OT Drivel in the press

[harry]

Re helicopter crash at Leicester. If the tail rotor came off, the pilot became an instant passenger. He had zero control. He was not a hero. He WAS unlucky.

[Andy Burns]

But given he flew that job at least twice a fortnight, his usual flightpath had probably been chosen to be over wasteground, rather than over roads or areas where crowds might still be mooching about.

If it disintegrated rather than 'came off' he might have had some diminishing control?

[michael adams]

Not necessarily.

Antitorque System Failure

Page 11-16

i.e. If the helicopter has enough forward airspeed (close to cruising speed) when the failure occurs, and depending on the helicopter design, the vertical stabilizer may provide enough directional control to allow the pilot to maneuver the helicopter to a more desirable landing sight.

( So much for spellchuckers and auto proof reading apps.)

Reading from the top apparently the technique is to switch off power and allow the helcopter to autorotate. However this requires sufficient height to allow a soft landing which wasn't available in this case.

Pilots are specifically trained for such eventualities. And so he may have responded instinctively in a way which may have averted an even bigger disaster. Whether so doing qualified him as a hero i.e when its questionable whether he had any choice in the matter is indeed another question. Although it may make his death a bit less hard to take for those most affected by it. Although of course there's nothing to stop you from phoning up his family and putting them straight on the matter.

Maybe they're religious, so you could maybe put them straight on that subject as well while you're at it.

As with monkeys and Shakespeare its almost inevitable that you'll post something sensible now and again. Even if its only a sentence consisting of only three words.

michael adams

...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Usual ignorant bollocks from harry.

If you chop te collective and throttle you can autorotate down and then the main controls still work, except the rudder, but you cant climb.

He had limited control even with it totally gone

Enough to choose a little where to crash

[Andy Burns]

I've seen it said you can do that from level flight to autorotate down in a controlled crash, but if it happens during a take-off, is there really much time/height to do that?

It was a twin-engine chopper, with two pilots, why don't they have dual tail-rotors?

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, tahts why he is dfead. But that is why he is dead in a palvce that was empty of other people

TBH not much goes wrong with tail rotors. Espeially shrouded ones.

[FMurtz]

If you chop te collective and throttle,???

[FMurtz]

No, tahts why he is dfead. But that is why he is dead in a palvce that was empty of other people More,????

[harry]

With the tail rotor falling off, the fuselage will instantly rotate (as in fact happened. The pilot has zero control of anything

[Brian Gaff]

Yes the problem is that if it was a gearbox failure it might have been difficult to actually get any autorotate to work. And it was far too low for it in any case. It sounds to me like not enough maintenance or a sudden catastrophic failure. Helicopters have far more checks than ordinary aircraft, for the reason we all know about. a pilot once told me, Helicopter pilots fall into two categories, those who have had a crash survived and are almost paranoid about checking things, and those who will have a crash.

Brian

[harry]

Apparently it was nearly new. Hence big panic at the manufacturers.

[critcher]

why don't you type with your fingers, not a pound of palethorpes best

[Andy Burns]

2 years old

[The Natural Philosopher]

[harry]

Exactly. In private hands, the hours spent flying would be really low.

[Richard]

Damn. He meant to type "f*ck off", but it came out wrong again.

[bert]

Reaction time is very short.

[bert]

Thankfully nothing much goes wrong with helicopters in total.

[harry]

The reason he crashed where he did was that helicopters fly over none inhabited spaces at low levels to avoid people getting knobbed off with the noise.

[Vir Campestris]

Something came off.

The pictures on the Beeb of it on the ground clearly showed tail rotor blades. I won't swear all of them, and obviously can't tell if it was going round.

Andy