"Chuck" wrote in message
m...
I was looking through http://www.faa.gov/avr/aai/iirform.htm and found that
a helicopter had an "incident" during takeoff. It says that it became
"nose
heavy" and that the tail rotor struck the ground.

Would this be a typo, or am I just thinking wrong? I would think that if
it
was "nose heavy", the *nose* would hit the ground.

As Bob says, the report is way too recent to be meaningful. Also the "nose
heavy" quote probably came from the pilot or other occupant, filtered by an
NTSB person writing the report. It may simply mean that the helicopter
initially nosed down, and then in a subsequent overcorrection, the tail
rotor dug in.

Alternatively, it's possible that a rapid nose-down motion induced a left
roll (precession), with then resulting in an uncommanded yaw that caused the
tail rotor to strike the ground.

Whatever the case, from the words in the description it's obvious that some
information is missing and/or the description is at least partially
incorrect. Less than a week after the incident is too early to be trying to
learn anything from the incident.

Pete