Thread: Chopper crash
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  #21  
Old May 20th 06, 09:47 PM posted to rec.aviation.rotorcraft
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Default Chopper crash

Kids,

Do not try this at home; its not a demo, its stoopid. There's a really good
chance that you'll never get the chopper back under control because of the
inertia of the spin. And by the way, if you get in to this condition in a
hover over a nice surface you might consider chopping the damn throttle.

Oh and FWIW; I think the water crash this thread is all about was caused
because the guy came in too hot, got behind the turbine, and couldn't arrest
the sink into the drink. Then the dude was so focused on getting the thing
back outa the water that he did a forward version of a dynamic rollover. If
he'd had a system failure, then why would he try to take off again?

There was a comment in here about hin getting into low rotor RPM. That
doesn't really happen in a turbine ship unless you're already behind the
engine so far that you can't get the power up (or you have a low-side
governor failure). Chances are the dude pulled pitch too late and saw his
torque-o-meter peg at the redline and his VSI still saying "elevator-down".
Looked to me like he just ran outa airspeed, altitude, and ideas all at
once.

Bart

"John_F" wrote in message
...
A good demo of this is LTE loss of tail rotor effectness when doing
360 degree hover turns about a point with a strong wind. If you get
the turning speed just right it is going to do an uncommanded spin for
part of the turn and there is not a darn thing you can do about it
once it starts except ride it out and let it turn till the wind blows
the vortex away and your tail rotor is not in the tail rotor "side
wash" vortex any more.
John