Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the Ground
Who is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

Friday, November 25, 2011

A Bad Day At Work in Auckland





(The story)

If I had to guess, I'd guess that a rotor blade hit a wire.
Posted by on or about 15:55
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6 Brickbats Thrown:

  1. Damned things are unnatural. I've never seen a bird fling it's wings around over it's head and come to think of it I've never seen a low wing bird either.

    ReplyDelete

  2. From both angles it looked like the airframe broke at the root of the tail before the rotor went off. Maybe the gearbox blew as the rotor head seemed loose from the start of the breakup. But the blades looked intact.
    Now of course I am probably full of it. But that's what I see.

    ReplyDelete

  3. Looking a fourth time it may be the lifting cable broke as there is movement at the bottom of the craft. If the cable broke it could have whipped into the area I discussed before and the whole craft could have come apart.

    (In a prior life, dissecting a vehicle after a crash for the cause was part of my job.)

    ReplyDelete

  4. Yikes. That whining noise immediately after the crackup must be the turbine suddenly spinning away without a load?

    ReplyDelete

  5. There was another site with a slow mo. A cable from the tower or something was not secured and whipped around by the downwash. One of the rotor blades caught it and started winding it up and the fast moving cable literally sawed the tail off.

    One of the hazards of wire cables in general is when they contact moving aircraft or are moved along aircraft structures they act like saw blades.

    What you hear at the end is the power section of the turbine winding down likely in a bent case while eating itself up. The turbines in those are dual shaft,
    power section as in compressor and power turbine on one and the drive section on another that extracts power from what would be thrust of a pure jet engine.

    Normally the rotor head would seem stable but maneuvering like that there is a fair amount of pilot input to maintain position. Nominally the rotor head has a a lot of complex movement in it to allow for the advancing and retreating blades to articulate independently.

    Lucky pilot. What's even more amazing is no others were hurt.

    Yes, they are unnatural.

    Eck!

    ReplyDelete

  6. Definite wire strike.

    1) In the second video you can clearly see two wires coming out of the top left of the frame. A second before the accident the wire on the right disappears.
    2) There was a "pew" sound just as the accident began, which sounded to me like a wire giving way.
    3) The lattice structure shook just after that sound, even though the helo wasn't near it.

    ReplyDelete

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