The end of the NTSB report says that they did, and that upon review, they didn't see any evidence of any "drift", but they said they did see a hover of a few seconds, which I didn't see, but I'm not a helicopter pilot... looks to me like he pulled up and started forward, but I saw no pause in vertical ascent.
I saw him pull pitch into a nice hover with good directional control. Trouble is, he then kept going up until the main rotor impacted the hangar door.
Notice the power and inertia in the rotor system -- it chopped the tail boom right off (which is not uncommon when the main rotor gets that out of whack). The teetering (trunion) bearing and the coning hinges allow a significant up/down motion to the main rotor blades.
Interesting too, that it looked to me like the main rotor was pretty well bent up but didn't lose any pieces. R44 blade tips travel at 705 feet per second which is somewhere around 400 kts.
The NTSB report is at:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20040825X01288&ntsbno=CHI04LA212&akey=1
CHI04LA212
On August 5, 2004, at 1200 central daylight time, a Robinson R44, N7036J, piloted by a commercial pilot, was substantially damaged when the main rotor contacted an open hangar door during takeoff and the helicopter subsequently impacted the ground at Spirit of St. Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, Missouri. The flight was being conducted under 14 CFR Part 91 and was not on a flight plan. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed. The pilot and 2 passengers reported no injuries. A third passenger reported minor injuries. The local flight was originating at the time of the accident.
In his written statement, the pilot reported that the flight was to be a local sightseeing flight for the 3 passengers. He added that the left side flight controls had been removed. The pilot stated that the helicopter was parked on the ramp approximately 35 feet from the hangar. He reported that the bi-fold hangar door was open and extended about 10 feet out over the ramp.
The pilot stated that after completing the normal start-up and pre-flight procedures, he established that the area was clear and picked up into a 6 - 8 foot hover. He reported that he began to move away from the hangar. He stated that as he did so the passenger in the left front seat turned to his right and "accidentally and inadvertently hit or bumped the counterweight portion of the cyclic as he turned."
The pilot stated that the helicopter drifted toward the open hangar door and before he could correct the drift the main rotor clipped the bottom edge of the door. He recalled: "I quickly maneuvered away from the hangar building and began to level the aircraft." The helicopter descended to the ramp. The subsequent hard landing caused the skids to collapse and the main rotor to sever the tail boom.
A ground witness to the accident submitted a video recording of the accident flight. Review of the recording revealed that after the helicopter lifted-off, it paused in a hover for a few seconds and then began to climb out, subsequently contacting the door. No drift toward the hangar building was observed prior to rotor blade contact with the door.