Emergency Action Drills for mechanical/electrical problems

[Nemoman]

Hello community. I am inevitably going to encounter very severe conditions during combat missions in the Shark, therefore I wonder if anybody knows the correct procedure that must be carried out when engines sustain damage and become engulfed in flames or what to do when EKRAN detects bad engine vibrations.

 

When such faults or break downs occur I have no idea what to do to save the chopper, I know the Shark features a host of redundant systems, fire extinguishing and backups. How do I go about using such systems to save the chopper and keep it going long enough to make it back to a FARP for repairs?

[Reaper6]

Engine control handles - max power

Gain as much forward speed as possible

engine Electronic Engine Governor switch - off

shutoff damaged engine (Engine cutoff valve)

Fuel shutoff valve for damaged engine - off

maintain at least 80% rotor rpm(no sudden jerks on the collective). - In some certain situations you may also think about putting the re-adjustment of the free-turbine to idle.

 

Reaper6

Edited March 27, 2015 by Reaper6

[Raptor9]

Regarding fires, the first fire extinguisher is discharged automatically, but if you still have a fire, you'll have to discharge the second manually. But in all cases, fly first, fight the fire second. If you fly into terrain because you were looking down at the fire indicators...

 

Flying too fast can actually cause you to lose some rotor RPM's when flying single-engine. 130kmh (give or take) is where you want to be at for a minimum rate of descent and/or trying to maintain level flight under one engine. Having said that, if you are going faster than that, don't decelerate and waste what airspeed you have without trading that airspeed (kinetic energy) for something, like doing a cyclic climb to get more altitude (potential energy) if tactically feasible. But if you're at about 130kmh on one engine, trying to accelerate might do more harm than good. If you're below 120kmh, I'd try to dip the nose a little and trade some altitude for airspeed.

 

Try to do a rolling landing, or landing with rollout, as some call it. If landing to a FARP, you'll have to time your deceleration just right to hit the pads with as minimum forward movement as possible without falling out of the sky too fast. The biggest hindrances to single-engine operations are:

 

1) Too much weight. Jettison what you can to lighten your aircraft (stores jettison, emergency ATGM jettison), but you can't do much about a full fuel load.

 

2) High density altitude. It's either hot, or you're operating at high altitudes/elevations, or both. These conditions cause the air to be thinner, resulting in less lift and less engine power. Can't do anything to affect this unfortunately.

 

3) Hostiles in the area. These may limit your flight path, your altitude, etc. Just try to get out of the danger area as soon as possible so you can resume a level and boring flight profile. Jinking under one engine leads to running out of airspeed, altitude, and power real quick.

 

There has been some debate about what Ka-50 airspeeds are appropriate for single-engine flight, loitering, autorotation, max rate of climb, etc. My experiences have lead me to believe that 130kmh +/-10 is what you want to maintain for the most efficient single-engine flight, but you might hear anything between 120 to 150. However, that variance might have been due to environmental or helo configuration factors. You can always experiment.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Raptor9

[seikdel]

engine Electronic Engine Governor switch - off

If you're talking about the EEG for the good engine, be very careful that you don't burn out your one good engine. Also, this step is not in the emergency procedures for single engine failure during flight or during hover.

 

Also also, don't forget to open up the fuel crossfeed valve. That will allow the single functioning engine to draw fuel from both the fore and aft tanks, hopefully avoiding a dangerous weight imbalance.

 

The manual has a whole chapter (ch. 12) of checklists. Engine failure checklists start on ch. 12 p. 23 (aka p. 443).

[Nemoman]

thanks for the information guys, this will no doubt be a lifesaver on operations.