(Luft) NH Industries NH90

[Quintus Fabius]

Über die finnischen NH-90:

https://verticalmag.com/features/a-look-...st-member/

Einige interessante Aspekte:

The Mi-8, for example, had been designed by people with a good knowledge of extreme cold. “Starting up the NH90 is sometimes complicated in very cold weather,” said Nordberg. “If we leave the helicopter exposed to the outdoors overnight in -40 C [-40 F] — and these are temperatures we sometimes encounter — it takes an hour to get it going in the morning, with a long warm-up. The Mi-8 took only 15 minutes.

The Mi-8 routinely carried around 20 soldiers. The NH90 can only take about 15 in anti-crash seats. But this figure can rise to 20 in the “seat out” configuration used by the special forces, when all the seats are removed from the cabin and the men strap directly on the floor.

“The Mi-8s were very popular with the crews,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kimmo Nordberg, the former helicopter battalion commander, and now a representative of the Army Commander in the Finnish Defence Command. “These were sturdy, rustic aircraft, with a large interior volume that made it possible to stand up. The large opening, when the clamshell rear end doors were removed, made it possible to drop very large loads.

To facilitate airdrops, the Finns are also keen to fly without the ramp and rear doors, as they previously did with the Mi-8s. “Flying without the ramp, with a large opening at the rear of the fuselage, is not a problem,” said Nordberg. “It may not have been planned initially, but we tested the setup and it worked well. You just have to make a few adjustments to the speeds and angle of attack of the aircraft.”

Aircraft maintenance was the subject of vigorous criticism during the type’s first years of service. In 2014, the availability was less than 20 percent. The numbers improved slowly thereafter, and now fluctuates around 40 percent.

“When we bought the NH90, the manufacturer promised us a requirement for three hours of maintenance per hour of flight,” said Nordberg. “The reality is that the need was closer to 30 man hours per flight hour.”