HUEY UPDATE!

OK guys, here's the latest on our Huey helicopter. I know some of you are really interested in what we're doing so I thought I would share some very exciting news with you, my friends. For months now we have been chasing an adjustment in the stick that the pilot uses to fly. Well, our mechanic inadvertantly found the problem last week and would you believe that problem was cause by a simple spring? Yup a tiny spring was creating a "push" on the stick making it impossible to fly! When the turbine engine was shipped to us well over a year ago, the supplier put a small spring in near the transmission to protect an adjustment but they didn't tell us about it. All we needed to do was REMOVE the tiny spring and the stick issue was solved!!

SO, this Saturday the crew is meeting at the hanger at 1:00pm and we will be getting her into a hover for the first time!!! That means she'll be off the ground for the first time since we started the restoration!! Now, we have a number of tests that need to be done before she can actually take off and go, but this is historic for us because it'll be the first time she'll be in the air!! SO, after all the flight testing that needs to be done, she'll be ready to go, WITH PASSENGERS!! We are almost there to be flying her anywhere we want to go and that's a good thing because we have many events this summer that we'll be flying into.
I just thought I would share the great news with you all! THANKS for all your support and patience too, it's geatly appreciated!

Isn't so many times something SIMPLE, drives ya nuts when you are looking for something BIGGER!

You must be really excited, seeing that baby hover is going to be surreal I bet!

All the best man!

Awesome!!!

That's GREAT NEWS B!!! Now you know we want VIDEO!!!! That's right, no half ass pics!!! MOVING VIDEO!!! LMAO!!! Congratz to you and the crew! I'll bet the heart rates are in OVER-DRIVE!

Cool!!

Great news B, then you can pick up all of us XMT'ers and we can have an Xtreme get together!

Good News Brian!!


Now I can cancel my tickets to Florida in May...you can come pick up Me, My wife & kids and fly us down to Disney



Congrats man! A lot of hard work paid off!!

"You are cleared for take-off."

Congratulations to you and your crew.

. . . thanks for the update Brian!!! Get pictures!!!!

congrats Brian, post a video if you can.

So exciting. That's such a great machine.

THANKS everyone, your comments are greatly appreciated! I will be videoing this and all I have to do is learn how to post video to UTube! I can't begin to tell you how excited the cerw is today. We have been working on her for almost 5 years to get us to this point. We are meeting at the airport at 1:00 and then we'll get everything set up. My wife and a few other wives are bringing food and drink so we're gonna make a party of it for sure!! You all know how excited I was to get the Oris, well multiply that by a factor of 50!! We've put A LOT of hard work, sweat, many hours on the road driving all over the country for parts and a TON of hours just doing the work. THANKS again for the interest and I'll get some video posted for you all!

Congrats Brian can't wait to see the video. So the spring was pushing the cyclic out of the neutral position? Kind of like a car that really needs a front end alignment where you need to hold constant pressure just to keep it on the road.

Brian - great to hear! What kind of events, and where? Just curious, I go to the air show at Jones Beach here on Long Island every year and love to see the old birds, even though I don't know jack about them I still appreciate it.

merichar wrote:

Congrats Brian can't wait to see the video. So the spring was pushing the cyclic out of the neutral position? Kind of like a car that really needs a front end alignment where you need to hold constant pressure just to keep it on the road.

Actually your analogy is DEAD ON! That's exactly what was happening. It actually could have been flown the way it was but the stick wouldn't have been as accurate meaning it would have been more dangerous! I'm impressed with the analogy though!

FreeDive wrote:

Brian - great to hear! What kind of events, and where? Just curious, I go to the air show at Jones Beach here on Long Island every year and love to see the old birds, even though I don't know jack about them I still appreciate it.

We'll actually be doing a number of functions this summer. We'll fly into the air show here in Indianapolis, go to a number of Vietnam veterans functions, we're going to try to fly into our Vietnam veteran crew members own reunions too! We currently have 3 Vietnam veteran crew members, one was a pilot and the other two were crew chiefs and they were basically in charge of all the maintainence so they were very important. They all go to their unit reunions so in honor of them, we'd like to fly into each of their reunions! The other cool personal thing we're going to do with it is fly into the Indianapolis 500 race this May!!! This won't be an official function though. Our family has about 20 of us that go to the race every year and my brother in law who started this whole thing knows people there so we'll be able to fly in and land in the infield and then walk to our seats instead of driving in the mess called traffic. I can't begin to tell you how cool that's gonna be!
Basically, the functions that we'll fly into will have something to do with Vietnam veteran's and current military functions. Anything dealing with the military and honoring the military in any way is what we'll fly into. One of the main reasons we did this restoration really is to honor all members in the military whether they be veterans or on active duty. This is to honor them!

Cool pic in your avatar but do you have some bigger ones we can see too?

Tremendous Brian !!!! This sounds like it's going to be an epic event !
After all the hard work you guys have been doing, it's definitely going to be a
VERY special and memorable moment for all of you. I hope everything goes
perfectly for you, and that it's a safe flight ! By the sound of things, it's
going to be a busy Spring and Summer, going to these cool events you are
talking about ! I know there are countless people that will be looking forward
to seeing the Huey. It's going to be appreciated SO much by everyone !!!!
THANKS for giving this update ! We appreciate it VERY much ! Good Luck,
and can't wait to see some pics and video ! Take care !

sheraortho wrote:

merichar wrote:

Congrats Brian can't wait to see the video. So the spring was pushing the cyclic out of the neutral position? Kind of like a car that really needs a front end alignment where you need to hold constant pressure just to keep it on the road.

Actually your analogy is DEAD ON! That's exactly what was happening. It actually could have been flown the way it was but the stick wouldn't have been as accurate meaning it would have been more dangerous! I'm impressed with the analogy though!

I've never actually rigged the flight controls on a Huey but I did stay at Holiday Inn Express last night. I just figured they've got to be similar to airplanes of that era. Push/pull control tubes or fly by wire had yet to be widely used or developed. Back in my early airmen days I worked some UH-1N avionics systems, they are pretty cool machines and nothing else sounds quite like them. You guys got a loudhailer on that thing?

merichar wrote:

sheraortho wrote:

merichar wrote:

Congrats Brian can't wait to see the video. So the spring was pushing the cyclic out of the neutral position? Kind of like a car that really needs a front end alignment where you need to hold constant pressure just to keep it on the road.

Actually your analogy is DEAD ON! That's exactly what was happening. It actually could have been flown the way it was but the stick wouldn't have been as accurate meaning it would have been more dangerous! I'm impressed with the analogy though!

I've never actually rigged the flight controls on a Huey but I did stay at Holiday Inn Express last night. I just figured they've got to be similar to airplanes of that era. Push/pull control tubes or fly by wire had yet to be widely used or developed. Back in my early airmen days I worked some UH-1N avionics systems, they are pretty cool machines and nothing else sounds quite like them. You guys got a loudhailer on that thing?

Well we were initially looking at one of the push/pull tubes that operated the stab bar (stabelizer bar) on top of the rotor blade. We changed that but we went back to the origional one for some reason that i don't know yet. BTW, what is a loudhailer?

Here are some new pics we had taken by a professional photographer:









Some that i took:

OH WOW!

Very cool..that engine is MASSIVE!

A loudhailer is an external speaker. Did you see in Apocalypse Now when the Hueys were flying in with Ride of the Valkyrie playing? That was a loudhailer. They can be used to communicate with people on the ground. They are interfaced with the aircraft interphone system and various other audio systems/radios, etc. Or you can use them to just scare the hell out of any unsuspecting ground crew who walk by the helo. Not that I've ever done that.

Looks awesome Brian!

merichar wrote:

A loudhailer is an external speaker. Did you see in Apocalypse Now when the Hueys were flying in with Ride of the Valkyrie playing? That was a loudhailer. They can be used to communicate with people on the ground. They are interfaced with the aircraft interphone system and various other audio systems/radios, etc. Or you can use them to just scare the hell out of any unsuspecting ground crew who walk by the helo. Not that I've ever done that.

OK now I'm with ya. I thought that's what it may have been but wasn't sure. Actually, we have talked about doing just that and putting one in and play Ride of the Valkyrie when we come in to land! Not sure if we'll do it yet.

Holy Cow Brian !!!! The Huey looks just phenomenal !
From the unbelievable condition of the outside and all of
the signs on it. To the impressive detail and size of the
engine ! You guys have done such an AMAZING job
with all of this sir ! CONGRATULATIONS and awesome
pictures by the way !!! Thank You !

AtomicTom wrote:

Holy Cow Brian !!!! The Huey looks just phenomenal !
From the unbelievable condition of the outside and all of
the signs on it. To the impressive detail and size of the
engine ! You guys have done such an AMAZING job
with all of this sir ! CONGRATULATIONS and awesome
pictures by the way !!! Thank You !

THANKS man I really appreciate it. It's nice that people can really appreciate it for what it is! If you look at the picture of the tail, there's a unit painting from the Warlords. They were an attack helicopter squadron that our Huey flew in. Then the front with the crossed sabres is for the 1st Calvary Airborne unit. These are both units this flew in when in Vietnam. We are actually painting another unit patch on the other side of the tail to honor another unit this was in during it's 2 year tour in Vietnam. It's all about remembering the veterans and what they did and the units they were in!

sheraortho wrote:

AtomicTom wrote:

Holy Cow Brian !!!! The Huey looks just phenomenal !
From the unbelievable condition of the outside and all of
the signs on it. To the impressive detail and size of the
engine ! You guys have done such an AMAZING job
with all of this sir ! CONGRATULATIONS and awesome
pictures by the way !!! Thank You !

THANKS man I really appreciate it. It's nice that people can really appreciate it for what it is! If you look at the picture of the tail, there's a unit painting from the Warlords. They were an attack helicopter squadron that our Huey flew in. Then the front with the crossed sabres is for the 1st Calvary Airborne unit. These are both units this flew in when in Vietnam. We are actually painting another unit patch on the other side of the tail to honor another unit this was in during it's 2 year tour in Vietnam. It's all about remembering the veterans and what they did and the units they were in!

No need to thank me Brian ! I appreciate everything about this Huey,
ESPECIALLY you and ALL of the people like you, who flew in these.
Thank You and Thank ALL of you !!!!...Want to also thank you for
giving some more information on those unit paintings and what they
stand for. It's really terrific seeing the hard work and determination
behind keeping this piece of history in the forefront. Like you said it
IS about remembering the veterans, their units, and what they did
for the country. Thank you again sir !

Brings back memories. Good luck with the flight.