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<blockquote data-quote="James M. Lewis" data-source="post: 177281" data-attributes="member: 6354"><p>Nope didn't have them in 1970s. Did it the old fashion way, remember in the old days how the trains picked up the mail without stopping? The had a specially made pole they attached the mail sack to and the RPO (Rolling Post Office) grab it on the fly with a hook. Well we had something like that with a mark tape. The helicopter spool up and the ground crew held it up for the blade to leave a mark on the tape. The tape had numbers on it for use to figure how much pitch was needed for each blade. So you can see that was time consuming, could spend several hours. Once in Vietnam we had a blade that we couldn't track and lost a whole day. That blade grip had a very fine crack discovered and the maintenance officer had us replace that part. Doing tracking on a Huey with two blades went a lot quicker than that of a Chinook with six blades. Tried to do this in calm weather if possible. But if we had to get that helicopter operational, this task had to be done regardless of what mother nature said. We sometimes worked around the clock using flood lights if needed.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="James M. Lewis, post: 177281, member: 6354"] Nope didn't have them in 1970s. Did it the old fashion way, remember in the old days how the trains picked up the mail without stopping? The had a specially made pole they attached the mail sack to and the RPO (Rolling Post Office) grab it on the fly with a hook. Well we had something like that with a mark tape. The helicopter spool up and the ground crew held it up for the blade to leave a mark on the tape. The tape had numbers on it for use to figure how much pitch was needed for each blade. So you can see that was time consuming, could spend several hours. Once in Vietnam we had a blade that we couldn't track and lost a whole day. That blade grip had a very fine crack discovered and the maintenance officer had us replace that part. Doing tracking on a Huey with two blades went a lot quicker than that of a Chinook with six blades. Tried to do this in calm weather if possible. But if we had to get that helicopter operational, this task had to be done regardless of what mother nature said. We sometimes worked around the clock using flood lights if needed. [/QUOTE]

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