Saw this over at Armoramo, these are the same thing I saw a few months ago on a rotational unit’s aircraft here at the NTC. They were going from here to Iraq. Pretty interresting. Pics are from a guy in 82nd Avn BDE. Chief Snake, another project for you.
Wow. That’s a big filter!! Thanks for posting those pix Gino.
decreased engine performance and high engine oil temp time!
Yeah, you would hope not. But it looks like the front of those things might have a kind of emergency inlet door or something?..a sort of bypass in case of an overloaded filter or high temp situation, maybe. You would hope they thought of that situation before they installed them![:)]
Only one way to find out…fly it and see how it performs.
CH-53E’s have a similar system called EAPS (Engine Air Particle Seperators) which filter out the dust when landing and taking off. There are doors on the front of the EAPS which the pilot can switch between open, closed and automatic. In automatic mode the doors will close and the blowers come on under 30-50 knots indicated air speed.
Kik36:
A work around used in Iraq was to seal the filters on the EAPS (the smaller filter holes on the EAPS, not the front doors). This brough more power to the engine. HMH-462 were the guys that found this out. Performance is better on the T64-416s with the TiN coating on the compressor blades as well. I can’t wait to see the CH-53X that Sikorsky is working on. That will be a Horse!
Semper Fi!
Carl
We had problems with the IPS systems on the huey. The huey has little swirl vertexs on the IPS. They look like the same thing on the 53s, but there was no moving parts on them. You really need all you can get on a single engine huey. We had no problems with the old vietnam type partical separator. A few of our hueys still have the old type.
Hueys forever!
Thanks for the info Dragon, it has been a few years (almost 6)…but damn if I ain’t proud…HMH-462 was my parent squadron!!! Semper Fi!!
The bypass doors that you see are left open when operating around improved areas. The only people that I talked to who were using them were A guys and they reported about a 10% loss in power. I am sure that there is a similar loss in power on a L, but we have a lot more power to work with than the A guys do. I am also told that they take almost 1 hour each to remove if you have to remove an inlet. I can get the 100 hr torque check done on one of ours (no filters to take off before the inlets come off) completed in less than an hour including removal and reinstallation of the inlets.
Mac
Yo Mac good to see you are back. We need to get together!