Stu,

I reccommend that you keep your Safari. I agree with you completely
about the Brantly looking like a flying Ice Cream Cone. It definitely
takes a lot of the fun out of flying when you know the people on the
ground are laughing at you, wondering if you have any Strawberry-Pecan
for sale. The only thing worse would be to fly in that hot-air
balloon that is shaped like Mickey Mouse.

I was stunned when I discovered that the B2B uses a vertically running
engine *despite* having at least three gearboxes. The Exec uses a
vertically running engine because it does not have a gearbox. I have
to say that I never realized that Lycoming even made a vertical
version of the O-360. I couldn't see well enough into the wreckage to
tell, but there was at least three gearboxes in the B2B. There were
two gearboxes on the tail boom. One was at the apex where it makes a
45 degree turn upward. The other was at the tail rotor.

This extra 45 degree gearbox seems to be a waste. It adds a lot of
extra weight and doesn't buy you anything. I will have to admit that
I was fascinated by the gearboxes themselves. They appeared to be
made out of 2" galvanized pipe elbows. I'm not sure if they really
were, but that's what they looked like.

I read the NTSB report about the crash and learned something. I
learned that the NTSB leaves out a lot of detail. We (myself and
other folks at the airport) were thinking maybe there was something
wrong with the engine which would explain the pilot not having enough
power to maintain a hover. The passenger weighed 190# which shouldn't
have been that excessive. Apparently, the NTSB never bothered to test
the engine and fuel systems as we had expected them to do.

According to the NTSB report, the pilot/owner said that the passenger
was flying the helicopter which caused it to crash. However, this is
not what I heard the passenger say. The passenger told me that he
never took the controls.

The pilot was an airline transport pilot with 28,000 flight hours and
over 100 hours in this particular B2B. I find it difficult to believe
that a pilot with this many hours would carelessly neglect to maintain
rotor RPM if he had a choice. Even if he did turn the controls over
to the passenger, a PIC with 28K hours would not allow the RPM to
decay like that. The tach is in plain sight.

Not to contradict myself, but I am truly interested in the facts that
surround this particular crash regardless of whether my opinion is
right or wrong. As such, I will have point out that the helicopter
crashed shortly after being refueled and that other people have had
trouble after refueling.

On 12/30/2003, a Cessna 441 crashed shortly after refueling at this
same airport. Then, a month later on 1/22/2004, another plane, this
time a Piper PA-23-160, also crashed after refueling. Both of these
accidents were fatal and had engine failure before hitting the ground.
Although, there was speculation about the fuel being bad, it was
tested and nothing was found. Not only that, but there were a lot of
other planes that used the same fuel and didn't crash. Nevertheless,
it still seems like there is more to it than a coincidence.

On another note, I would be curious as to how B2B's handle the weight
shift when a passenger is added. On an Exec, you have to move a
ballast weight depending on whether you have a passenger or not. On
the R22, it uses a high rotor level and geometry solves the problem.
On the B2B, you have a low rotor level and AFAIK no ballast weight.
How does the B2B do it? It this something inherrant to the 3 bladed
hub or does it simply have a large amount of cyclic?

Dennis H.




"Stu & Kathy Fields" wrote:

One thing I noticed in the Brantly was that the rotor positioned so close to
the bubble could and did cause a very annoying flicker with the sun at the
right angle. A hat with a bill would be a must.
I agree with on poster the Brantly I flew was relatively smooth. I don't
think that they made the prettiest helo tho..More like a horizontal ice
cream cone. I remember a story Ken Brock told me about running out of power
with a passenger at a density altitude of about 3,500 but he was on a
pinnacle and didn't have all the ground effect he would have liked.. For my
money, if I was located at a place where the density altitude rarely got
above 4,000, I would consider the Brantly because it was so easy to fly.

Stu Fields Safari Driver.
"Murphy's law" wrote in message

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