Your absolutely right Dennis. There's never been a crash from blade
failure here in the US. Probably never will be either and not because
of this AD. We don't have pilots flying 5000 hours on one set of
blades like pilots do in other countries. About the blades: the AD
applies to all -2 blades. That's basically all of them. And your right
about Robinson...they will make millions and millions of dollars off
this AD. HUGE MONEY. And here we are forced to buy stuff we don't
need. I feel like I'm being robbed. I've managed to retrieve data on
many of the accidents caused by blade failure. The data does not
support the ten-year limit. In fact the data proves age is not a
variable in these accidents. The FAA told me that in both accidents
that they cite as the reason for the AD (last one in Australia one in
Israel) the blades were 12 years old. That's not what I found. I
checked and found the serial numbers on the ATSB (Australian
Transportation and Safety Bureau) accident reports. I still don't have
the Israeli blade number but the age of the blade in the last
Australian crash was 9 years old. And in the Australian crash before
this one (2000) was 4 years old. With this information how can anyone
come to the conclusion that blades are unsafe after 10 years? Clearly
there's some other cause for these accidents. What we are told by the
Australian mstering community is that it's common practice to put
4000-6000 hours on a set of R22 blades. There's your cause not the
age. And why should we have to buy new blades because other countries
have pilots flying like this? This just doesn't make any sense at all.
We must write our congressman and get an investigation going.

wrote in message ...
(rotortrash) wrote:

rigor of themselves. For this AD they didn't provide one shred of
concrete engineering evidence. When I asked where's the research the
non-response I got was "how many more people have to die". No kidding
that's what the FAA said to me. Can you believe that? How ridiculous.
There's something very wrong going on here.

Perhaps ask them the Tail number of the helicopter in the US that
crashed due to blade failure because of this cause. I have looked at
a lot of, but not all, NTSB reports on R22 crashes. To date, I have
never seen a case where a blade was thrown from an R22 without hitting
something first.

That really sucks that they would do that. Maybe someone at the FAA
is getting kickbacks from RHC? What a windfall? Is there any way to
check to see who at the FAA owns stock in RHC? Is RHC publicly
traded? Maybe you can request this under fredom of information?

From what I have been told, only certain serial numbers have to be
changed at 10 years. If you are not on the list, you're OK.

Dennis.


Dennis Hawkins
n4mwd AT amsat DOT org (humans know what to do)

"A RECESSION is when you know somebody who is out of work.
A DEPRESSION is when YOU are out of work.
A RECOVERY is when all the H-1B's are out of work."

To find out what an H-1B is and how Congress is using
them to put Americans out of work, visit the following
web site and click on the "Exporting America" CNN news
video: http://zazona.com/ShameH1B/MediaClips.htm