On 12/20/10 I was driving up I45 just south of Dallas and noticed a Russian Hind helicopter passing overhead and I am sure there was another arfcomer behind me in a Toyota SUV. Anybody else see it?

The thing was pretty impressive and moves pretty fast, but I could see it forever, not what I would want if I was the pilot.

If you could see it, I'm sure you were in range.

I saw an A-10 overhead on tue. a.m. @ about 2500 ft.


strange-

Ya, I yelled "Wolverines" when I saw it but I dont think they noticed.

LOL! that is awesome.

shit, that made my morning

Pics or it didn't happen.

there's "Red Team" vs. "Blue Team" stuff all the time.  We've got some of their aircraft and likely they have some of ours.  

The Hind is the most ominous ( yet underpowered ) flying bird out there.

gratuitous Hind image...

That thing is uglier then my ex wife!

That Aircraft is based at Lancaster airport. It is part of "a private flying museum" whatever that is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBOMzFCU0_k


The Cold War Air Museum is a non-profit educational institution whose mission is to exhibit, educate, and eternalize the role that Cold War aircraft, pilots, and other personnel had during this conflict. Museum exhibits include many ex-Soviet aircraft such as the Mi-24D Hind helicopter gunship, MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters and numerous fixed-wing and helicopter trainers and support aircraft all either flying or being restored to flying condition. Museum is open 10am to 4pm on Saturdays.

850 Ferris Rd
Lancaster, TX 75146

Phone: 972-218-9700

Sweet........need to try and hit that up next week.

Seeing that thing over Arlington/Grand Prairie area when I was growing up probably would have resulted in a call to NAS Dallas and shots fired...lol

slight hijack here, but what aircraft did they base the hind off of in red dawn....since it bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Technical term?

What are the two "boob" looking things above the pilot?

shielded air inlets for the turbines

Engines (well, covers in front of them, anyhow)....



 

Pretty sure it was a Puma.

Saw one in the Phx area a few years ago, apparently headed to the Boeing/Apache plant in Mesa.  Could hear it coming––it sounded like a railroad locomotive––and had time to get outside for the fly-over.

They based the movie HINDs on the Puma helicopter.
The two boob thing is the air intake.

How many troops will they carry when fully armed / have any pictures of the cargo area? it always truck me as stupid that they would build a gunship THAT big. Big ugly bastard has to handle like a pig.

The Soviets didn't believe in a dedicated gunship.  Lower ranks that were pressing for a helicopter gunship, based on what the US had done in Vietnam, knew they needed one, but the higher ups thought they didn't.  So the lower guys figured out a way to get their gunship, and that was by putting a passenger compartment on the back.  Then the sold the idea to the higher ups, who bought off on it, and once built it was used as a dedicated gunship, like it should have been from the begining.

It does make it bigger, but it's empty space, so handling isn't really effected.  With helicopters size has less to do with handling, etc.  You can throw a CH-47 Chinook around in ways you wouldn't think possible for something the size of a bus.  The Hind's handling problems stem from alot of things, and the passenger compartment really isn't one of them.

In "Hind"sight, the passenger compartment might have been a good idea for the Mi-24 actually.  They used to stick a guy in the back with a PKM and he would lay fire down during their break, to suppress the target and keep from getting shot in the ass, where there is no armor.  In a move of politics worthy of the US government, they ordred the gunner off to minimize casulties if it got shot down.  Of course without the thrid guy, it was more likely to get shot down.  And I thought the US was the only government that did stupid shit sometimes.  Anyway, when you look at the times that Apaches/Cobras have had to rescue/move people in ad hoc air assaults, and then the later US requirement for the OH-58D replacement to be able to move a fireteam, the cargo compartment might not be all that hokey and idea.  If you had two guys back there with guns, you'd increase survivability, and have alot more room for crap you might want to carry when real bullets are flying.

The cargo compartment itself can carry eight guys.  The compartment is NBC protected by ovepressure, as is the cockpit.  The windows are hinged at the top and there are weapon mounts (like yokes) that you can rest small-arms in to fire from the inside.  The doors clamshell up and down, and take up the front half of the cargo bay walls.  

The problem you get with the Hind and maneuverability is the wing stubbs.  They will give you around 20-30% lift, but depending on the maneuver you can loose lift on one, or both.  If you're not expecting a loss of 30% lift, you can see where that might give you trouble, espeically if it's just one wing.  The solution is to keep up speed and not do maneuvers that would give you problems.  It's a very fast helo though, so you use it's strengths and minimize it's weaknesses, just like you do in anything else.

Thanks, Ross.  Great post. Like the Snakesdriver posts in GD, the Hind is likely driven by the lessons learned from the first days of attack helo employment in mech combat from the Easter Offensive in 1972.


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Thanks, Ross.  Great post. Like the Snakesdriver posts in GD, the Hind is likely driven by the lessons learned from the first days of attack helo employment in mech combat from the Easter Offensive in 1972.


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In before Primorsky posts a pic of a KA50 Shark...

That is a South-African 'Super-Hind' mod - it has very little bearing on the bird the Russians make, other than sharing the same pre-mod airframe.



 

Interesting.  How is it different?  Bigger engines, fuel tank,  avionics?  

ok, looks like mostly avionics and sensors,  no mention of engine upgrades.  That was a grave shortcoming when the Soviets were in Afghanistan at high altitude,  the Hind barely had power to take off and land.

http://www.guncopter.com/super-hind/

<snip>

MI-24 Super Hind Specifications
Crew 2 - With Pilot seated above and behind Gunner
+ 2 door gunners (optional) MI-24 SUPERHIND FEATURES

   * integrated avionics package
   * night vision compatible cockpit
   * doppler GPS navigation
   * reduced vibration
   * stabilized nose-mounted sensor / sight package featuring FLIR, range finder and TV camera
   * optional dual-feed 20mm cannon in steerable chin turret
   * day/night heads up display (HUD)
   * flight data record
   * vhs video recording of sensor data

Engines Two Klimov 1500-hp TV3-117 turboshafts
Dimensions L - 17.51m
W (rotor diameter) - 17.30m
H - 3.97m
Weights 8200 kg (empty)
26,455 kg (max loudout)
Max Speed 180 kt (279 kph)
Range 1000 km - with external fuel pods
Armament optional replacement of standard Mi-24 weapons:

20mm dual-feed cannon
up to 16 INGWE laser-guided tandem-warhead anti-tank missiles

</snip>

Upgrading old Soviet equipment is a cottage industry in many countries. Israel, Bulgaria, and many others do upgrades on the Mi-24.  Usually these upgrades concentrate on the fire-control, NVG compatibility, and throwing some better engines in there.   The Mil factory in Moscow does their own upgrades, and these are the most comprehensive of any that I've seen.  They include alot of features that can really only come from the factory, like bering less main rotor hub, 2500 shp engines (VK-2500's), new transimission (very key with new engines and something rarely upgraded), and most of the features of the Mi-28 simply moved into the Mi-24's body (like tail rotor, fire control, etc.).

My brush with a Hind...

As a tanker we spent hours and hours doing aircraft recognition classes.  There is nothing that makes a tanker's skin crawl than something above you.  Our greatest fear was always the Hind, we were taught how to shoot it down with all weapons available if possible.  In the simulator gunners always trained to take down a chopper.  

Fast forward to Iraq, 1991.  We were travelling in line a few days before the kickoff of the ground war and out from behind a rocky hill flies a Hind.  Everyone shit and 16 gun tubes all turned on the Hind at the same time, it was kinda cool to see how fast everyone got a gun on that chopper.  All of a sudden over the radio all we heard was the CO yelling to stand down it was a friendly Hind...  A friendly Hind?  WTF???  Turns out it was an Egyptian Hind and it was indeed friendly.  Lucky for him.  He was flying pretty slow and level at only about 800 meters when he came out so he would have been obliterated had we opened fire.

That would have been cool to see the response to the Hind.

I haven't watched Red Dawn in a long time but if I remember correctly what they tried to emulate looked more like A models...like this


and a cool paint job on a D model

probably a drug cartel helicopter heading to arlington for an avionics update

Rotor & Wing Magazine did a story on the three Puma's they used for Red Dawn (and Rambo 2, as I recall). There wasn't a lot of info (commercially) available to Hollywood, so they improvised on The Pumas making them "into" A-models.

These Hind-A models were made using British Puma helicopters as a base; same helicopters were used in Rambo II and Rambo III.

I had heard somewhere that the Hind was the only helicopter with ejection seats. They had explosive bolts on the the rotor blades which fired as soon as they pulled the lever on the ejection seat.



Kinda cool.

I don't think thats the Hind, but I believe the new Russian attack chopper does that.

ETA:

From Wikipedia:
"For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter.[10] Before the rocket in the ejection seat deploys, the rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is similarly jettisoned."