PS Magazine - TB 43-PS-611
PS, The Preventative Maintenance Monthly
ISSUE 611
OCTOBER 2003
Remember, an
unbalanced tail
rotor can cause
metal fatigue and
can crack the tail
rotor gear box
mounts. And then
BAM,
your bird
could spin out of
control.
M
echanics, don’t get in a hurry when it’s time to do pre-flight inspections.
For example, don’t check your Chinook’s
engine oil level indicator when your bird is cold.
Warm up cold engines first before checking the
gauge. That’s because cold oil drains back into the
gearbox and won’t give you an accurate reading.
Never add oil before running the engines first.
If you do, you’ll overfill the engines with oil.
Then, look out! The excess oil will blow out
through the engine oil breather line onto the flight
line and leave a slick mess for you to clean up.
Perform your daily engine inspections like it
says in TM 1-1520-240-PMD to keep ‘em run-
ning smoothly.
To avoid adding too much oil and creating a slippery situation, service your
engine oil system like it says in Task 1-74 of TM 55-2840-252-23-1 on helicopters
with T55-L-712 engines. With helicopters that have T55-GA-714A engines
installed, use the info in TM 1-2840-265-23&P, EM 0186, to check engine oil level.
It’s Task 1-33 in the paper version.
PS 611
OCT 03
39
CH-47D…
Tail Rotor Hardware Mix Up
As you remove each piece of hardware from the retention plate, put it in the
appropriate hole on your display board. When you reinstall the tail rotor, there’s no
guesswork about where the hardware goes.
But keep this in mind: Make sure you put the
steel washers
—not the aluminum
washers—on the bolts against both sides of the retention plate. Aluminum washers
cause corrosion and rust when placed against the metal retention plate.
Check gauge when
oil is warm
time to warm
up your engines
before I check
your oil.
When reinstalling
the Black Hawk’s
tail rotor after
maintenance, don’t
get a case of
amnesia about
where the retention
plate hardware
goes.
it’s
easy
to get the
hardware
mixed up.
“So make your-
self a bolt
display board
to figure out
what hardware
goes where.
here’s how…”
• Make the board from a thin piece of styrofoam or plywood.
• Cut out a 2-ft square piece and draw in the shape of a tail
rotor retention plate.
• Drill 1/2-in holes for each bolt and mark the board FWD, AFT,
TOP and BOTTOM.
When installing hardware, put steel washers against rentention plate
UH-60A/L…
that way
we can get
a good
reading!
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