Friday, November 27, 2009

Type 1 helicopters: S-70



The military counterpart of the civilian Sikorsky S-70 helicopter is known as the UH-60 "Black Hawk". The first prototype of the UH-60, a design replacement for the Bell UH-1 or Huey series of helicopters, entered service in October 1974. It entered service in the U.S. Army in 1979.

In addition, there is a nice write-up (with some pictures) of the many variants of the UH-60 and the S-70 here, note that this is a MS Word document. The many variants make direct comparisons difficult.

The firefighting version of the S-70 is known as the Firehawk. The Firehawk can be fitted with a removable 1,000 gallon fixed tank. Existing Black Hawk's can be converted to the Firehawk configuration or the Firehawk can be built as a new model. The LA County Fire Dept has an air operations webpage with pictures of one of their three Firehawks and a description of the fixed tank system.

1 comment:

Random Ramblings NJ said...

I was contacted by someone at aerial firefighting who flew the S-70 firehawk for five seasons. In the interest of privacy and all that I don't publish e-mails, so I deleted his comment. I am looking forward to corresponding with him and will write more about the S-70 in a month or so.

Tyler