Where I live out in the sticks, few aircraft are ever in evidence. The occasional high altitude jet; during summer a private plane sprays anti-skeeter chemicals, sometimes cropdusters, and some bastard who I hate with the fire of a thousand exploding suns often goes bopping around in a powered parafoil (damn you and your easy ability to go flying whenever the hell you feel like it!!!!). So imagine my surprise yesterday when I heard the thop-thop-thop of a low-altitude heavy helicopter. I grabbed the camera and dashed outside in time to catch a Chinook flying overhead.
Then imagine my surprise when it was joined by a second.
And then a third.
The Chinooks came out of the west, presumably from – or at least over – the ATK facility. They orbited around once, and then wandered off towards the mountains and Brigham City. Damned if I know what they were up to. One had an opened loading ramp for some reason.
Conspiracy Paranoia Note: While these helicopters were probably dark green, the combination of the dark color and the sun angle makes them look black. I can’t spot any markings in any of the photos. So, there ya go, a trio of black helicopters out doing mysterious stuff.
16 Responses to “A Gathering of Chinooks”
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Training exercise, I suspect. The terrain looks right for doing Afghanistan training.
And what with ATK going to become a ghost town soon enough, we’ll have that whole “empty desolation” thing going for us oput here.
I note they have aerial refueling probes on them also.
The finish is very dark olive green with a really rough finish almost like sandpaper, and the markings are in black, so they are hard to see.
The rough finish apparently has something to do with reducing its reflectivity or emissions in the IR spectrum. I don’t know if it’s also supposed to reduce radar echoes also, but it’s something you obviously couldn’t on a high speed aircraft due to the drag it would cause.
OK, one more time, with feeling, they are not “black” helicopters, they are flat, matte, laser and radar countering, green helicopters. And yea, training. What kind of training? ARMY TRAINING, SIR! Got to love Bill Murray and Sgt Hulka!
I’m surprised you don’t see more of them, your area is an excellent approximation for Afghanistan, especially the transitional areas, going from open plains to mountains, you get a lot of rapidly changing wind conditions in that transition line/region. As for the ramp down, it does affect handling, so pilots inexperienced in flying with open rear ramp have to do a certain number of hours in that mode. Plus it is a HELL of a kick riding on the ramp. My favorite position in a shithook is portside stern, as far back as I can get.
Oh, and that is a tactical formation, 2 ships forward, one trailing, trailing ship is the heavy or gunship, it puts the beatdown on anyone shooting at the forward pair, also it flies CAP while the other 2 land and offload/onload.
And the one with the fueling probe is a PAVELOW model, setup to operate with PAVELOW Apache and Blackhawk ships. Extended range and upgraded electronics suites. Could not tell if they all had probes mounted. Nice damn pics for a run-out-the-door shoot of opportunity!
> they are not “black” helicopters, they are flat, matte, laser and radar countering, green helicopters
Yes, but to first order they *look* black. And if someone was already of a mind to see conspiracies with aliens and MIBs and whatnot, that would be enough. So perhaps the dreary tales of “black helicopters” are really tales of “dark green helicopters.”
> I’m surprised you don’t see more of them
As I said, they came in over ATK. ATK is an active rocket production facility, with just a whole hell of a lot of rocket fuel and high explosives on-site. They’re not exactly overly thrilled with low-altitude overflights by *anybody.* But now that their day is done, presumably all the explodey stuff will go away.
I got a real good look (inside and out) at a “black” Kiowa from the National Guard that was used by drug enforcement agents from Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota while I was working nights out at our local airport years ago.
The thing was set up with low-light and thermal imaging equipment in a underbelly turret that was fed into a two-man set of recording and observation equipment in the back seats.
It would be flown in on clear cool summer nights and sent out looking for warm barns on farms where marijuana was being grown, their roofs being heated by the internal lighting systems.
They couldn’t just go around looking at all the farms at random, but needed a court order and a police officer on board to investigate a particular farm if it was thought there was activity like this going on. A sure sign was a small farm that suddenly had a huge climb in its monthly electrical bill.
According to the crew they would shut off the navigation lights and hover at around 8,000, where the sound from their engine and rotor couldn’t be heard.
It’s notable that most “black helicopter” sightings come from fairly barren rural areas…where one also finds things like meth labs and marijuana farming going on, so I suspect that some of this activity is related to drug enforcement actions as well as military training.
In this photo of the three in formation they all three have refueling probes on them:
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/dsc_7722.jpg
BTW, check out this video of how _not_ to aerial refuel a helicopter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Pp4vOr3SE
Probably time for a really quick landing to look things over.
Scott? Its an old joke. And yes, Pat, DEA and other law enforcement do use black painted helicopters, being as they are too stupid to understand the bigtime drug operators use all the latest vision assist equipment, which makes their very hot, and noisy, helicopters easy to spot and track. In the majority of busts phoned in tips are the primary source of the information leading to it, that and undercover buys. Helicopters are just very expensive toys in the war on American’s. Be far more efficient and effective to use satellite data to spot methlabs, they put off one hell of a chemical plume. We find them here in PA by the smell, and they mysteriously catch fire or blowup before cops can arrive, and they usually find the perps, again mysteriously, beaten to shit on the ground near by. you know how fires leave people with multiple broken bones, contusions and teeth kicked in. Far more effective than a trial and probation.
Oh, and I could not tell if the lead ship had one or not, I couldn’t resize them. And I have seen that clip, and a few others. Aerial refueling is a very hazardous operation. Occasionally we see KC135s refueling C17s here in west PA, the 171 ARW being based in Pittsburgh.
I would have thought the problem with aerial refueling would be the rotor hitting the hose of the probe-and drogue refueling system, not hitting the helicopter’s own refueling probe like shown in the video.
I note that the Chinook’s refueling probe doesn’t look like it goes out a far as the end of the rotor blades, and I think the video may show why that’s the case… the longer the refueling probe the greater chance you can clip it with the rotor if the helicopter violently maneuvers during refueling.
Here’s an odd video of a Chinook crew dieing for the sake of art in South Korea, as lowering a modernistic sculpture into place atop a bridge goes terribly wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_3GOS-1LTg
Chopper refuel probes extend and retract, during normal flight it pulls back into the housing. And that first clip you linked is of a CH 53, and they got a WHOLE list of operational problems, inflight refueling being just one.
You are right, the drogue from the tanker has to remain outside of the prop wash, else it gets forced down away from the probe tip, and the turbulence created by the tanker is another major problem the chase pilot has to fight.
In that first clip it appears that the nose of the Super Stallion keeps being forced down, which makes the ship gain speed by changing the AoA of the main rotor. With the Stallion, being a single rotor ship, this is kinda crucial.
It looks like the Super Stallion incident occurred over a desert area, and I wonder if they were hitting thermals rising from the desert that were causing them to bob up and down.
I was wondering that. Hard up and down drafts definitely effect choppers, especially at low speeds. Been bounced around more than a few times in different ships.
The three Chinooks you saw were in transit from the NW to New Mexico for training. This happens about once a year and they always stop at U42 in West Jordan for fuel and overnight rest.
Ah, cool!! Always like that training. What kind of training? ARMY TRAINING, SIR!!!!