Unexpected Limitations Part 1

7º 15.016s 134º 53.389w

Sat May 04 2019

Back around 2010 I designed a flight test that would allow us to teach our optionally piloted helicopter how to land on a moving platform. Being a low budget operation, we built up a flatbed trailer into a rolling helipad. My old GM engineering pal Kevin Macfadden hooked me up with some of his Proving Ground friends, and they built us a custom tow truck with a kick ass cruise control system. We rented the runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico, towing our helipad up and down it for a couple of months while we developed the navigation methods and the flight control laws. My lead crew chief Jack Gray pretty much dealt with the facilities headaches. Austin Perkins, electrician extraordinaire kept all the electronics on the truck/trailer lash up alive. I oversaw the entire operation, doing my best to be watchful and thoughtful. Test pilot Roger Hehr demonstrated an amazing degree of patience and intestinal fortitude - heck, we only tried to kill him a few times. Mark Metzger, the chief test pilot at that time called it “Hardesty’s aerial circus”. Took a long time to sell that test to the safety review board.

Only problem was towing a helipad down a long runway excluded the displacement, velocity and acceleration components created by tidal currents. Well, and also the sway, surge and heave that a helideck on a real ship in a big seaway presents to the pilot, human or robot.

We did so well that Dino Cerchie, our program manager lobbied his boss for a large wad of cash so we could solve those additional components of the navigation and flight control solution. We rented a turd of a boat down in Fort Lauderdale that was equipped with a helideck. That relic was for sale as a “sport utility vessel”. In reality it was an old oilfield work boat that had some new structure and furnishings and a fresh coat of paint. Put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.

I had to design a test that I could sell to our safety review board, and ultimately that both Roger and I believed wouldn’t get him hurt. First off, Roger was a former Army pilot with no ship landing experience. Turns out at a Miami Sailboat Show I had met some former US Coast Guard and UK Navy guys who had formed a consulting group called “The Squadron”. They specialized in training flight crews to land on superyacht helidecks, as well as training the boat crews to deal with flight operations, including a crash on deck and the resulting fire and carnage. That checked a lot of blocks.

The fire suppression system on the pig wasn’t up to our standards, so we brought along a portable system, along with two of our company firemen. As they put it, if Roger had a hard landing and a fire resulted, they would wade in and get him out of danger. They called it “getting hot”. Their devotion to their duty increased Roger’s enthusiasm for the task at hand, which was to allow the robot helicopter to try and land, and let it go as far as possible before smacking the autonomous flight control kill switch and taking control, hopefully simultaneously avoiding death and destruction. The more data we got, the faster we could solve the engineering problems and refine the flight control system. Nobody envied Roger.

We used the ship’s tender, a 10 meter rib to chase the landing approaches so that Dan Ciernia, our video guru, could document the test and generate various media products. Even though company policy prohibited it, both my firefighters were accomplished SCUBA divers and fully intended to board that tender and go get Roger if he had to ditch the helicopter for some reason.

There were several engineers that supported the test. Only one of them had ever spent time on a boat, and their ability to work under pressure in a marine environment that might make them queasy or distracted was a big concern.

The safety of flight review addressed all of the above concerns plus a lot more. We had brainstormed every scenario we could imagine, trying to create a matrix of system failures and limitations we might encounter. It was the most complex and riskiest test I had ever designed or run.

Well, off we went to Florida to do our thing. We had ultimately concluded that the flight sorties would be limited in length by helicopter fuel state, and the number of sorties per day would be limited by crew rest requirements for both the flight and ground personnel. It was typical Fort Lauderdale July weather, hot and sticky, and even offshore there wasn’t much breeze.

I kept a close eye on all the support staff, as did Roger. He knew when to say “Uncle”. All the team members had a tremendous “can do” attitude, but that might eventually disguise fatigue or confusion, and ultimately an unacceptable level of performance at their jobs.

The limitation that ultimately terminated flight operations before crew rest or fuel state became an issue took us completely by surprise. My firefighters, fully dressed in turnout gear and Scott Airpacks for every landing attempt, got to the point of heat exhaustion on a daily basis. Given their craft, they were the most highly skilled and trained professionals on the test. They were also among the smartest, and when they became concerned about their own level of readiness for the task at hand, pride didn’t enter the equation and they advised me to stop the test activity until they could recover.

Not once had that human limitation entered the minds of anyone on the test team, or of our top management whose experience we relied upon.