Bye bye tail rotor.
- Thread starter Makinchips208
- Start date
There is another much clearer video out there which appears to show a possible pitch link failure for one of the tail rotor blades which then sets the whole sequence of events off; with intact and unburned wreckage plus multiple videos I'm confident the FAA will come up with a definitive cause. Sometimes video compression artifacts mess with things, so I'll put what appears to be a pitch link failure in the video down as a possibility and wait for the official accident report. But in the mean time we'll gets lots of speculation from expert internet accident investigators.
Pilot appeared to be solidly in the dead man's curve of the H/V diagram when things went sideways and didn't have many options, things could have ended up much worse than they did for both the people in the helicopter as well as those on the ground.
Pilot appeared to be solidly in the dead man's curve of the H/V diagram when things went sideways and didn't have many options, things could have ended up much worse than they did for both the people in the helicopter as well as those on the ground.
From what I read there were no fatalities. A poor kid on the ground was injured pretty bad, brain bleed or something. Sounded serious.
I've watched that video and what I can't figure out is why the big power pull?? Seems like he was close to landing when shit went sideways. I was thinking tail rotor strike but still seems odd he climbed like he did. I'm a fixed wing guy....so idk all the procedures.
My bet is on tail rotor gearbox (most likely) or driveshaft failure.
The video shows that the tail rotor changed speed substantially at the same time the yaw started. Normally, main rotor and tail rotor are coupled via a power tap on the main rotor gearbox, a rigid driveshaft inside and along the length of the tail boom and a 90 degree gearbox at the end of the tail boom. Which means that the tail rotor cannot change rpm independently from the main rotor unless there is a failure in the drive train.
A failure affecting only the pitch control of the tail rotor would also have resulted in an uncommanded yaw but would NOT have caused a sudden change in tail rotor rpm.
Disclosure: I work for a helicopter manufacturer but have not stayed at a Holiday Express recently.
The video shows that the tail rotor changed speed substantially at the same time the yaw started. Normally, main rotor and tail rotor are coupled via a power tap on the main rotor gearbox, a rigid driveshaft inside and along the length of the tail boom and a 90 degree gearbox at the end of the tail boom. Which means that the tail rotor cannot change rpm independently from the main rotor unless there is a failure in the drive train.
A failure affecting only the pitch control of the tail rotor would also have resulted in an uncommanded yaw but would NOT have caused a sudden change in tail rotor rpm.
Disclosure: I work for a helicopter manufacturer but have not stayed at a Holiday Express recently.
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Based on the video it sure appears to initially be a failed or disconnected pitch change link that is swung outwards by centripetal force, followed by tail blade pitch asymmetry as at that point one blade is still connected and controlled as normal while the other will take a neutral aerodynamic position, and then the vibrations and forces from that thrust imbalance caused a tail gearbox failure including separating it from the airframe. In one of the videos you can see the gearbox detach and get flung towards the person taking the video and then landing in the parking lot.
And as an added bonus we get to see the results of mast bumping captured on fairly clear video.
Again... the video is pretty damning, but I'll wait until the initial incident report comes out, hopefully with pictures of the tail rotor components.
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