Sikorsky S-58 and Westland Wessex

[kerick]

There's a company called Midwest Helicopter Airways that uses what appears to be turbine versions for aerial lifting. They're based in a Chicago suburb and I've seen them in action a few times. This is at Navy Pier in Chicago.



Supposedly this one is an S-58JT



Another company called Aircrane uses what appears to be the same type.

[MiB]

Midwest: the Desirée Horton's chopper!       :

[Weaver]

Wonder how a PT-6A-TwinPac-powered S-58T compares to a PT-6A-TwinPac-powered Bell 212 or 412?

[NARSES2]

I pretty sure I witnessed this as a teenager on my paper round. A yellow RAF rescue Wessex came very low, turned tight and touched down in a small paddock in the village, very close to some houses. I assumed it was an emergency.  It stayed for several minutes with rotors turning and then took off and disappeared again. Why it landed in there and not in one of the nearby fields, I have no idea.

Probably saw the sign in the nearby cottage "Mary's home made cakes" and thought they'd get some for tea 

[PR19_Kit]

Not exactly Wessex related, but it is to do with helicopters landing in strange places.

My youngest brother lives in an old farmhouse in the south of France, about 35 miles north of Pau and in the middle of the pate de fois gras producing area. His house is about 1/2 mile from any other buildings and is right alongside a small hillock on the other side of the 'road' leading to his house.



The House.




The hillock, and you can see how much 'out in the wilds' it is.

He'd only been living there about a week when he heard a helicopter flying VERY low across his front garden and the road, and it plonked itself down on top of the hillock and disgorged a bunch of Amree soldats, rather like the scene below!



It was of course an Armee de l'Air Puma and he went over to see if he was being invaded, but the Sarge in charge said 'Non' and the hillock was one of their normal field landing sites and they didn't know the house was now inhabited and they'd phone him when it was likely to happen again. They've done just that a number of times, including once when I was there, but sadly I had to leave to catch the ferry home the same morning they were going to 'drop in' so I didn't get a chance to take real pics of them.

[kerick]

Wow! If the military did that here it would be holy hullabaloo! 

[chrisonord]

I vaguely remember seeing turbine powered S-58's on at least one episode of Airwolf.

[zenrat]

A very simple Wessex/S-58 whiff, which might slip unnoticed past many a JMN, is to cut a second door into the port side.

The only trouble with that is that the Wessex has it's seats on the outside of the cabin facing inwards, nine to port, five to starboard behind the door and one in front of the door. Add another door and you lose three seats. Not easy to see how you'd claw them back either. You can't put seats facing forwards or backwards against the front or rear bulkheads because there are maintenance access doors in them. If you put two rows of nine seats in down the middle, back to back, then you lose the ability for every passenger to exit through either door.

Two rows of five down the middle and a gunner in each door.

[Gondor]

A very simple Wessex/S-58 whiff, which might slip unnoticed past many a JMN, is to cut a second door into the port side.

The only trouble with that is that the Wessex has it's seats on the outside of the cabin facing inwards, nine to port, five to starboard behind the door and one in front of the door. Add another door and you lose three seats. Not easy to see how you'd claw them back either. You can't put seats facing forwards or backwards against the front or rear bulkheads because there are maintenance access doors in them. If you put two rows of nine seats in down the middle, back to back, then you lose the ability for every passenger to exit through either door.

Two rows of five down the middle and a gunner in each door.

That's roughly what I am thinking of doing with the part started build I have.

Re: the seats on the forward bulkhead, they can be removed if you need access to maintenance panels, it's not as if anyone will be sitting on them at the time.

[zenrat]

Here you go.

Wessex - Sky Pirates 10 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr

Matchbox Wessex, Matchbox Lysander UC, Academy Stuka cannons, Elheim white metal door gunners.   I can't remember how I built the interior.

[Old Wombat]

A very simple Wessex/S-58 whiff, which might slip unnoticed past many a JMN, is to cut a second door into the port side.

The only trouble with that is that the Wessex has it's seats on the outside of the cabin facing inwards, nine to port, five to starboard behind the door and one in front of the door. Add another door and you lose three seats. Not easy to see how you'd claw them back either. You can't put seats facing forwards or backwards against the front or rear bulkheads because there are maintenance access doors in them. If you put two rows of nine seats in down the middle, back to back, then you lose the ability for every passenger to exit through either door.

Two rows of five down the middle and a gunner in each door.

That's roughly what I am thinking of doing with the part started build I have.

Re: the seats on the forward bulkhead, they can be removed if you need access to maintenance panels, it's not as if anyone will be sitting on them at the time.

The Wessex is a pretty narrow beast, you may not have room for the troops to get into or out of the seats if you put two rows back-to-back down the centre.

[Weaver]

A very simple Wessex/S-58 whiff, which might slip unnoticed past many a JMN, is to cut a second door into the port side.

The only trouble with that is that the Wessex has it's seats on the outside of the cabin facing inwards, nine to port, five to starboard behind the door and one in front of the door. Add another door and you lose three seats. Not easy to see how you'd claw them back either. You can't put seats facing forwards or backwards against the front or rear bulkheads because there are maintenance access doors in them. If you put two rows of nine seats in down the middle, back to back, then you lose the ability for every passenger to exit through either door.

Two rows of five down the middle and a gunner in each door.

If you're going to accept that much of a passenger reduction, you might as well have them against the walls: leaves the floor area clear and preserves access to the maintenance door without having to remove seats to open it. You could get two more seats (one each side) in front of the doors too, although you might want to reserve them for the gunners. That'd give you a max load of 12 seated plus permanently standing gunners, or 10 plus seats for the gunners. Still a reduction on the 15 seats real ones carry. They're actually rated at 16, so maybe there's a jump seat somewhere I'm not seeing, or maybe that line of 9 seats is so long that everyone can scrunch up enough to make space for one more (unless it's Big Dave, who gets to sit on the floor, of course).

[Rheged]

All I can offer to the Wessex seating debate is that in 1975, one of the rescue Wessexes lifted  10 members of Keswick Mountain Rescue team, their kit, and two rescue dogs from the northern slopes of Skiddaw to  the field across the road from what is now the Theatre by the Lake, on a rainy October late afternoon. All I can say for certain is that it was  extremely cramped and very noisy but it saved us an hour and a half's walking .  Maurice the doctor asked the driver   pilot what  the maximum safe load of the machine was , and got the answer "A SHORT verbal message."

[PR19_Kit]

When I flew in the Wessexes on 700H NAS they only had 3-4 seats, right in the back, as the port side had lots of equipment racking that was full of 'stuff'. The crew pointedly ignored telling 18 yr old me about it, and I assumed it was some sort of dipping sonar, but who knows,

But it was an HAS1 so I guess that it didn't major on any tasking other than anti-sub work.

[jcf]

A very simple Wessex/S-58 whiff, which might slip unnoticed past many a JMN, is to cut a second door into the port side.

The only trouble with that is that the Wessex has it's seats on the outside of the cabin facing inwards, nine to port, five to starboard behind the door and one in front of the door. Add another door and you lose three seats. Not easy to see how you'd claw them back either. You can't put seats facing forwards or backwards against the front or rear bulkheads because there are maintenance access doors in them. If you put two rows of nine seats in down the middle, back to back, then you lose the ability for every passenger to exit through either door.

Two rows of five down the middle and a gunner in each door.

That's roughly what I am thinking of doing with the part started build I have.

Re: the seats on the forward bulkhead, they can be removed if you need access to maintenance panels, it's not as if anyone will be sitting on them at the time.

The Wessex is a pretty narrow beast, you may not have room for the troops to get into or out of the seats if you put two rows back-to-back down the centre.

Which is why the S-58T is still in use in the crane role. The narrow fuselage means that the visibility looking down is superior to most other machines, the K-Max being the exception.