"newshound" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 07/08/2019 21:15, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 21:08:15 +0100, NY wrote:

Excellent flying as well, not only close to the dam but also
hardly any
lurch upwards when they drop a couple of bags...

Yes I was amazed at how well the pilot was able to compensate the amount
of lift as he let go of a ton of ballast. I wonder how much "autopilot"
type assistance the pilot gets in maintaining a constant height as the
load varies and if there are any gusts.

Don't know if a Chinook has any such automatics. In some ways I be
surprised if they do, such automatics have a habit of not letting you
"push the envelope" which an aircraft in a combat zone may wish to
do... It's also added complexilty thus something else to go wrong.

Being RAF it won't be the first time they have dropped underslung
loads and they'll know the aircraft very well and how much to reduce
the pitch of the rotors for a given weight loss. I guess that they
don't reduce the pitch until they feel the weight go rather than on a
count, just in case the release doesnt happen...

Watching those "rescue" films, I'm amazed at the "hover" of the Sea-Kings
even in obviously gusty conditions. They look just as stable as kestrels,
and even though they are massive it seems remarkable that pilots have the
reflexes to achieve this. I'd always assumed they have some sort of
inertial control system. I asked a Sea-King pilot about this at a county
show about 20 years ago and he claimed it was all manual. But perhaps he
was winding me up.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a086969.pdf
says they do and its used for ASW ops when its hovering
dipping submarine detectors in the water, with two
modes, barometric pressure and radio altitude hold.