AgustaWestland AW109

[3] However, the design team came to recognise that the market found a twin-engine rotorcraft more attractive, so the project was revised in 1969, to outfit it with a pair of Allison 250-C14 turboshaft engines.While early considerations had been made for a militarised model, which the company internally referred to as the A109B, Agusta intentionally placed a low priority on the work for this variant in favour of other market sectors.[5] The A109 was subject to a protracted flight testing phase, which was largely attributable to the discovery of dynamic instability that took roughly one year to resolve via a modified transmission design.On 1 June 1975, the type received certification for visual flight rules (VFR) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), permitting the A109 to be operated in North America.[3] In 1975, Agusta's design team revisited the concept of a military version; to support their work, a series of flying trials were carried out between 1976 and 1977 involving a total of five A109As that had been outfitted with Hughes Aircraft-built TOW missiles.It is equipped with skid landing gear (being the first twin-engine helicopter produced by the company to have this feature) and is powered by a pair of FADEC-equipped Pratt & Whitney Canada PW207C engines; its avionics are supplied by Genesys Aerospace, which have been designed for single-pilot operations.Other roles for the AW109 have included emergency medical services, law enforcement, homeland security missions, harbor pilot shuttle duty, search and rescue, maritime operations, and military uses.[3] A range of turboshaft powerplants have been used to power the numerous variants of the AW109, from the original Allison 250-C14 engines to the Turbomeca Arriel 1K1 and Pratt & Whitney Canada PW206 of more modern aircraft.[18] These systems are designed to reduce pilot workload (the AW109 can be flown under single or dual-pilot instrument flight rules (IFR)) and enable the use of night vision goggles (NVG) to conduct day-or-night operations.[14][15] For shipboard operations, the wheeled landing gear is reinforced, deck mooring points are fixed across the lower fuselage, and extensive corrosion protection is typically applied.The British Army Air Corps decided to use those helicopters in domestic operations (being flown by 8 Flight AAC to support SAS regiment deployments in the UK), alongside two additional A109 which were purchased later following favorable use of the first two; all were retired in 2009.[30][31] During the 1990s, the US Coast Guard, seeking to tackle drug trafficking on small speed boats via armed aerial interdiction helicopters, evaluated several options and selected the AW109 as the winner.For a number of years, eight armed AW109s, designated MH-68A Sting Ray, were leased from AgustaWestland and deployed at Coast Guard land facilities and onboard cutters.[38] In May 2008, the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) placed an order for five AW109LUH rotorcraft to replace their aging Bell 47 Sioux in a training capacity; they are also used in the utility role to complement the larger NHIndustries NH90 and has seen limited use in VIP missions.[39] During August 2008, Scott Kasprowicz and Steve Sheik broke the round-the-world speed record using a factory-standard AgustaWestland AW109S Grand, with a time of 11 days, 7 hours and 2 minutes.