmasters to use it also for cockpit and cabin familiarisation and procedures training.

The BHMTA is based on an S-70A9 fuselage which was no longer airworthy after being exposed to salt water contamination while being shipped from Sikorsky's Stratford plant in the US; the tail rotor pylon is off an RAN Seahawk which had suffered corrosion; and other components, including the tail cone, engine, rotors, transmission and various systems came off a Blackhawk which crashed near Oakey in 1992.

Helitech carried out structural repairs to most of these to bring them up to the same configuration as the Army's Blackhawk fleet, and manufactured from scratch a number of components and assemblies, such as a cockpit door, main rotor blades, pilot's cyclic and collective control grips, engine cowlings and avionics bay doors which would have been too expensive to buy from the manufacturer for use in a static training rig.

At the same time, the company sectioned some major components, including the oil cooler, main rotor freewheel unit and various engine components to enhance the BHMTA's training value. Helitech also, at Army's request, installed a sound generator to simulate activation of the fire alarm, cargo hook and rescue hoist emergency release mechanisms.

The fire detection and master warning and control panels also restored to full functionality, along with other aircraft systems such as the aircraft's flight control and hydraulic systems and the aircraft's stabilator. This allows trainees to learn and practice rigging the helicopter's flight controls, conduct routine servicing on the hydraulic system and its components, and perform an engine change without needing to take a serviceable aircraft off the flight line.

Dowling points out, however, that some elements of maintenance training still require the use of a serviceable aircraft - particularly the Aeroskills Division's annual four-week Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) training course.

With a Blackhawk upgrade tentatively planned for about 2008, and electronic warfare elf-protection (EWSP) and night vision goggle (NVG) upgrades also on the cards, Helitech played close attention to configuration control: the BHMTA is designed to accommodate these and other enhancements or upgrades in the future, and also for original parts to replace dummy parts, if training needs dictate.

By Gregor Ferguson, Adelaide