AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011 - 71

final flight, because Bredenbeck wants the focus on the team. When that team painted “Kevin Bredenbeck, Chief Test Pilot, 007” on the side of the X2, noting his role as only the seventh Sikorsky chief test pilot, Bredenbeck wanted it removed. He relented when he realized it was more important for team morale that it stay. Bredenbeck has a habit of eating a banana as his breakfast and was branded a “space monkey” by the team. After major accomplishments during the 17 flights, the team gave him a plastic banana with the achievement written on the side. “I hate to say how simple it is to fly this aircraft, because I like to think I’m a special kind of person,” Bredenbeck joked. “But let’s just say any monkey that you feed a banana to can fly this aircraft.” He needed an assistant monkey on the first flight of the X2, when the aircraft proved a handful. In pilot parlance, it was “hot”—that is, twitchy. Step one on the flight test card was to pick it up (lift off). “Step two was to land, and I said, ‘I think we need to wait for the landing. I don’t think it is going to be too good.’” So he flew it around for a while, acting as sort of an airplane whisperer,

“I hate to say how simple it is to fly this aircraft...let’s just say any monkey that you feed a banana to can fly this aircraft.”
—Kevin Bredenbeck, Sikorsky chief test pilot
getting to know the aircraft’s bad habits. When he came back he had it figured out, so he landed twice, but there was an ulterior motive. An engineer had taken a photo of his off-centerline landing after an earlier flight and posted it on the Internet before Bredenbeck was out of the aircraft. It was a conventional helicopter used to test X2 flight control systems—and the engineer knew he faced razzing for the problem in the yaw control system. His point was that while his software needed improvement, so did Bredenbeck’s landings. On that first landing in the X2, after literally a shaky start, Bredenbeck returned to the landing pad and landed off the centerline. Remembering the engineer with the camera, and knowing he had the aircraft figured out, he lifted off to the consternation of the flight test director, circled around, landed on the line, and radioed, “Bryan, you can come out and take a picture now.” Solving the stability problem in the fly-by-wire system was the key to the X2’s success. An earlier try The X2 wasn’t Sikorsky’s first attempt to reach 250 knots and solve the advancing-blade problem. If a helicopter blade moves at 300 knots at a hover, and then you move forward at 200 knots, the advancing blade gains greater lift because it has a relative speed of 500 knots. The retreating blade has a relative speed of 100 knots and much less lift—an imbalance that would cause the helicopter to roll. All helicopters compensate for this problem, but none are able to compensate at X2 speeds.

http://FAA.PSlexams.com http://FAA.PSlexams.com

AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011