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What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives? > The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966 1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Some really hyperbolic comments on there: JohnU says: "It’s all fun and games until helicopter crashes and what should be a minor incident turns into a nuclear emergency where you have to call very specialized decontamination units to remove radioactive material from the site." Alan Reid says: "unless they shoot ’em down on your own territory then you don’t have a helicopter but you have mini-hiroshima to clean up."…
You must not hang out on there. Those are some pretty standard grade Hackaday comments. I love the site, read every day, but the comments section can be... rough.
Some really hyperbolic comments on there: JohnU says: "It’s all fun and games until helicopter crashes and what should be a minor incident turns into a nuclear emergency where you have to call very specialized decontamination units to remove radioactive material from the site." Alan Reid says: "unless they shoot ’em down on your own territory then you don’t have a helicopter but you have mini-hiroshima to clean up."…
You must not hang out on there. Those are some pretty standard grade Hackaday comments. I love the site, read every day, but the comments section can be... rough.
You should never read the comments.
Terrible explanation
Hackaday isn't the end-all, be-all authoritative source for anything. It's a blog that, for the most part, links to neat stuff with a summary write-up. If something interests you then it's on you to follow the links. This is how the web used to work.
Huh? So it's not really in use today as much as hasn't been retrofit out. Those are very different. This also doesn't read well. Maybe rewritten without proofreading
What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives? > The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966 1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Strontium-90 is a beta emitter, apparently, so you could just measure Alpha, Beta, and Gamma and detect false positives due to elevated background radiation that way. If you're in the air you're probably much closer to your Beta source as well so you could detect it above background due to distance. Gamma is essentially light so it falls off with the square of distance. But Alpha and Beta are probably much worse than…
Gamma: Halving distance in the low hundreds of meters.
Alpha: Goes a few centimeters.
Beta: Goes a few meters per million electron volts. Most sources don't go above a few million electron volts.
Neutron: The only one with good penetration, halving distance around a kilometer for high energy neutrons. But note that there are few sources of neutron radiation other than fission.
Thus unless you're flying into fallout it's not much of an issue.
The article is very vague on how the radioactivity allows detection of leaking gas. The video at the bottom explains from 7:50 in. Gas pressure pressing on a spring holds a radiation shield in place. If the gas leaks the shield moves and the radiation can be detected.
There's a good comment: MH-53E maintainer here. The system is IBIS (Inflight Blade Inspection System) and the little pods are BIM (blade inspection monitors). The box is pretty obvious sitting just behind the main rotor on the deck above the center engine. I found a random picture on the web: https://assets.verticalmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/MH... And: The IBIS devices provide in-flight warning of blade failu…
What if the helicopter would have to operate in a contaminated area? Wouldn't it cause false positives? > The CH-53 Sea Stallion first entered service in 1966 1966 is Cold War era, so, I think, an idea that a military helicopter would have to fly in an area that has been recently nuked wasn't totally inconceivable...
Exposure to a nuclear blast doesn't necessarily make things radioactive. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not radioactive wastelands. Even in Chernobyl, the other reactors continued to operate for a time after the accident, and nature is thriving. But, the radiation detector is on the upper surface of the rear fuselage. Hypothetical Beta particles from the ground will strike the underside of the aircraft and not the detect…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a good comment: MH-53E maintainer here. The system is IBIS (Inflight Blade Inspection System) and the little pods are BIM (blade inspection monitors). The box is pretty obvious sitting just behind the main rotor on the deck above the center engine. I found a random picture on the web: https://assets.verticalmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/MH... And: The IBIS devices provide in-flight warning of blade failu…
What does “inches” mean here