During a visit last year with the new owners and leaders of MD Helicopters, I had an opportunity for a demo flight in the MD530F, one of the three 500-series models on the company’s production lines. As MD recovered from bankruptcy and resumed growing, the new owners focused on the most popular models, and the factory is humming with MD 500Es, MD530Fs, and the military version of the latter, the TH-AH-530 or Cayuse Warrior.
Officially, the MD530F is the marketing name for the model 369FF, derived from the Hughes model 369 that started life in 1965 as the OH-6 Cayuse military helicopter. The 530F has longer main rotor blades and a larger engine than the 500E and thus provides better performance in hot and high conditions.
MD Helicopters training and demo pilot CJ Schneider III flew the demo; at the time I flew with Schneider, I was about halfway through earning my commercial rotorcraft add-on in a Guimbal Cabri G2 trainer, so the 530F would be a significant boost in performance and capability. It was also a great introduction to the performance and handling of a larger helicopter compared to the trainer.
When Schneider teaches experienced helicopter pilots to fly the 530F, the transition course includes 16 hours of ground training and five hours of flying, including full touchdown autorotations. Many customers, especially police departments and utility operators, send pilots to MD for annual recurrent training, which includes eight hours of ground training and three flight hours. Buyers of new ships get two pilot training slots and also maintenance training.
The 530F is powered by a 650-shp Rolls-Royce 250-C30 turboshaft engine and features a five-blade, fully articulated rotor system with a two-blade conventional tail rotor.
With a mtow of 3,350 pounds, the 530F can carry an internal load of 1,627 pounds and fly 223 nm. Vne is 134 knots.
There are two crash-resistant elastomeric fuel cells (an auxiliary cell is optional), and these are protected by crash-resistant keel beams and bulkheads below the cabin floor, according to MD. “A three-dimensional truss-type structure with an internal roll bar protects the pilot and passengers and offers increased occupant safety.”
What helicopter pilots appreciate about the MD machines is their precise handling. “People say you just strap it on,” said MD's Schneider. “It’s the Ferrari of the skies.”
Helicopters drive the main rotor blades from a driveshaft connected to the main gearbox, but in the MDs, instead of the main rotor hub mounting to the mast and transmitting flight loads into the gearbox, the MD has a hollow mast attached to the gearbox. Inside that hollow mast, a driveshaft connects the gears to the rotating hub. The result is that flight loads are transmitted directly to the fuselage, and that provides a more direct response to control movement. This design also allows for a smaller gearbox because it doesn’t directly absorb flight loads.
The earlier 500-series models had four-blade rotor systems but switched to five blades with the 500D in 1976; the pointy nose was added when the 500E was introduced in 1982. The differences between the 500E and 530F are the engine and rotor disk diameter, which is about a foot more on the 530F. The 500E is powered by the 420-shp Rolls-Royce 250-C20B. The 530F also has an 8-inch extension added to the tailboom to move the tail rotor aft to accommodate the more powerful engine and larger rotor disk. For those looking to upgrade instead of buying new, MD offers a 500E to 530F conversion program.
MD offers an enormous number of optional add-ons for various operational tasks, including floats, cargo hook, FLIR, satcom, searchlight, FreeFlight radar altimeter, and other mission-specific equipment. The standard avionics package includes Garmin G500H TXi touchscreen displays, GMA 350Hc audio panel, GTX 345R ADS-B In/Out transponder, and GTN 650 com/navigator, Howell engine instruments, and PAI-700 vertical card magnetic compass. The 530F that I flew had the optional Garmin synthetic vision and helicopter terrain awareness and warning system.
Flying the MD530F
Pilots fly the MD series from the left seat. There are all sorts of reasons given for this, but primarily it has to do with flying a sling load being easier from the left seat in terms of reaching the controls and a better view from that side. I climbed into the left seat and Schneider in the right; it was a warm morning at the MD headquarters in Mesa, Arizona, almost 80 degrees F (26 degrees C) and we flew with the doors off. I’ve come to like flying doors-off because it adds the extra sense of being able to hear if we’re flying trimmed in yaw without looking at the instruments.
Schneider started the engine and, after checking the governor, throttle rigging, and N1 deceleration, lifted off from MD’s delivery ramp on the northeast side of Falcon Field. We hover-taxied over the fence to Taxiway E, then the tower cleared us to take off and depart to the northeast.
As we cleared the runway environment, Schneider handed over the controls, explaining that using the trim button on the cyclic would help a lot. “If I get it trimmed out right, I can almost take my hand off and it’ll stay right [there],” he said. The trainer I’d been flying, the Guimbal Cabri G2, has a similar trim system, so that was familiar. Although the rotor blades spin counter-clockwise in the MD, unlike the clockwise rotation of the G2, I didn’t feel any confusion because of that, and flying the 530F proved easy and natural.
“You should be able to just fly hands off,” Schneider explained. “All I do now is minor bumps to keep straight and level. But what people do is they try to fight it and then they’re gripping and they overcontrol and that’s where you get that feeling of being on a boat, those little micro-movements that are over-controlling at that point.”
Leveling off, I accelerated to about 110 knots and followed the Salt River, flying on the right side to avoid inbound traffic that remained on the other side of the river. “The collective might be a little heavier [than the trainer],” he said. “Don’t be afraid to give it a little tug. You just kind of feel the power in this thing. It’s that five-bladed rotor system, it’s almost instant…with how the mechanical controls work and how the flight controls work, you almost get instantaneous power and instantaneous movement within the controls as well.”
Steep Turns
A bit further on, Schneider had me fly some steep turns, to the left then right. “The purpose is I want you to make it tight and let you feel it. Pulling up on the collective really tightens that turn. Rolling into those turns, you can do that from about any airspeed and the helicopter will take it. As long as you’re in trim and not over-controlling the helicopter, she’s gonna dance with you. It’s just a smooth dance, and as long as you’re not stepping on her toes, she’s going to flow right with you. But it’s over-controlling, out of trim where she’s going to fight back and start chattering at you a little bit.”
Schneider then took the controls to demonstrate an autorotation with power recovery. He pointed out that MD likes to train full-down autorotations, where the maneuver ends with a power-off run-on landing instead of flaring and then recovering to a hover. “We’re not going to go all the way into the flare,” he explained. “I don’t like teaching that, particularly, because it teaches you a bad habit. When I teach you the flare to the pushover [and hover], it’s different than what I’d teach you if I was doing a full-down. So I don’t want you or the customer to get in the habit of doing one thing then [getting] the muscle memory and memorize it and have to do it [differently] over here.”
I followed through on the controls as Schneider entered the autorotation and pitched back to about 60 knots. He demonstrated how the 530F happily stays at 60 almost by itself. “As long as you’re not touching anything, the helicopter’s going to work for you,” he said, then moved the cyclic and showed how that makes the pilot have to work the other controls to compensate. Below 100 feet agl, he added power and then flew away. “The smoother that you can be, the helicopter just wants to work with you.”
It turned out that the steep turns were to prepare me for the next maneuver. “See that dry creek bed, fly straight to that,” he said as I entered a small canyon and flew through a twisting course that put that steep turn practice to good work. “It’s just going to get a little tight but completely fine,” he said. “We fly this every day, so there’s no wires or anything. Just look ahead to where you’re going and fly to it, like you’re on a motorcycle. Don’t be afraid to kind of just whip it around.
“We bring [pilots] out here because if you can maneuver here, you’ve really got the feel for the helicopter and start to communicate with it. This is just a good way to get pilots in tune with it.”
Taking the controls again, Schneider flew to a locally famous landmark called “the rock” and demonstrated a perfect pinnacle approach and landing. After lifting off from the rock, he showed me a one-skid operation, where he placed one skid precisely against the rock as if a passenger had to get out in an area where it was impossible to land. “That’s the cool thing about how our skids stick out,” he said. “I’m just kind of planting it against the rock here. Let a guy out and go away.”
Pinnacle Landing
Back at the controls, I flew over to a less intimidating landing pinnacle, not quite as steep-sided as the rock but nevertheless a small spot for a touchdown. Normally I’d fly a reconnaissance over such a spot, having never been there, but I trusted Schneider’s having trained there often.
He guided me to the pinnacle, and I gradually slowed the helicopter while descending at a low rate. Before I knew it, the helicopter’s tall skids were touching down, and I lowered the collective to keep it planted. The G2’s skids are much shorter, and I wasn’t expecting the touchdown so quickly, but that turned out better because I wasn’t agonizingly hovering over the spot and trying to touch down smoothly, which usually results in over-controlling and some uncomfortable jerking around. “For your first time coming in on a pinnacle out here…not bad,” Schneider said.
After lifting off into a hover, I handed the controls over to Schneider, and he climbed the 530F to demonstrate settling with power. Once level, he slowed to an out-of-ground effect hover, then allowed a sink rate to build while adding power. “You feel the mushy controls, feel the buffeting, the shuddering,” he noted. “I pull up, we still get a sink rate and you can feel it’s unstable. So what I’m going to do is collective [down a little] and I want to bring that [vertical speed] back up there and just fly out of it. It’s very manageable in this helicopter; it’s not overwhelming.”
Next was a demonstration of an out-of-ground-effect autorotation, starting at zero airspeed, and with a power recovery. All he had to do to gain airspeed was “barely push down on the nose,” he said. "When I’m up at altitude, and I slam that collective down, the nose is naturally going to drop. And I don’t want to over-accelerate because that means I’m going to move faster toward the ground. So I try to make everything as slow and as comfortable as possible. And then if I need a little bit of airspeed, then I gently, just like I would now, just gently push it forward and fly it there. Nothing to it.”
After asking about how the 530F does with low-g maneuvers, Schneider showed me a 30-degree pitch up followed by 30 degrees down. “We’ll get a bit of airspeed,” he said, “so that’s about 20, 30, and then we’ll come low-g here, and just floating it back down, that’s about a 30-deg angle and then come out of it. Completely normal, that’s how they do their military bumps [low-level manuevering], nothing to it.”
I flew back to Falcon Field, with a slight detour to take some photos of a herd of horses—wild mustangs—that live in the desert.
Back at Falcon Field, AIN director of video Ian Whelan had set his camera up to catch us autorotating onto the ramp. Schneider first set up another out-of-ground-effect autorotation, starting at zero airspeed from 500 feet agl. After touching down smoothly near the camera, Schneider handed over the controls and I did another liftoff to a hover. It wasn’t as precise as Schneider’s flying, but did give me confidence in the MD530F’s superior handling. I flew the traffic pattern, then handed over the controls for a final touchdown autorotation, and Schneider pulled it off perfectly, skidding to a stop perpendicular to the camera.
After lifting off again, I gave control back to Schneider, and he hover-taxied back to the MD delivery ramp, where he shut down the engine.
“In an hour or two, you could easily get used to this [helicopter],” he assured me. “The more comfortable you get in it, the easier and more comfortable that feeling is. That’s why it’s good for the powerline construction stuff, so they can sit there next to the lines, even in high winds, and keep the alignment safe because of how precise they can be with the helicopter.”