Vertical Flight Society confirms group winners of its 2021 Awards, to be recognised virtually at Forum 77 event

Fol­low­ing from its indi­vid­ual awards which were announced ear­li­er this week, The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has con­firmed this year’s group recip­i­ents of its pres­ti­gious awards pro­gramme — pay­ing trib­ute to the teams in indus­try, gov­ern­ment and acad­e­mia work­ing on VTOL air­craft.

Sim­i­lar to the indi­vid­ual recip­i­ents, this year’s group win­ners will be recog­nised vir­tu­al­ly dur­ing the 77th Annu­al VFS Awards Cer­e­mo­ny. It is open to the pub­lic and will pre­miere on May 5th, 2021 at 2pm EDT.

Mike Hirschberg, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “Since the first VTOL air­craft — the heli­copter — began tak­ing off in the 1940s, VFS has been the organ­i­sa­tion that has sup­port­ed ver­ti­cal flight advance­ments. This year’s group awards high­light the incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal advances and capa­bil­i­ties of ver­ti­cal flight air­craft, and those who devel­op and oper­ate them.”

The Society’s Cap­tain William J. Kossler, USCG Award is giv­en for the great­est achieve­ment in the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion or oper­a­tion of ver­ti­cal flight air­craft, the val­ue of which has been demon­strat­ed by actu­al ser­vice dur­ing the pre­ced­ing 18 months.

This year, the award is being pre­sent­ed to the Cal­i­for­nia Army Nation­al Guard 40th Com­bat Avi­a­tion Brigade, which bat­tled the rag­ing fires that engulfed the Sier­ra Nation­al For­est in cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia in Sep­tem­ber 2020. The CH-47 Chi­nook and UH-60 Black Hawk crews res­cued more than 240 Mam­moth Pool Reser­voir campers trapped by the fires, fly­ing in thick smoke, intense embers and 20–30 kt (37–56 km/h) winds.

The Grover E. Bell Award is giv­en for an out­stand­ing research and exper­i­men­ta­tion con­tri­bu­tion to the field of ver­ti­cal flight devel­op­ment. This year’s recip­i­ent is Bell’s Elec­tri­cal­ly Dis­trib­uted Anti-Torque (EDAT) Devel­op­ment Pro­gram. It uses an array of elec­tric fans with fixed-pitch blades and the con­cept offers greater sim­plic­i­ty than con­ven­tion­al designs and has the poten­tial to reduce heli­copter noise.

Using a mix of cus­tom-designed and com­mer­cial-off-the-shelf equip­ment, an inter­na­tion­al team devel­oped and flew a Bell 429 demon­stra­tor, pro­vid­ing valu­able data on the prac­ti­cal use of hybrid-elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy.

Sur­vival Sys­tems Inter­na­tion­al (SSI) is this year’s recip­i­ent of the VFS Sup­pli­er Excel­lence Award. This award is giv­en to a sup­pli­er who, through the qual­i­ty, inno­v­a­tive­ness and cost-effec­tive tech­nol­o­gy of its prod­ucts, has made a notable con­tri­bu­tion to improv­ing the state of the art of ver­ti­cal flight air­craft.

The Robert L. Pinck­ney Award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of notable achieve­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing research and devel­op­ment for ver­ti­cal flight air­craft or com­po­nents brought to fruition in recent years. This year’s award is giv­en to Sikorsky’s Raider X Main Rotor Blade (MRB) Spar Team, Eric Dunn and Kei­th Schenone.

The pair devel­oped nov­el tool­ing strate­gies, lever­ag­ing addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing and the dig­i­tal thread, to rapid­ly imple­ment robust man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods for a com­plex high-per­for­mance rigid main rotor blade spar to meet the demands of US Army’s Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) pro­gramme. 

The Har­ry T. Jensen Award is giv­en for an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the improve­ment of reli­a­bil­i­ty, main­tain­abil­i­ty, safe­ty or logis­tics sup­port through improved design or tech­ni­cal achieve­ment.

This year, the joint US Army/Sikorsky H‑60 Flight Safe­ty Parts Pro­gram is being recog­nised. Ini­ti­at­ed in the 1980s, the H‑60 FSPP reached a major mile­stone this year: 20 mil­lion flight hours with no fatal acci­dents relat­ed to OEM flight safe­ty parts.

This year’s recip­i­ent of the Howard Hugh­es Award, giv­en in recog­ni­tion of an out­stand­ing improve­ment in fun­da­men­tal heli­copter tech­nol­o­gy brought to fruition in the pre­vi­ous 18 months, is the SB>1 Defi­ant Main Rotor Gear­box Team, includ­ing team mem­bers from Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny, and the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny.

For the US Army’s Joint Mul­ti­role (JMR) Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment pro­gramme, the team devel­oped an advanced coax­i­al main rotor gear­box that breaks per­for­mance bar­ri­ers for medi­um lift rotor­craft through the strate­gic incor­po­ra­tion and mat­u­ra­tion of low tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness lev­el (TRL) tech­nolo­gies, and advanced ana­lyt­i­cal tools and/ meth­ods.

The Fred­er­ick L. Fein­berg Award is pre­sent­ed to the pilot or crew of a ver­ti­cal flight air­craft who demon­strat­ed out­stand­ing skills or achieve­ment dur­ing the pre­ced­ing 18 months.

This year’s award is giv­en to US Air Force Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Command’s 7th Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Squadron CV-22 Osprey crew. In Octo­ber 2020, this spe­cial oper­a­tions wing exe­cut­ed a short-notice, long-range clan­des­tine mis­sion through­out the night to a tar­get 2,000 miles away, which required mul­ti­ple refu­el­ing over some of the harsh­est African ter­rain.

Lever­ag­ing the speed and range of the CV-22, the crew suc­cess­ful­ly per­formed an exfil­tra­tion mis­sion from a remote loca­tion — total­ing 11 hours and required a 17-hour crew day — show­ing sig­nif­i­cant self-sac­ri­fice and coura­geous con­duct.

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Her­itage Sites Pro­gram is intend­ed to rec­og­nize and help pre­serve loca­tions with the most note­wor­thy and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions made in both the the­o­ry and prac­tice of heli­copter and oth­er VTOL air­craft tech­nol­o­gy.

This year, the for­mer Hugh­es Heli­copter Cul­ver City Plant — the site of all Hugh­es Heli­copter research, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion from 1948 to 1983 — was select­ed for its his­toric sig­nif­i­cance.

Descrip­tions of the awards and past recip­i­ents are avail­able at . To watch the cer­e­mo­ny on May 5th, vis­it www.youtube.com/VTOLsociety.