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Whether you’re maintaining a fleet of helicopters or a single ship, blade tracking and balancing shouldn’t be a full-time job. When you do pull out your tools to do your next track and balance, will the tools complicate the task, or simplify it? RPX Technologies recently spoke with the mechanic for a county sheriff aviation unit in the southeast U.S. about the right tool for the job and how switching to the DynaVibe GX with DynaTrack made his job easier. The department had previously purchased a competing track-and-balance system, but this mechanic shared that “I'd go for long periods of time and we didn't have to do a track and balance, and then you kind of relearn it every time you do it.” The mechanic recalled that the competing system “was way smarter than I was and a little more complicated than I was used to working with. I struggled through using it a few times and at one point, I contacted manufacturer for a field rep to come and help me again. They were willing to do it, but they were going to charge us an extreme amount of money to do that, to train us. That's the time I figured we needed to start looking at something a little less complicated.” The DynaVibe GX3 balancer when coupled with the DynaTrack optical blade tracking system is efficient, accurate, affordable, and easy-to-use to perform helicopter blade track-and-balance. “We purchased a DynaVibe system,” noted the mechanic. “It's easy to install and set up. To operate it… probably took me less than an hour and 45 minutes to get everything done.”  OH-58 in hover during track-and-balance process. His first use of the DynaVibe balancer was on a ship where the crew had just changed out the main rotor hub. During the initial track and balance process, he found that “the vertical wasn't too bad, but the lateral vibrations were pretty bad,” explained the mechanic. “After I made the PC link adjustment to bring the blade down, that helped the lateral quite a bit. And then on the second run after that, the DynaVibe system told me that I needed to add weights to the blank blade bolt and I did that. You could feel it just getting better on each run. I was impressed. We finished tracking it out and I was really happy with the way the system works.”
The department has multiple OH-58 helicopters and the mechanic’s goal is to always have at least two aircraft available for flight operations. As important is ensuring the helicopters are not degrading the ability of the crew to function. “There's always a primary and a backup aircraft,” explained the mechanic. “Our guys fly missions and they'll do orbits over the target area, and they fly three to four hours a day sometimes. It's easier on them, when they're not getting beat to death by the aircraft being out of track, and it's easier on the aircraft too.” This mechanic summarizes his experience using DynaVibe and DynaTrack: “I’m really happy with the way the system works and everything. The RPX rep called and checked on me to see how my progress was, and we sat and talked about the readings I was getting and everything. I'm real satisfied with the service. There’s a great support system there for the customer, and that's a good selling point for these systems. Kudos to the DynaVibe guys; they’ve got a good product.” Visit the Rotorcraft section of the RPX online store, or click the yellow "Contact Us" tab below to learn more about helicopter track-and-balance solutions. |
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