How to Break your Black Shark with Overheating

[Volk.]

Starting a new series of smaller vids on the little ways you can wreck the Ka-50 outside of combat or mating with a tree.

 

 

First up is overheating. Which is a thing and it isn't. But it could be.

Not very common, but I need to get through it so I can explain dust, which is up next. I just need to run a few more tests on that (I say when there's already over 89 on it).

After that, either icing or RPM and rotor intersections.

[Rogue Trooper]

Unless the engine modelling has changed since 1 or 2 years ago, I popped an MI-8 engine hovering hot and high in Nevada. The engine went down with a fabulous and very satisfying bang! 40 - 45 degs centigrade FAT.

I also had the left egt roll back the sharks left engine on me whilst hunting targets hovering hot and high in the mountains of Nevada. Accelerating down the safe side of the mountain increased air flow through the engine and allowed the engine to rev up again, I allowed a few minutes of forward flight to cool the engines which allowed me a few minutes of hover attack to take out 2 or 3 enemy units before I needed to repeat engine cooling.

It was a fabulous rinse and repeat exercise..... at least to me.

 

The Nevada map is one of the greatest maps in DCS

 

An ED Afghanistan Map would be a dream for me.

[Volk.]

Interesting.

TBH I haven't gone back to logs for both Mi-8 and Ka-50 since inception.

I've also heard someone else say they've overheated the Mi-8, and others say they never could. The Mi-8 I only tried one flight, but it kinda sucks testing the Mi-8 in that fashion purely for proving overheating - the Shark you only occasionally need to correct flight parameters and can then fast-forward. Mi-8 is every couple of minutes and the RBS limit creeps up a bit faster too (well from changes in flight path fast-forwarded). But yeah, at the moment those needles stay put, even the slightly-in-the-red left panel temps. I did do the HIP at extreme ambient temps, can't remember if I did it at altitude though. But I think testing the HIP in these ways is best done while actually flying it for fun or an op and then intentionally running heavy on collective, probably multi-sortie.

 

Shark I ran in 40deg ambient temp, on Nevada, the airbase about 900' ASL, then spiralling upwards max collective & throttle (EEGs on) up to just over 3100' depending on the loop, refuelled 4 times and it never peaked. I don't know about any loss of lift from decaying rotors or other strange factors, but the compressor output didn't decay in that time. Other single-sortie missions were at 14000 ft, 50 degrees heat, different icing/dust switches etc. which the EEG's always limited to avoid failure.

 

Dust typically causes vibration, but in certain circumstances can also lead to a disconnect between engine heat / output (I mean a 10-20% difference, not the normal subtle difference in response/output). There's also some stuff that can happen with dust and spiking temps, which if combined with maneuvers could maybe spike it. Dust damage is cumulative, so maybe that caused the rapid heat buildup.

ps. mentioned 89 tests for dust above, it's actually 59 (stupidly double counted file types), but still running more.

 

Out of interest, do you maybe have a trackfile/tacview on that Nevada hunt? Seems I've turned into medical detective trying to figure out why it falls outta the sky. Or more info on which mountains, average AGL, anything else? I'm assuming your EEGs were on - because typically it won't keep increasing beyond the limits with them off, but the altitudes + maneuvers may push it over the limit. Though unless that subtle difference between the two engines happened to fall on that heat limit, typically both engines go out from heat, not just one. At least with my tests now - can't comment on what would happen in previous DCS versions - one might need to track both Shark changes and general changes in DCS - so maybe it could die from that previously. Whether it should be able to die (IRL) from heat with EEGs on I can't comment.