Weird Emergencies

Stu & Kathy Fields wrote:

Hell, I've got another one.
While up in Minnesota, I was going to give an gentleman a ride and so I
lifted off from a tight pad and took the ship over to a field that had more
maneuvering room. The group of people accompanying the passenger came over
to the field with their big black Labrador Retreiver, who came running and
jumping at the bottom of the helo. Having seen a dog try to bite a tail
rotor, told me that this wasn't going to work so I moved to a different
field. The winds were a bit gusty so we decided to wait and see if they
would calm down. Shortly after, a fast moving Big Ugly Storm Cell(BUSC) was
observed heading our way. Wanting to get the helo under cover, I grabbed
the truck and trailer and headed for the field. Got the truck stuck in a
gate that was too narrow for me to make the needed turn. CB antennas on top
of the truck contacted an electric fence wire which was hung suspended on
normally high enough poles. The property owner came over to offer advice,
leaned on the(electrified truck door and landed on her butt. I backed the
truck out told my wife to take the truck to a different field, Remember the
BUSC was still coming and looking worse. I jumped in the helo, lobbed it
over the fence into the next field, shut down and prepped the ship for winch
loading onto the trailer. My wife arrived with the truck and trailer, (the
BUSC was closer and meaner looking) and the winch failed. About this time I
discovered that I had landed in the field where the heard of Buffalo lived.
Complete with BIG BULL. Here they came. (It is breeding season) Winch still
doesn't work and the BUSC is getting closer. Now the buffalo are
surrounding the chopper, the BULL is shaking his head and pawing the ground,
the owner is screaming "LOOK OUT HES' GOING TO CHARGE" The cows are in a
spectator circle observing the whole process. I can't have my helo damaged
so I charge the BULL with a 2x4 waving around trying to look as big as
possible. My wife who is truly fearless(has night dived with sharks, and
painted Radio towers) has jumped into the camper on the back of the truck
and is looking out thru a crack in the door.

I really like the surprise of this sentence. It simply doesn't finish
like I'd expected. You got a loud guffaw out of me for that one, Stu.

A great story, I thank you for sharing it!

ref
The BULL continues to paw the
ground snorting and acting like he is not even noticing me and my 2x4. The
owner is still screaming "LOOK OUT HES' GOING TO CHARGE", I'm waving the
2x4 and the gentleman who was to take the helo ride shows up in the field
with a truck with buffalo feed and the entire herd turns their back on me
and leaves. Now the winch decides to work. Got the helo under cover and
not more than a light sprinkle out of the BUSC.
Yeah! Why didn't I lob the helo back into the tight pad I started from
where there were no buffalos?? That is the same question I kept asking
myself while sucking on a cold beer after the above fiasco.











"SelwayKid" wrote in message
m...

Over the past weekend in San Diego, an 84 year old man decided to
unstrap and get out of the aircraft while on short final. It killed
him of course. He was in a biplane but it reminded me of some
incidents when I had passengers who became the emergency in
helicopters too. How to handle them?
A pax who was moving around in the front seat and stuck his foot thru
the chin bubble and got it stuck..... Or the big guy pax who filled
the seat so much that he limited the amount of aft cyclic while trying
to flare and land....
Or the guy who was drunk and tried to wrestle the controls away from
me so he could show me how it was done......
The pax who unstrapped and began to move around in the cockpit and was
actually going to change seats by crawling across me?.....
I'm sure you have seen others as weird. How about sharing them and
spice up the board? Its getting pretty dull....
Ol Shy & Bashful






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While not a rotorcraft "oopsie"...............
In the mid 1970's my dad sold his Cessna 172 and bought a Cessna 210. On
one of the very first flights he took it from Indianapolis to the University
of Miami (Ohio) to show one of his close friends his new toy. Everything
was going great until he attempted to land. It was only when he heard the
antenna on the bottom of the fuselage scraping the runway that he realized
he had forgotten to lower the landing gear! He did have the presence of
mind, though, not to try and pull out of it as it might have resulted in him
pancaking the aircraft and himself. He just hit the master switch and rode
it on in. Fortunately for him the airstrip he "landed" had a runway of
pea-gravel and tar. They had just laid a new coat of pea-gravel that
morning so he had the added benefit of the gravel acting as ball bearings
when he touched down. He came out of it without a scratch, but I make sure
to remind him of it every now and then. It was repaired and back flying in
no time. I'll never forget that plane since it taught me the love of
flight. While I will likely never be able to become a pilot I still look to
the sky and wish that I could return.

BC
(snipped)

Not mine this time, but I did have a hand in it.
Guy flying a Safari Homebuilt helo. On approach to field to get fuel, rotor
tach ceases function. No problem engine tach still working and he can see
the blades are turning. Lands, gasses and leaves on the short (10 mile)
flight back to home pad. No problem engine tach is still working..
Then...You guessed it...Eng tach fails. Now he is setting there with one of
his primary instruments completely dead. No problem (this is where I come
in) He has a rotor alarm system that will provide a tone in the headset for
low rotor and a different tone for high rotor. (My design..) All he has to
do is keep the tones quiet. No problem. Gets it on the ground and finds a
wiring problem..
Stu Fields
"John?] "
wrote in message
. net...

Highbluff Stagefield, Fort Rucker, Alabama; Two students aboard, one at
the controls. Routine standard autorotation just like a few thousand
before it.

1000' AGL, 90 knots, aircraft in trim and aligned with the lane.
Collective pitch full down, throttle flight idle, student announces,
"Rotor in the green, gas producer
is...GOING-TO-ZERO-YOU-HAVE-THE-CONTROLS!!!"

I said, "No, I don't; continue the maneuver and I'll back you up if
necessary". He did a respectable autorotation and when the aircraft
stopped I said "I have the controls", rolled the throttle back up to
operating RPM and hovered the aircraft off the lane. He was white as a
sheet and shaking like a leaf. I asked him if he knew what had just
happened, but he couldn't speak; his mouth was opening and closing but
no words were forthcoming.

As much as I would like to take credit for being Joe Cool in a dire
emergency, I was neither cool nor was it an emergency. The day before,
another IP had experienced an N1 tach failure and we had talked about
it in the IP briefing that very morning. When the student went
ballistic, I saw the N1 tach going to zero but remembered the briefing
and noticed that we still had EGT and engine oil pressure so I figured
that the engine was still running. Even if it wasn't, we were set up
for a perfect autorotation so it wasn't a problem.

Turns out that they had gotten a batch of rebuilt N1 tachs from the low
bidder and after a couple of more failures, they changed suppliers.
Fortunately no one was hurt by the failures but several people still
have nightmares.

John




In article , Stu & Kathy Fields
wrote:

Well I will share another, but I'm starting to see that I have so many
to
share that I had better review my maintenance , flight planning and
safety
strategies.
The Safari that I fly has a spring system on the collective to trim out
the
forces so that I can even take my hand off the collective in flight for
at
least long enough to scratch my nose. Without this spring, the
collective
wants to come to high pitch rather strongly.
On a beautiful day on my approach to land, I had just flared and was
pulling
pitch when I heard a loud bang, the collective wound up under my left
ear,
the helicopter was going thru 15' straight up and the low rotor alarm
was
screaming in my headset. To use a "Bartism" the sphincter torque gage
went
off scale. By the time I got control of the collective, I had a good
idea
what had happened: The spring broke. I now have two springs operating
in
parallel. I have since come to believe that seat belts are not needed
if
you have a 1/4" bolt just protruding from the middle of the seat.
Stu Fields
"SelwayKid" wrote in message
m...
Over the past weekend in San Diego, an 84 year old man decided to
unstrap and get out of the aircraft while on short final. It killed
him of course. He was in a biplane but it reminded me of some
incidents when I had passengers who became the emergency in
helicopters too. How to handle them?
A pax who was moving around in the front seat and stuck his foot thru
the chin bubble and got it stuck..... Or the big guy pax who filled
the seat so much that he limited the amount of aft cyclic while trying
to flare and land....
Or the guy who was drunk and tried to wrestle the controls away from
me so he could show me how it was done......
The pax who unstrapped and began to move around in the cockpit and was
actually going to change seats by crawling across me?.....
I'm sure you have seen others as weird. How about sharing them and
spice up the board? Its getting pretty dull....
Ol Shy & Bashful

Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena:

Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat
(important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but
not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the
'Glades).

Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I started across the open water. The issue was that the
horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was
terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept
making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the
job was easy again.

Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas,
but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever
believe possible.

Bart

"Bart" wrote in message ...
Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena:

Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat
(important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but
not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the
'Glades).

Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I started across the open water. The issue was that the
horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was
terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept
making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the
job was easy again.

Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas,
but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever
believe possible.

Bart

Bart
The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground
lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights
and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the
situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water
or jungle, or large areas of desert.....
Fly Safe
Ol Shy & Bashful

"Rocky" wrote in message
om...
"Bart" wrote in message
...
Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena:

Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and
fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat
(important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I
started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but
not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to
Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the
'Glades).

Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I
started across the open water. The issue was that the
horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up
the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was
terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my
conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept
making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it
really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the
job was easy again.

Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with
"point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas,
but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful
about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever
believe possible.

Bart

Bart
The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground
lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights
and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the
situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water
or jungle, or large areas of desert.....
Fly Safe
Ol Shy & Bashful

Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because
the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think
this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively
new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon.

Just wondering?
Fly Safe,
Steve R.

I would opine that an indeterminate horizon is where things started to
go pear-shaped with that flight... But I will always wonder how much
part the pax played in the ultimate outcome - in terms of distraction
before and after it started to get away from him.

I will also wonder why he didn't engage at least the wing leveler or HDG
mode of the autopilot (*before* it really got serious of course). Ego?
Lack of A/P training/knowledge?

Dave Blevins

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 20:45:18 GMT, "Steve R."
wrote:



Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because
the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think
this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively
new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon.

Just wondering?
Fly Safe,
Steve R.

Steve R. wrote:


job was easy again.

Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with

"point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas,

but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful

about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever

believe possible.

Bart

Bart
The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground
lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights
and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the
situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water
or jungle, or large areas of desert.....
Fly Safe
Ol Shy & Bashful


Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because
the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think
this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively
new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon.

Just wondering?
Fly Safe,
Steve R.



This has attributed to fatal accidents. Paying too much attention
visual without referencing your instruments in these situations can be
fatal.

rm

Black hole effect, is I think what this is called. A light way out in the
distance, dark ground before and many have flown into the ground do to this
effect.