SAWYER, MI (AP)-- The U.S. Army is planning to carry out three months of winter icing helicopter testing over the Central U.P. from Sawyer International Airport.
The Army's Redstone Test Center's Aviation Flight Test Directorate near Huntsville, Alabama, has sent a team to Sawyer to ice test helicopters. The group is working with an Italian flight operations team for AgustaWestland, maker of the twin-engine AW189 helicopter.
AgustaWestland spokeswoman Lauren Slepian says preliminary test trials were conducted in February through April 2014 in Duluth, Minnesota.
Slepian says the icing trials allow the gathering of a large amount of data on the helicopter's performance.