Helicopter down in AZ

pmanton

pmanton

Final Approach
PoA Supporter
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
6,260
Location
Indian Hills Airpark Salome, AZ
Display Name
N1431A
Home Airfield
2AZ1
News showed the remains of a helicopter down. Very compact wreckage with no signs of any rotor blades that I could see.

So very sad.
RIP
 
Wow, he was pretty big in the helicopter community. Worked at XP Services out in KTHA. Appears he was in charge of developing / testing new composite blades for the B206.

Lost a good one. Sad.
 
Whatever happened he lost the entire M/R drivetrain at altitude to get that type of debris spread and the fuselage intact in one place. XP performs flight testing for 3rd parties and hopefully the onboard sensors survived the fire or the data was live streamed somewhere. RIP.
 
'The accident flight was the last test flight of the main rotor blades before the certification process.'
 
So - testing new rotor blades. There is some video of the crash after the initial “bang” was heard.
 
Sounds like the dog house blew apart..... I’m wondering if the main rotor departed first just like that Apache did a few years ago.
 
Unit74 said:
Sounds like the dog house blew apart
Click to expand...
The only "doghouse" on a 206 is the oil cooler cowling. With a mile long debris field and the intake cowl and vert fin/TR GB assy sitting next to each other, 300 yards from the fuselage, either one MR blade came off or the entire MR/xsmn assy came out rather quickly. Either way the failed part(s) should be attached to the MR/xsmn assy as they apparently didn't follow the fuselage to its final resting place. Maybe some of the test data was live streamed.
 
In the full auto, is there any issues with mast bumping or over speed on the main?
 
Unit74 said:
In the full auto, is there any issues with mast bumping or over speed on the main?
Click to expand...
While possible, mast bumping in a 206, 205 (Huey), 212 is usually a non-issue as they are considered a "heavy inertia" blade system vs a "light inertia" system like a R22. Same with overspeed. But it's all dependent on pilot technique which I don't think was at issue here.

Heavy systems are slow to respond whereas light systems are fast to respond to load vs unload conditions on the MR. In my experience, most mast bump incidents would leave the aft portion of the tailboom in one location and the rest of the aircraft in another location.
 
Unit74 said:
In the full auto, is there any issues with mast bumping or over speed on the main?
Click to expand...

You’re still under load during an auto so mast bumping is out. You might get about .5 G in an aggressive entry but nothing to cause things floating in the cockpit.

Over speed can occur in any helo in auto for several reasons (turns, weight, DA, poor track and balance) but unless the pilot is completely inattentive to Nr, there shouldn’t be an overspeed. Definitely shouldn’t get to the point of throwing a blade.
 
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