(Rocky) wrote in
om:

Surely in your aviation history
you have observed someone who did everything right and got it all
wrong? And, those who did everything wrong and got it right, or more
correctly, got away with it?

I recall a pilot who didn't get away with it. He was going to do a
maintenance flight, with a mechanic in the left seat. The mechanic was
very heavy, almost 300 lb, but the pilot was maybe 130. The wind was
blowing about 30 knots directly from his rear. He cranked up the 206B, and
started to pick it up to a hover, when the wind got underneath the
horizontal stabilizer and suddenly the ship was on its nose. He was
heading across the ramp, full aft cyclic, but that wasn't enough. He was
doing ok until the pitot tube, which was scraping the concrete, hit a 3/4"
water pipe laid across the concrete, whereupon pieces of the rotor system
went all over hell and half of Texas. One went completely through an FAA
van in the parking lot, and another went almost half a mile across the
airport in the other direction, but no injuries resulted to anyone. He was
fired, and the mechanic quit riding on helicopters. The marks where the
pitot tube scraped across the ramp were visible for years. How the rotors
kept from hitting the ground all that way is a total mystery to me.

--
Regards,

Stan