Posted on 03/19/2014 6:12:37 PM PDT by PROCON
Very sad about the copter crash in Seattle the other day, with loss of life, but here is my input as a former Army/Vietnam aviator. As the eye-witness accounts said that the copter, which looked liked a Bell Ranger, or an OH-58 as I remember it, they said that as the copter lifted off of the helipad it dipped and started to rotate, which may be a sign of a tail rotor failure. If the tail rotor failed for some reason, there is no control of left/right lateral movement. The copter is then helpless and out of control, and it crashed unfortunately. The reason I even bring this up is that the same thing happened to me in Nam, we were hovering, coming in for landing on the flightline with A Troop, 1st Sqdn, 9th Cav in Songbe, when we had a tailrotor failure, and except for the skill of the pilot we crashed and lived. Just saying, this Seattle crash reminds me of the same situation.
That picture with the child - took the kids to lots of field trips to the science center back in the day. Glad that the crash didn’t happen during a peak tourist time.
Normally, I think the AS-350 is pretty awesome. Lots of power, plenty of pedal, can does most sane things with it. Just kind of weirds me out when another similar ship goes down due to what will probably be a mechanical failure.
What always bothered me about the A/Twinstar was how unstable is was in ground effect.
Yeah, it is pretty squirrelly. Putting it on even a big sized dolly is a pain sometimes.
Didn’t fly OH-58A until after I left Vietnam (cheaper flying hr cost for minimums) but the IP told us to inspect its tailrotor driveshaft bearings very closely because if one seized then you could lose tailrotor thrust.
The driveshaft & bearings were exposed for years before a cover was added in later models.
Sorry to hear of the crash. Prayers for the families.
Ain’t that the truth!
The main rotor to tail rotor ratio is like 15:1 - from what I read about the accident was the chopper just lifted off and went nose down. It should have started spinning right away - it does sound as though the tail rotor did hit something and broke off.We’ll read all the conspiracy posts until the NTSB settles the case. See how close to the NTSB they are.
All kinds of theories will be put forth but until the NTSB does its investigation I won’t believe anything isn’t possible.
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