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Old 22nd Jul 2007, 12:00
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FH1100 Pilot
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Posts: 770
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It's wierd. Watching that series of pictures is like watching the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination...

What strikes me as odd is that shot as the ship has started to go over but the blades haven't hit yet. There are two groundcrewmen standing off to the left of the aircraft. One of them apparently has a helmet on (guy from the helicopter, maybe?). The other (the truck driver?) has already started to beat feet outta there. Helmet-guy seems blithely unaware that his(?) helicopter is rolling over without him.

My guess is that the ship was not quite ready for take-off and got into an unintended liftoff/rollover of some sort, perhaps like that Puma in New Orleans after Katrina. News reports say that a "pilot and copilot" were rescued from the ship, which causes me to wonder: How many people normally crew a Skycrane in flight? Secondly, do Skycranes have a low-rpm "ground idle" setting? In other words, were they at 100% NR?

Just asking.
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