To save money, state builds copters from surplus parts | Hacker News Reader

To save money, state builds copters from surplus parts

seattletimes.com

24 pointsmdturnerphys24 comments

The article says they're paying about $500K to refurbish a Huey. Northwest Helicopters sells refurbished Hueys for around $500K, and that includes many new parts, new wiring, and modern avionics. They also have an upgrade version, with a more powerful engine, carbon-fiber blades, and a longer-lived transmission.

Yup, I can buy a refurb straight truck for 50k yet a refurb firetruck costs an order of magnitude more.

Yes, they are doing the refurb in-house - but when its done for the same 500k its fully outfitted for the duty it needs to do, versus 500k for one that would still need additional conversion for firefighting.

Does that include the left pilot seat, the foam system, the bubble door, the bucket suspension system, or any of the other adaptions, plus getting it certified? The article specifies that some of the parts are surplus, but nothing in it says there are no new parts or modern avionics. It's entirely possible it'd still be worth it going with buying them outright, but the situation is more complicated than you suggest

This is admirable and pretty cool that they have the staff who came together to relish the challenge and developed the expertise to refurbish the mishmash of parts.

>All told, an aircraft like Caroline takes roughly 5,000 mechanic hours to become flight-worthy.

For a site like HN, the above quote sounds so improbable when applied to software.

Perhaps. It's the equivalent of a project that takes a 5-developer team 6 months, full-time, to complete. When you put it that way, it's not so out-of-bounds ...

A question to copter engineers: why does a copter have to be ripped apart and reassembled after just 125 flight hours? I don't think that an airplane with far more complex parts needs such short full-maintenance intervals...

Which airplanes parts do you think are more complicated than a helicopter swash assembly?

I'd guess stuff like the F-35s STOVL system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_LiftSystem) to be a quite complex thing (but apparently the gun of the plane is more complex than this, lol) or the Airbus A380 and bigger planes due to the massive weight of the planes and the corresponding immense power of the engines.

The F35 has to spend something like 10 hours in the shop for every hour of flight time.

What the ...? Okay, at least that explains why according to wikipedia they plan to buy 1.7k jets... if they need 9 jets as "stand in" for every one that's been flying.

Absolutely ridiculous that they have firemen heading off into danger in a 50 year old airframe.

I'm sure the State wastes 10 million a year on any number of things.

Why waste good helicopter parts? I would have to think that the materials used in military applications are more robust than commercial. Refurbishing old parts isn't bad so long as it's done safely. The article says that the helicopter parts are inspected visually every 25hrs, a tear down is done every 125hrs, and any anomalous issue gets them grounded. No mention of problems with the refurbished copters.

Honestly, I think this is a very smart and efficient move on the part of the state. Reuse when possible, so long as it doesn't jeopardize safety.

There is no such thing as a safe helicopter.

Indeed. In fact, the most dangerous aspect of high-angle mountain rescue is usually flying in helicopters in borderline weather conditions, not the actual act of plucking people off of mountainsides.

Keeping and maintaining something that works is often safer than buying something new. Those kinds of helicopters haven't changed in a long time, and chances are, if they bought new, they would probably buy the same thing since the problem is getting parts to maintain it, not the base airframe.

500k sounds insane I have seen flight worthy helicopters for 300k.

Seams more like they do it cause they like it.

Since they're doing all the maintenance, probably more confident when they do the initial refurb. Additionally, these aren't just helicopters, but are tooled for a specific set of tasks (in this case, filling and dumping giant buckets of water)

Flight worthy firefighting helicopters for 300k? With at least the same number of hours left on all the major parts (engines, airframe, etc)?

Any links?

Have not seen anyhing recently, just one of's at various places.

Is this kind of like Orbital Sciences using the surplus rocket engines?

Maybe order one F35 less and give these guys a bit more budget?

How many states have F35's?

I believe he is saying that instead of burning up the federal budget buying this mediocre design-by-committee jet, they could allocate more money to the states.

Logical thinking will get you booted out of office.

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