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174           HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

never be replaced with respect to wear. But when you are extending the state of an art, the engineering sciences are sometimes quite theoretical. In this case, it was proven so.

We have had, I believe, 12 failures of one of the driving teeth in this gear, which is shown by the white chalk mark. The integrity of the flight was not impaired. The flights were completed. The failures occurred between 375 and 1,700 hours. I emphasize that we have a history of gears, of a proceeding type of helicopter which never failed and never were replaced. This was a very unique situation.

The thrust of my discussion here is that we were able not only to identify, to locate and identify, but to solve this problem before it became apparent in the military regime.

The military, notably the Navy, utilized the machine having the same components as the model 61 has. This means that by the time they would discover and could introduce enough leadtime to cure this problem, they would probably have to go through two or three replacements of this part on a broad fleet basis which involves several hundred machines. 

The ability of the manufacturer to detect the problem and crank in the engineering required to solve it and to modify and put into execution replacements in the military before failures, and multiple failures, occurred—bear in mind that during the period when we were replacing these gears we were having multiple failures. If you had multiple failures on a four-fleet basis, you are talking about possibly $4,000, $8,000, $12,000, perhaps $16,000 replacements.

But multiply that by a thousand and you get into some very sizable fallout benefits.

This is a large item. We have, for example, another type of savings which is very difficult to prove, to demonstrate. I will ask Mr. Slade to bring this up to the Chair. This involves a high replacement low-cost item, which is on the other side of the spectrum. This little item is known as an O ring. It is a seal. And the price of this seal, believe it or not, is $3.61. Our replacement over a period of about 3 years is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,600. 

Through the efforts of our technical staff we have been able to trace the market and find a replacement part for, I believe, about 20 cents.

There are two opposites of the spectrum insofar as military benefits are concerned where the operator can detect and solve the problem and make it available to the military before they even detect it.

I want to be sure the record contains these items, Mr. Chairman. I realize the hour is late and that you have most of my other testimony available to you. In closing, I would like to point to one future development, if I may.

Dr. Sikorsky made reference to the flying crane this morning. We have a problem in the Los Angeles area as you do here in Washington.

This is what we call the flying lounge. We simply adopt the concept of the lounge but instead of carting it around on wheels in the form of a truck, we would think the lounge should be picked up in the center of Washington, or in the center of Los Angeles, either from a rooftop or from a park as you have previously stated, Mr. Chairman. This could include a check-in facility, ticketing facility, and even of