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Rather him than me! As per the comments, I'm also surprised that nobody was rushing out there to chain it down?

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A plan is simply a basis for change.

While that is fantistic flying, surely there is a limit on operating helicopters in certain sea conditions! That was an accident looking for a place to happen!

Designed to fly without restraint and haul down gear in sea state six. In sea state 8 with them. What's the use of a a weapon that cannot be used in heavy weather? I think I have stated it here before but we flew Wasps from the Simon van der Stel when an American super carrier refused to fly it's helicopters. This allowed the SAAF Wasp the honour of being the first SAAF aircraft to land on a USN carrier. With the negative pitch blades the Wasp would stick to a flight deck that was rolling at fearsome angles. We once flew the Wasp off President Steyn when the sea was coming over the edges of the flight deck - in fact it washed the two 20 man inflatable liferafts on the port side overboard. The Lynx can do anything and more than the Wasp. In that video there are one or two puzzles - why is he not using the equipment for Ship Controlled Approach in bad weather? I suspect it was probably a pilot exercise to see if a human could do it without the automated equipment. The oleos on those choppers are designed to take a hell of a thump - something like a vertical drop of 8 feet if I recall correctly. Normally he would hover at a safe height from the flightdeck and the batsman would give the signal, usually when the thing was rolling up from the starboard side, and the pilot would slam the rotors into negative pitch and slam it onto the deck in such circumstances.

Somewhere I have the procedure booklet for such landings - not in a trommel but mouldering away in one of my heaps of magazines I imagine.

And what, for the unenlightened, are "oleos"?

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A plan is simply a basis for change.

Shock absorbers - huge ones in this case.

Thanks Roger - "oleo" means "oil" (as in oleomargarine) but most aeronautical oleos are in reality oil/air shocks. The vessel in the movie should interest you - the Danish Offshore Patrol Vessel Ejnar Mikkelsen. Very lightly armed - although can be fitted with missiles and torpedoes but not normally carried. (Fitted for but not with - a term becoming common in naval circles.). Standard armament is the 76mm Oto and two 12.7mm Brownings. 1800 tonner - flight deck but no hangar. It can do a rotors running refuel on a Lynx though.

Thanks.

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A plan is simply a basis for change.

If you look at this picture of a Westland Wasp's port forward landing gear you get some idea of how robust the whole thing was. The two shiny bits are the two oleos.

Yep, looks pretty meaty. Doubt one would be able to conduct a car type bounce test on one of those.

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A plan is simply a basis for change.

This has been posted before.

As the video title suggests: Ship Helicopter Operating Limit Development.

You can see the pilot slam it into reverse pitch at the end of the video, and the undercarriage, like the Wasp's, is designed to prevent any kind of motion when locked.

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The Danes - along with, I think, the Norwegians have been working on an auto rough weather landing system of their own for a number of years (starting about 8 years back) and looking at the gizmos in that Lynx cockpit I wonder if this wasn't a trial of that system. I would favour the beartrap gear myself but I suppose it's expensive to equip all ships with it. Also doesn't help when a landing on a non-equipped ship of another NATO navy is required.