Absolutely the World’s Toughest Skid Shoe Ultra-Long Wearing. Full-Length: Protects Entire Tube. Clamp-On: Fast, Secure Installation.

Surfacite Wear Bars are extremely tough. They are our patented, unbreakable, extremely wear-resistant material. Surfacite is made of diamond-hard tungsten carbide, titanium carbide, tantalum carbide and niobium carbide particles metallurgically bonded at 3000°F into a tough, shock-absorbing, work-hardening Nibond bronze binder and encased in a weldable steel skin. Surfacite absorbs extreme abrasion and impact without fracturing. Typically, hard materials, like diamonds, will shatter when hit hard. Surfacite, however, withstands severe impact and abrasion with ease. The tungsten carbide in Surfacite has been crushed into very fine particles that are brazed into an shock-absorbing bronze matrix that absorbs impact and prevents the carbide from breaking upon impact with the runway. Result: exceptional wear-life.

Surfacite Wear Pad on the bottom of a Bell UH-1 Skid Shoe

Surfacite Shoes are installed on Saudi Aramco’s Bell 412 helicopters to protect the skid tubes from damage when landing on concrete runways and rocky desert terrain. Installed in 1995, these original Surfacite Shoes are still in use after 17 years!

Surfacite Shoes are Full-Length and wrap up around the sides of the skid tubes to protect all areas of the skid tube that could be damaged during landings. They protect the skid tubes from damage during training (auto-rotations and running landings) and also from being dented and bent during landings on rough terrain. The wear-surface runs the complete length of the Shoe thereby protecting all areas of the skid tube that could be in contact with the ground. Surfacite Shoes also add structural strength to the skid tube making it much harder to bend the skid tube during hard landings.

Surfacite Skid Shoes add a great deal of structural strength to the skid tube making it very difficult to bend or dent the tube. This is due to the fact that our rigid steel skid shoe and the tough Surfacite Wear Surface run the entire length of the Skid Shoe, with stainless steel banding clamps attaching the Surfacite Shoe to the skid tube every few inches. This design adds rigidity and greatly increased structural strength to the skid tube, thus protecting the skid tube from impact damage of all types.

Surfacite Shoes installed on Detroit Police A-Stars protecting the full-length of the skid tubes. Your tubes will be protected in all situations including maneuvers where you are dragging the heels or planting the forward ends of the skid tubes.

Surfacite Shoes are installed throughout the Peruvian and Columbian National Police Force’s helicopter fleet (shown left) which operates continually in jungle & mountain terrain Over the last decade our Full-Length Shoes have prevented their skid tubes from being damaged during landings in the skid-tube-wrecking terrain of the Andes Mountains (as shown below).

US Army AH-1 Cobras at Fort Rucker equipped with

Full-Length, Ultra-Hardsurface , Clamp-On

Surfacite Skid Shoes since 1982. All Ft. Rucker UH-1, OH-58, TH-55 & TH-67 (NTH) ships have also been equipped with Surfacite Shoes for 32 years.

The Peruvian National Police UH-1 fleet is equipped with Surfacite Shoes, both for training and to protect skid tubes during landings on destructive jungle terrain. These Hueys get heavy use hunting down drug dealers and terrorists throughout the wilds of the Peruvian outback.

Full-Length Surfacite Shoes have done an excellent job of protecting the skid tubes from denting and bending during landings in boulder-strewn Amazonian riverbeds, as shown to the left. A single hard landing on such terrain can bend a tube badly enough to require replacement. Surfacite Shoes have successfully protected these tubes for years.

Surfacite Shoes installed on US Army AH-1 Cobras at Fort Rucker, Alabama, Home of Army Aviation, in 1985. Surfacite Shoes were critical to protecting the skid tubes on Cobras due to their heavy weight and the extreme friction created as the Cobras skidded the length of a football field during every autorotation. Surfacite Shoes outlasted Bell OEM Shoes by at least 100 to 1, saving the Army millions of dollars in replacement parts, maintenance labor costs and wasteful downtime prevented.

Installation is fast (about one hour/pair) due to the unique, easy-to-use “Quick-Connect, T-Bolt Banding Clamp” system used to attach the Surfacite Shoes to the skid tube. The Clamps are made of high-tensile-strength stainless steel, with high-strength cad-plated bolts and steel lock-nuts. Black plastic caps are used to protect the threads on the ends of the bolts.

This system was developed because most skid tubes become warped over time due to the heat and impact which occurs during high speed landings and auto-rotations.

Tubes also bend during hard landings on bad terrain (the picture taken above in Peru is a perfect example of this situation).

Trying to get the screw holes in new, screw-on OEM skid shoes to line-up with the rive nuts in deformed tubes is usually impossible. When this happens, new screw holes must be drilled in the tubes to line up with the holes in the OEM Shoes and new rive-nuts must be installed in the skid tubes. All of this increases downtime, wastes money and weakens the tubes.

With our unique “Quick-Connect” clamping system, this wasted time and expense is avoided. Surfacite Shoes are easily and quickly installed, even on heavily-used, deformed tubes.

Surfacite Shoes installed on EC-145/UH-72 Lakota

skid tubes. Notice that the locations of the clamps can be adjusted to avoid parts (such as hoist cable deflectors shown to the left of the second clamp) that have been installed on the skid tubes.

Surfacite Shoes installed on Australian Army OH-58 skid tubes. The close-spacing of the clamps on the Shoes helps to reinforce the strength of the skid tube making it far more difficult to bend or dent the skid tube once the Surfacite Skid Shoes are installed.

View from Aft End of the left EC-145/UH-72 Lakota

skid tubes showing Surfacite Shoe installed on the tube. Notice that the clamp bolts are tilted and rotated inboard to get the threaded end of the bolt away from direct contract with bottom of people’s boots when they step on the skid tubes. The black plastic cap protects the threads on the bolt ends from damage. Also note the very precise fit between the bottom of the skid tube and the mating surface of the Shoe.

Formed into the lower surface of the Shoe is a “U-Shaped” AIR-COOLING CHAMBER that separates the Surfacite Wear Bars from the skid tube. The Chamber runs the entire length of the Shoe and allows air to circulate between the Surfacite Wear Bars and the skid tube. This chamber dissipates the intense heat that is generated in the Surfacite Wear Pads during high-speed landings. By stopping heat transfer into the skid tubes, thermal stress cracks in the skid tubes and saddles are prevented. The longevity of these critical parts is extended and safety is improved.

The “U-shaped” Air Cooling Chamber also acts as a “crush-zone” shock-absorbing structure that can collapse slightly under very hard impacts, thus absorbing the impact of a hard landing and preventing far more expensive damage to the underside of the skid tube. This impact-absorbing structure will flex and compress and allow high-speed running landings and hard landings on rocks and tree limbs without damage to the skid tubes.

(This Chamber is not incorporated into Shoes for smaller aircraft such as the Bell 206, MD 500, Schweizer 300.)

The AIR-COOLING CHAMBER runs the full length of the Shoe. The Air-Cooling Chamber is formed into the steel structure of the Shoe in our computer-controlled stamping presses. The rectangular, U-shaped geometric form of the air-cooling chamber gives additional strength to the Shoe, making it much more difficult to bend or dent the Shoe and therefore, the skid tube.

You can also see the DRAINAGE HOLES that have been cut into the bottom of the air-cooling chamber to allow any water that gets into the Shoe to quickly drain away.

ANTI-ROTATION BRACKETS prevent Surfacite Shoes from rotating on the skid tubes, particularly during high speed running landings where the helicopter is yawed relative to the line of flight. Even very hard running-landings will not rotate the Shoes on the tubes. On Bell UH-1, 205, 212, 412 helicopters, the large inboard Anti-Rotation Brackets protect the saddle and saddle rivet heads from scraping on the ground and being damaged as the cross tubes flex outward upon impact. The Anti-Rotation Brackets are positioned on both the inboard and outboard sides of the forward and aft saddles. The through-bolt that holds the saddle to the cross-tube is used to hold the Anti-Rotation Brackets in place.

Shown above are the Outboard Anti-Rotation Brackets on Surfacite Shoes for Bell 412 helicopter. The Brackets are bolted to the skid tube saddles (using the through-bolt that attaches the saddle to the cross-tube) to prevent the Shoe from rotating on the skid tubes during landings, particularly landings where the helicopter is yawed relative to the line of flight.

Shown above is the Inboard Anti-Rotation Brackets on Surfacite Shoes for Bell UH-1 helicopter. This A-R bracket also protects the rivet heads of the rivets that attach the cross tube saddle to the skid tube.