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Old November 29th 03, 05:02 AM
Helimech
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Well its a rough ride down but definitely controllable. The BK117 has had
this happen numerous times (I would guess about 15 times, all landed
safely). The engine cowling is being left unlatched (this is not the
mechanics or pilots story) and is coming open in flight striking the M/R
blades. The M/R blades tear the cowling off the airframe and upward into
the rotor system. The result is almost always large sections of M/R
skin/foam being ripped off a blade or two. I've seen several BK blades that
had 3 foot sections missing, from the spar back. The worst one I ever saw
was an Omniflight BK that lost the last 6-8 feet of the Skin/foam off 1
blade. All that was left on the outer 6-8 feet of one blade was the spar.
Like swinging a stick around. The pilot did a great run on landing in some
frozen field but he said everything was just a blur all the way down from
the imbalance. I've heard many stories of aircraft loosing large parts of
blades (shot off) in Vietnam. It livable if you just loose the light stuff.
Most of the weight is spar and metal eroision strip, thats the stuff you
want to keep onboard. I've been looking thru my stuff since this tread
started looking for a weight figure I read one time on what the centrifical
load was on a 206 M/R blade but can't find it. I remember it was a whole
lot more force than I ever would have guessed. Made me respect for the
strength of those TT straps.JC

wrote in message
...

Losing a MR blade in flight results in certain death, but what about
having a blade delaminate? That is, part of the skin comes off but
the main chord is still attached?

Dennis.


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

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