Over Torque

Over Torque at any time could result in failure of Gear boxes/and attachments. If in flight one of the components failed it could result in flying debree and hopefully an auto rotating to a landing. If there were no failure it would than required a special inspection after the incident. On recip engines like the H34 overspeed & overboost occured. The throttle was opened without the clutch being engaged the unloaded engine would scream to to point of disinegration usually the fan blades would fly off like shrapnel. On over boosts was results of a loaded drive system at a low RPM than adavancing the throttle causing an over boost in the engine usually bending the push rods and engine components such as the supercharger. We had many of these two at the Vietnamese H34 Squadrons for unexpierenced pilots or panic situtations. SF PM 😮 Agree with Larry on the other questions involving operations & communications!!!

Op Sec

There is such a thing called operational security. The need to know. Why do you need to know these things?

thanks for the info pm377! it answered my question perfectly!

Larry Zok wrote: There is such a thing called operational security. The need to know. Why do you need to know these things?

the short answer: it's for a modification of a PC game, where we're trying to make everything as realistic as possible.

the long answer:
the modification is called Wargames (WG), and it is a modification of the PC game Operation Flashpoint (OFP).

OFP doesn't simulate helicopters very well, and some of the things WG is trying to add are small details like start-up sequences, warning messages, weapons that go offline when you're going too fast, and damage from not treating your helicopter nicely (i.e., over-torque :D). the problem, though, is that the person adding most of these things isn't actually a helicopter pilot, he's just a 23-year-old former Marine, so while he's a great resource for things like small-arms damage values, weapon sounds, and the general "feel" of ground combat, when it comes to helicopters he uses a lot of improvisation :D.

so, right now, as soon as you get the over-torque warning message, your helicopter takes damage (unfortunately OFP only uses a 0-100% damage system) at a rate of about 1% for every second you are over the "speed limit".

i have another PC game called Vietnam Medevac, which is a huey simulator, and while i frequently got "Warning: Over-Torque" messages, it never seemed to have any effect on the helicopter. it didn't make sense to me that over-torque would be completely harmless, but it also didn't make seem to make sense that it would cause you to crash within 2 minutes, so i went to get a professional's opinion :D.

the reason for my second question is basically the same; the OFP community as a whole is very dedicated to realism, but there are relatively few missions that realistically simulate things like the chain of command and the use of a radio to communicate with support elements (such as helicopters), as these things weren't included with the original game (they must be simulated by the mission maker through on-screen menus). many people have created realistic simulations of things like artillery support, but one of the things i haven't seen covered, though, is the interaction of a squad/company and its air-support, and since i was already asking about the over-torque (that's originally why i was going to post), i figured i might as well ask about that as well, since it was something that i had been curious about in the past, and figured might benefit the community if i shared it with them.

anyway, thanks again for the info about over-torque, and i totally understand if you don't feel comfortable releasing that information, though with the kind of stuff you can find on the globalsecurity.org website, i didn't think it would be classified information (i guess i could be wrong, though).

Op Sec

Pablo

I hope you can understand our dilema here. I can understand your wanting to update your game, however, as recent news reports state, our enemies are using the internet for training and the such. For us to post info on air/ground communications and SOP we would have to be really dense. Plus, you are posting from New Jersey, which if I am not wrong, has a very radical muslim community. Am I just paranoid? :rolleyes:

Larry

US Military SOP is already available to the public!

Go to this website for a list of some of the US Army field manuals available to the public:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/index.html

So it's not like the information isn't out there already; I was just asking for a quick and simple explanation of how things were back during the Vietnam War.

thanks!

Pablo... To keep it simple....... on fm radio freq's we'd use "from Jack Benny's age up or down 2.3 etc" Today that probably wouldn't work well since most young pilots don't even know who Jack Benny was, let alone his age. 🙂

To make sure you knew if it you were over the correct LZ, a pilot would use his radio to tell the guy he was talking to in the zone to "pop a smoke" (Sound familiar?). After a short pause you'd see smoke on the ground. Sometimes 2 or 3 different colored smokes would pop. Only one would be the friendly zone. So.... you'd ask your contact in the zone "which color is yours?" If it sounds a bit primative and simplistic..... it was..... but it worked.

I'm sure that modern advancements in telecommunications over the last 40 years have changed things drastically and thay have made things a bit more secure for the aircrews flying today. However, they still may be flying some of the original CH-46's that we old farts flew back in the 60's/70's... Hope that helps .

PS... Just to make sure that I haven't violated any opsec rules, I won't tell you Jack Benny's age....cheers 🙂

thanks for the help mike!