The pilot, Officer Steve Browning, 52, of Shirley, described in an interview how he struggled against winds gusting to 32 mph as his craft, a Bell 412 air/sea rescue helicopter, hovered atop Storm King Mountain just after 2 a.m. The five-member rescue team saved the unidentified cadets with the help of infrared and night-vision equipment.

The copter and its crew had to make two trips, hoisting first one cadet into the craft for the trip to the U.S. Military Academy’s parade field, then the second. The two, stranded on the mountain since late afternoon Saturday, were treated for weather-related conditions at the academy’s Keller Army Medical Center, according to a spokeswoman.

“The first thing we saw were two of them on top of a small rock with barely enough room for them,” he said adding the cadets were huddled together. He said he lowered the paramedic and served as Browning’s eyes while he steadied the chopper. If Almeida said “right,” Browning went right. If he said “left,” Browning would go left.

During the rescue, he said, the helicopter’s rotors were about 20 feet from the edge of the cliff in conditions he described as the “worst winds you could ever think of.”

The two cadets had gone rappelling alone on the mountain on a training exercise, on the west bank of the Hudson River, which can reach up to 1,360 feet above sea level, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Military Academy. NYPD said signals from one of the cadet’s cell phones were used to locate them.

I have examined and test flown this newly developed AK 1-3 helicopter in Poltava Ukraine. Would like to compare notes with any one else who has also flown it. I rate the engineering design and build quality as outstanding. There are no castings used in its manufacture, but only CNC machined parts, including the main rotor gearbox casing. There is copious use of Kevlar for all blades and cabin and also plenty of Titanium for weight savings. It would be an injustice to comapre this helicopter to existing crop of kit-helicopters. The helicopter is powered by a 165 hp fuel injected EJ 25 Subaru. I would rate this craft between a R22 Beta II and the Schweitzer 269 C in terms of its weight lifting capacity, performance and cabin size.

Very smooth in flight, usefull load of 610 pounds, cruise speed of 85 knots, rate of climb of 1770 Ft/min, gross weight of 1430 pounds and 200 statute mile range at cruise speed + nice wide cabin at 4ft 5″.
I was very impressed, so I took on the agency for Southern Africa.

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The order affects Phase 1 and Phase 2. Schumer’s proposing to include Phase 1 in the House and Senate budgets.

“We haven’t gotten any commitments, but we are getting an understanding that cutting it completely makes no sense from a fiscal point of view,” said Schumer.

5 helicopters in Phase 1 are already built. Schumer says safer helicopters are needed because the President’s current one is 30 years old.

In a sky-high drama construction workers on Saturday installed the underpinnings for the spire atop Donald Trump’s Chicago skyscraper, which ranks as America’s second-tallest building after Sears Tower.

Sikorsky S-61 helicopter dangled three-legged steel sections of the spire over the tower’s roof. Ironworkers aligned the sections, then bolted them into place, despite the blasts of cold air from the winds and the helicopter’s clattering blades.

As the spectacle unfolded more than 1,300 feet above the sidewalk, with the chopper levitating near such landmarks as the Wrigley Building, pedestrians on Michigan Avenue stopped in their tracks and recorded the sight with a variety of devices–cell phone cameras, camcorders and conventional cameras.

After the helicopter lowered the fifth section of the spire into place, an iron worker clad in a red jacket climbed to the top of the section and disengaged the cable to which the steel piece had been attached. Seen through binoculars, he resembled a fly. “That’s the lead dog pulling the sled,” said one onlooker on the construction team.

Helicopter development is hampered by the fact that for so long it has been a zero sum game, with designers only able to improve forward speed at the expense of hovering ability and low speed control, and vice versa. This, combined with other inherent design restrictions, has kept the top cruise speed for conventional helicopters at roughly 150—170 knots. Looking to overcome these limitations, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. is working on a coaxial design aimed at realizing a cruising speed of 250 knots. First announced in 2005 and having recently achieved a major ground-testing milestone, the X2 is a scalable technology demonstrator that can hover, land vertically, manoeuvre at low speeds, and transition seamlessly from hovering to forward flight. In the words of Sikorsky’s president, Jeffrey Pino, it could prove to be a real ‘game changer’ for the industry.

Coaxial helicopters incorporate a second rotor above the body of the aircraft, eliminating the angular momentum and dissymmetry of lift caused by having only one rotor. This allows the helicopter to achieve faster speeds with greater efficiency, and without having to compromise hovering ability. Sikorsky is very optimistic about the technology’s scalability, claiming it can be effectively used on anything from Class IV UAVs to high-speed joint heavy lift transports with a 25-ton internal load.

Both rotors on the X2 Technology Demonstrator have four blades, and are powered by a LHTEC T800 turboshaft, which also drives a six-bladed pusher propeller on the rear of the model. The craft is expected to travel as fast as 256 knots, has a range of 1300km and a take-off weight of 3600kg.

The X2 demonstrator will incorporate new rotor blade designs with high lift-to-drag ratio, a fly-by-wire system with advanced flight control laws, transmissions with greater horsepower to weight performance, and active vibration control. The X2 also contains an automatic system that strops the rotor blades from exceeding the speed of sound and shattering from the airflow – a necessary precaution for a helicopter traveling faster than 210 knots.

The recent blades-on ground testing milestone brought the craft within “arm’s reach” of its maiden voyage. “The entire X2 TECHNOLOGY Demonstrator Program Team is extremely pleased that we continue to move our experimental program closer and closer to first flight,” said James Kagdis, Program Manager, Advanced Programs. ”We anticipate that reaching this particular milestone, as with those yet to come, will continue to pique the interest of our military, commercial and international customers regarding the potential that X2 TECHNOLOGY could have on their diverse missions around the globe.”

The proof of concept technology demonstrator is scheduled to fly later this year.