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Aviation History
1987
1987 - 0168.PDF
Electronics, string, and glue As Bell Helicopter Textron gears for V-22 Osprey production, it is learning new manufacturing techniques. The name of the game is "electronics, string, and glue". Ian Goold reports from Fort Worth. Flight photographs on this page by Janice Lowe. They are ringing the changes at Bell. New construction methods are leading to a quiet production line as composites take over from traditional sheet-metal techniques. New scales of size and weight have been introduced, since the V-22 tilt-rotor will be at least 2s times as heavy as the largest current Bell heli copter. And most revolutionary of all—-according to a banner hanging high in one fabrication area—Bell is "changing the way Man flies". Paradoxically, the principle of "tilt-rotorship" is not new, at least not to Bell. The Texas company produced the XV-3 "convertiplane" as long ago as 1955. Bell does not rest on this individual laurel. The company, which cut its teeth on conventional fixed-wing machines, points to a long list of firsts: the first aircraft designed around a cannon (P-39 Aircobra), first supersonic aircraft (X-l), first aircraft to fly at twice the speed of sound (X-2), first civil certificated heli copter, first dedicated attack helicopter, "and now the first successful tilt-rotor". (Historians will challenge a Bell claim to the "first jet aircraft", Germany having flown a jet before the Second World War.) Bell's decision to concentrate on heli copters has given it grounds for some other impressive claims. It has built 45 per cent of the civil helicopters in the free world. The Bell 47 is the most populous piston type: almost 2,500 serve in a civil fleet of fewer than 7,000. Among turbine helicopters (of which, almost inevitably, Bell produced the first), the company has built more than 5,500, just over half of the world civil fleet. This year is the 30th anniversary of Bell Helicopter as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell Aircraft, which itself became a subsidiary of Rhode Island-based Textron in 1960. Leonard Horner, president of Bell Helicopter Textron and known as "Jack" throughout the industry, reports good support from the parent company. Tex tron is "pumping money" into Bell, which is spending $45 million-$50 million a year in capital improvements, in research and development, and in maintaining a large inventory of parts and spares. As part of Textron, Bell is No 12 among the top 100 36 Bell is learning new technology. Above left Computer-controlled equipment is used in manufacturing rotor blades and V-22 parts. Top Ultrasonic scanning detects flaws. Above Bell's 680 rotor US Department of Defence contractors. International Textron is No 11 of the top 25 US exporters. Bell's 22,000 civil and military helicop ters fly more than 4,500,000hr a year, an average utilisation of more than 200hr. Eleven models are in production, drawn from a wide family which includes the ubiquitous 206 JetRanger, 206L Long- Ranger, 222UT, 222B, 214ST, 212, and 412SP civil types, and the military V-22 Osprey (with Boeing), LHX (with McDonnell Douglas), OH-58D Advanced Scout, AH-1W SuperCobra, Modernised AH-IS Cobra, TH-57B primary trainer, and TH-57C advanced instrument trainer programmes. Bell has produced the 406 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 18 April 1987
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