Hey it works now, well kind of........

So the long anticipated wind tunnel tests have began. The first forward flight run was finished yesterday at about 15:00. Everything went according the plan........kind of. There were metal chips in the transmission of the UH-60 so the test was pushed back by a few hours while the mechanics removed the chips and found and fixed the source of the chips. But after that everything went according to plan, until they turned the tunnel on........ then they found that the hydraulic system for some of the actuators (the things that move the entire helicopter up and down during a test) was leaking, so they had to perform an emergency shutdown. Despite the name everyone remained eerily calm during the entire emergency....... Maybe everyone who works at NASA is a robot and can't feel terror? But that's just idle speculation that would probably appear on a conspiracy theory forum. During some of the high thrust conditions some of the channels approached their safety limits so I got to talk over the intercom system, that was fun, well more fun than just sitting there for two hours. I don't think I've posted any pictures of the test stand on the blog so here are some I took a while ago.

So this is the actual wind tunnel with the LRTA (Large Rotor Test Apparatus) in it, this picture was from when they were calibrating one of the laser systems that measures the blade displacment.

This is the control room that sits under the wind tunnel. My station is at the left most moniters (the bottom one is cut off). I'll be spending a lot of time in this room as the test continues in the coming weeks.

-David Stevens