Bladeslapper

Just a couple pics of the machine I’ve flown the past few summers
S-55 turbine conversion, quite a nice machine

Big old girl, not too many of them still going around I wouldn't have thought.

Not many at all. The operator I work that contract for has 10 flying, mostly recips. Those radials really rumble! Climbing up the side is a hassle but they fly really nice.

How’s the tail rotor authority with that older blade design?

That thought too crossed my mind FF....especially with a bit of weight on

Although some guys have complained about that. I’ve been in some very windy conditions and never had a problem.
There is a restriction on pedal turn speed (which I can’t recall at the moment) due to the tail attachment.

It’s also got a pretty heavy VNE penalty which makes for some slow XC at times.

A piston version of that was buzzing around NZ doing ag many moon ago, not sure what became of it.

NZHelo wrote:A piston version of that was buzzing around NZ doing ag many moon ago, not sure what became of it.

There were a few of them, they pretty much all crashed. last or second to last one killed the pilot.

Ag crashes took out a lot of them. The boss has several survivors. I’ve been told a lot of the turbine conversions ended up outside the U.S.