There Are Those Who Have, and Those Who Will

"They just forgot to put the gear down," was the simple answer to the expensive and temporarily painful question of "what happened?" to the Carter Copter last week.

As always, Jay Carter was open to our questions. He explained that a lot of enthusiasm, and some high-pressure mistakes, can often spell the difference between 'straight' and 'busted.' The Army Aviation Association was meeting in Ft Worth (TX) last week, and, as Jay explained it, "There's a lot of interest in our machine... in fact, they were there to see us fly." With the V-22 Osprey always a question mark, and with the 20-year gestation of that iffy machine still moving slowly, Carter said the assembled brass was enthusiastic. "One of the colonels told us, after witnessing the test flight, that this was, 'the most impressive demonstration [he] had ever seen.'" (One of our friends at the factory said we'd have to confirm with Jay, but added, "I think we impressed them.")

What happened? No, really...

Jay explained, "The pilots just forgot to lower the landing gear." These guys are top test pilots, though. What else? "All the flights in this test cycle had been with the gear extended. This was the second time in seven months they retracted the gear." It was mostly for show, this time, even though a lot of data are collected on every flight. Carter continued, "They were coming down with almost no thrust -- showing the capabilities of how quiet, how slow we can descend, in autorotation. They were planning on making an 'aggressive' landing."

They were on-plan, all right: "They hit pretty hard -- they had tried to power out of it -- they hit so hard the tailbooms deflected so far, that the prop hit the ground." It wasn't a 'crash,' except that there was no landing gear to absorb the impact. "Ten fps descent wouldn't have done anything to the landing gear," Carter assured us.

One thing led to another...

"When the first blade came off," Carter noted, "it [the rotational mass] was severely out of balance. In the half-revolution before the second blade came off, [the remaining blade] did some bad damage."

So much screaming, so little time...

"We were screaming at them on the radios, 'gear up!' but there was so much noise, they didn't know what we were saying, until too late." It was a case of too much information, during an already-stressful phase of the flight.

Damage assessment:

The fuselage and booms are badly damaged; the prop is wrecked; the engine is parts. On the 'good' side, the main rotor is OK, the wings are fine; the gear was well-protected; and most of the instrumentation and controls are salvageable. Getting it home wasn't too much of a problem. Our factory friend said, "It's rolling on the wheels it went there with -- we just lifted it up, put the wheels down, and rolled it on the trailer."

How did it happen?

Mr Carter explained, "We have a gear horn, and we disabled it last week." More explanation was in order: "A lot of our testing was taxiing. Every time we got over 50 mph, the alarm would go off, and freeze the display: 'Lower Landing Gear!' They wanted to make 'flying' takeoffs, and that alarm was annoying. The pilots said it was annoying," Jay said, "so I disabled it." He laughed, wryly, "They promised me, they wouldn't forget!" In retrospect, that still wasn't the best idea. "I should have redesigned it, so it wouldn't give that nuisance alarm..."

Everything else was going so well, too.

Jay reverted to his usual, wonderful 'optimist' mode: "We just finished some really neat tests-- our boosted controls worked great. We lost boost pressure one time, and the pilots merely said, 'It's stiff, but flyable.' That's a great confidence builder, that they could lose boost and still be flyable." The systems are proving capable, too: "One test flight -- 19 minutes long -- for 18 minutes of that, it was on total automatic controls. We did a lot of nice things, and we gave them one heck of a demonstration," Jay noted. Even though it didn't have the ending he wanted, he pointed out that the basic design is strong as dirt: "There's a lot that could happen, and they did not get hurt."

Schedule will slip a few months.

Carter was in the cusp of the next phase of prototyping, and had lined up some showcases for what will soon be the world's fastest rotorcraft. "We were going to demonstrate for more military, for the SATS meeting the first of May; and people from Europe, who wanted to have another look. We're three months behind."

Nevertheless, he's already planned the improvements he wants: "We're going to put in out new turbocharged engine, and a few changes to the gear, and a few changes to the automatic controls. We'll make it more-reliable, with a little more performance." He's going to blow the engine, too: "We need more horsepower -- 300 now, with a 3750-pound aircraft -- that's not very much [power to weight], even for a fixed-wing aircraft. [The low power shows] we've got a very efficient aircraft -- even this way, we can climb 550 fpm -- at 12.5 lb/hp. That's all we do in our family's old Mooney, with four of us aboard."

Next?

Jay took the setback/opportunity in stride: "We've had worse; we've had better. Basically, I learned what I needed to learn, and we needed to make some changes, and with all the demonstrations we were having to fly, we never would have made them. Now, we'll get that turbocharged engine in, and we'll have excess horsepower." That'll be neat.

They'll see you at Oshkosh.

FMI: www.cartercopters.com