What has 53 (grease) nipples?
Kawasaki KH4
While prepping for the Avalon Airshow this weekend I stumbled across this classic black and white photo taken in the Northern Territory. Twenty years ago the bullet proof Kawasaki KH4 “kwaka” was already vintage spec and as pure a helicopter as a bloke could strap into. BELL licenced Kawasaki Heavy Industries to build 47’s and this was one of their variants which sat the pilot in front of three passengers as opposed to the traditional three abreast of the Bell 47.
I was one of many junior pilots and the “new” R44 Alpha [yes… that electric trim model] was the next big thing but not until you had gone a few rounds with the kwaka, an opponent well beyond our abilities almost all the time. Perched way at the front offset some risk of serious hearing loss but skin cancer and arthritis from vibration were long term issues. Someone decided mirrors were an indulgence we didn’t deserve and with a tail rotor as far away from the pilot as possible plus no way to see your heels and bear paws, confined areas were a test of airmanship and guesswork. After a few months I was thinking I was pretty good until a set of composite tail rotor blades appeared and some sketchy aerodynamics resulted in a Left Pedal [anti-torque] that you could barely move and a right pedal that went to the floor if the wind blew on it. Since a complaint to human resources would see you deposited on the nearest sealed road with 10 liters of water and your swag, the only coping mechanism was to fly around the Tail Rotor. If you were demanding power - lead with pedal, droop the MR Rotor slightly to ease the left leg workout and then once it was all doing what you wanted, feed in the throttle, collective and RRPM. Going down? Do it all in reverse. The kwaka made a pilot out of me and I never did find all 53 grease nipples but being blessed with good leg strength, I merrily flew along at 60 knots rolling on and rolling off throttle to keep that turbo-charged engine screaming at unrelenting limits. It was stupidly slow, noisy and ‘doors-off’ was standard operating procedure. I can’t actually recall a day [wet season or not] that we had the doors on because it was so bloody hot all the time that being wet and cool was the better of the two options.
The KH4 and the KAMAX are similar in that dual controls are not on the factory Options List. The first time you fly it is your first solo flight and training is always done in a commiserate type. In those days recurrent training for bush pilots was rare. You were expected to learn by osmosis and learn fast. One afternoon in the middle of nowhere, myself and another pilot were swatting flies when the Chief Pilots (CP) ute roared up in a cloud of red dust. Quickly up off our arses we were stunned to learn someone [probably CASA] had inspired him to do some training and I quickly volunteered to go in second place. The plan was to take an hours fuel and head out for Confined Area practice with the CP positioned in the right hand rear seat to shout misery and abuse. They disappeared into the bush and one hour became two and I knew something was amiss. I was heading for the ute to raise the alarm when in the distance I heard what sounded exactly like a street sweeping machine and the kwaka appeared above the escarpment in an apparent state of imbalance. It was a blurred 3D picture, jumping vertically and laterally at the same time as it struggled around a right hand turn and settled roughly in the grass. The CP was out before it hit the ground and stormed past to the ute swearing his nut off. As the blades coasted down my colleague sat slumped with helmet bowed and the source of the noise and vibration was revealed. The outboard two feet of both blades were avocado green and smashed flat with the leading edge splayed out like a wine glass. The leading edge presented a perfect 90 degrees to the plane of rotation and yet somehow the kwaka could still fly.
As it happened the CP curtly instructed the pilot to do a confined area and pointed out a clearing. A nuance of Australian Bush flying is that clearings big enough for KH4 are rare. The Eucalyptus trees grow just far enough apart that you think you can squeeze in but one can fly for miles before finding a clearing big enough. This clearing was shaped like a dumbbell and the pilot shot his approach to the nearest dumbbell. Upon successfully making it into the hover, the CP keyed the mike and chastised him for not landing in the other clearing – the one he had pointed out. Eager to please, the pilot quickly decided to hover through the gap to the other clearing and that is when the kwaka attacked the gum tree.
The pilot said it was like dropping a piece of celery into a blender as the kwaka cleanly smashed the trunk and foliage that followed into neat one foot lengths. From that point a risk versus rewards analysis was carried out and it was decided to fly home since nobody knew exactly where they were, there was no sat phone, no radio comm’s or survival equipment and they just might have been in a national park…
About three hours later, the work ute roared into the carpark in a cloud of red dust with two Main Rotor Blades bouncing on the ladder rack. They had been healing themselves of old age behind the hangar but were promptly installed and we were back in business. It was about three months later that I learned what a Sudden Stoppage Inspection was and why they were critical… but that’s a story for another time.