Tracking Maintenance on the Black Hawk? Start here.
Adding a Black Hawk to your fleet of aircraft has undoubtedly increased your capabilities. The Black Hawk is one of the most recognizable and capable aircraft ever made, but keeping these aircraft flying requires more than the average helicopter. These aircraft are very complex and require specialized maintenance programs to ensure your fleet remains airworthy.
So, what makes the Black Hawk different or difficult to track? Well, there are a number of things that we will look at in this article but one of the most important and often the trickiest things to do is understanding and accurately transitioning military records into a sustainable civil program. Other differences include different Type Certificates (TC’s), Engine History Recorders, Max Power Checks and Daily HIT checks, multiple layers of sub-components, linked inspections and complex life limits.
Setting The Foundation
Building the foundation of a good maintenance program for your Black Hawk starts on day 1. Long before you even pick up your aircraft from the BEST program you need to start auditing and organizing the historical records into a program that is understandable and accessible by your maintenance staff. ModernHawk is maintenance software that is specifically designed to handle this task. Getting streamlined tracking in place before starting your conversion to civil life will pay dividends on the back end by ensuring the maintenance staff have everything they need to accurately document all maintenance and plan for every required inspection.
As you are gaining understanding of the records you will need to start thinking if you want to buy on to a pre-existing TC (there are quite a few for the Black Hawk now), or develop your own. Ultimately you will need to tailor your maintenance program to the TC to ensure compliance. The process of development and certification of your own TC can easily take a year or more, so plan ahead.
Understanding the History Recorder
One of the most unique things about the Black Hawk is how the engine times and components are tracked. The General Electric (GE) T-700 series of engines utilize a history recorder to track LCF1, LCF2, INDEX, and HOURS. The history recorder tracks engine hours separate from the aircraft, it is these hours that are used for all maintenance tracking of the engine components.
One important point that you need to understand when looking at the military engine records is that all component due times are listed as History Recorder Hours not the Total Time of the engine or airframe. These two times may or may not be the same depending on if the history recorder was original to that engine. Having maintenance software that was developed understanding this relationship allows for effortless and accurate tracking of components. ModernHawk records full History Recorder readings as often as the user needs/wants to record. This ensures that you will always be aware of the current status of your engine and prepared for any changes that may come in the future.
Max Power Checks vs HIT Checks
Power checks are not as simple as just pass or fail. The Black Hawk performance charts allow the pilot to utilize the exact power that the engine is producing. Each engine is given an Engine Torque Factor (ETF) that has an acceptable range between .85 and 1.00. The aircraft is given an Aircraft Torque Factor (ATF) which is the average of the two ETF’s, this can range between .90 and 1.00. So you could have an aircraft that has an ATF of only .93 and is acceptable to fly because the performance charts allow you to compute performance at that value. The ETF’s are determined by doing a Max Power Check; these are required after certain maintenance events, if the ETF’s are unknown or need to be established, after phase maintenance or a failing HIT check. Once a Max Power Check is completed and ETF’s established a Baseline HIT Check is conducted to set the parameters for your daily HIT check.
Now that you know your ETF’s and ATF and you have an established window from your Baseline HIT you can start conducting and recording your daily HIT checks. HIT checks should be conducted before the first flight of each day and are used to validate that your ETF’s and ATF are still accurate and the aircraft bleed air system is operational. ModernHawk automatically ties all this together for the pilot and maintenance team by referencing the last entered Max Power Check and Baseline parameters to provide a pass fail indication instantly. All of the HIT and Max Power Checks are documented and stored with the engine.
Components and Inspections
The Black Hawk requires the tracking of over 200 components and nearly 100 different inspections. Many of the time limited components are sub components to main assemblies and are easily missed in the records if you do not know how to look. Maintenance software will sort these components easily and display any components that are coming due, ensuring that you do not inadvertently overfly a component. Paper work can get confusing when it comes to changing a component with multiple sub components and different time lives, ModernHawk handles this with just a few clicks.
Another huge section of maintenance tracking with the Black Hawk is the complexity of the inspections, you need to have a program that tracks, sorts and alerts you about upcoming maintenance. Another important point to understand is how the Phase Maintenance Inspections (PMI) work. The PMI is broken up into two sections PMI 1 and PMI 2. Each PMI is done on a 960 hour interval that can not be more than 480 hours apart from the other, this means that your maintenance software must be able to link these inspections to ensure compliance. Being able to tie all the components and inspections together and accurately display the relevant information that you need will make maintaining and operating the Black Hawk safe and efficient.
Wrap Up
This article is just scratching the surface of what goes into understanding everything that surrounds a sustainable maintenance program for the UH-60 Black Hawk. Gaining a full understanding of this is paramount to ensure safe and effective operation of this amazing and complex aircraft.