2 killed when helicopter crashes on beach near Jacksonville, Fl

[cptjim]

My sincere condolences to the families and friends of those that perished.

Rest in Peace.

http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stories/032707/D8O4NET03.shtml

[bell222]

God bless R.I.P.

[STL206]

Preliminary NTSB Report. Scary stuff.

http://http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20070405X00374&key=1

[Hiro Protagonist]

I used to work for that company. I once found a four cell maglite that had been left inside a tailboom of an r44 for about 30 flight hours.

Scary! :mad: :mad:

[Newforest]

NTSB link doesn't work, got a better one?

[thecontroller]

correct link

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20070405X00374&key=1

i bet the engineer who worked on that is sh*tting himself

silverstate seem to have an awful LOT of crashes. i know they are a big company, but HAI never seem to have many incidents at all.

[RotorDompteur]

Just remove the surplus "http://" in the link and you'll get the report.

RD

[Hughesy]

What amazes me is how quickly accident reports come out. In NZ, It can take months and months for any info at all.
Unless I misread the dates.

I havnt really had a good look at a R44 at all. Are the parts that possibly failed/came apart noticable in a preflight? Or are they hidden away in the fuslage?

Just curious

Hughesy

[bladepitch]

Hughsey

mate all the end parts of the push pull tubes are visible for inspection at the top of the rotor head underneath the swash plate. they are located at the front of the mast. any proper pre flight should pick up any loose nuts attached to the linkages. the tubes go the length of the mast down to between the fuel tanks and around the M/R gear box and you need a mirror and flash light to properly inspect them at the bottom.

BP

[topendtorque]

A terrible ride down for sure and nightmares all round for family members, be strong guys.

From the following bit of the NTSB report, and I have not had the luxury of seeing a hydraulic R44 with its clothes off, but how long is the connecting push pull tubes to the servos? I see also that they don't appear to really tie up whether the jewellery is missing from top or bottom of the tubes.

Examination of the flight control system revealed that the right forward servo to swashplate push/pull tube fitting was disconnected and the attach hardware (bolt, lock nut, two washers, pal nut) was missing. The left forward servo to swashplate push/pull fitting was connected; however, the lock nut was found partially engaged on the bolt threads and the torque was "finger tight"; no pal nut was noted. The aft servo and push/pull tube fitting was secured with the appropriate hardware.


Of course there is the possibility that the missing bolt broke because of stress loads at impact.

<I have seen that on other types often enough>

There will be all sorts of stress marks on the yoke etc, regardless.

However I really do hope that an extensive search with metal detectors is undertaken to lacate all bits missing.

If it was the upper bolt then it could have popped quite aways for sure, maybe there's a few old beach-bum-geiger-counter-toting-hermits in the vicinty that would be only too pleased to wander around with their machines. some of those guys are unbeleivable the way they uncover all sorts of ironmongery.

A micro examination of the other "loose" nut should easily determine whether it is loose as a result of stress load or a mistake.

Those 'pal nuts' are not things that anyone would hang their hat on with any sort of a bump???

I would think that it is very hard for a "mistake' on two components especially if the one remaining was still secured correctly and it was all done by the same gentleman.

The sound effects are abit puzzling and regardless of experience of the observer it is amazing how people rmeber what came first after a traumatic event. But the pop twang, different noise level and flick roll could be indicative of something much more sinister out on the end of a blade???? There do not seem to be any reports on the health of the rotor blades.

[helimutt]

Reading the report, it would appear that the 'servo to push pull rod' would be the bottom one. (reading it as the servo connection to the bottom push pull tube.) Probably quite hard to see behind the fuel tanks etc. The servos are at the lower end of the push pull tubes aren't they? There are no servos attached at the top!




Still not good news whatever happened. RIP:(

[bladewashout]

How the heck are you supposed to find finger-tight nuts in a pre-flight, unless we start checking every nut?

On the 22, all the important ones have cotter pins or lock wire - is that not the case with these ones?

Tragic for the occupants and all those involved who have to live with the consequences.

BW

[STL206]

Robinson uses self-locking nuts on almost everywhere on that aircraft. If it was only finger tight then the nut would not be threaded on very far and there would be threads showing on the wrong side of the nut.

[TwinHueyMan]

"Silver State Helicopters appointed to the Federal Administration Aviation Safety Team"

http://www.verticalmag.com/control/news/templates/?a=4062&z=5

Maybe the FAA will be surprised what they find when they "conduct an evaluation of the companys safety culture and policies"...

-Mike

[topendtorque]

Maybe the FAA will be surprised what they find when they "conduct an evaluation of the companys safety culture and policies"...

could be, could be.

Certainly seems a good idea on the face of it to provide a more definitive set of guidelines, as long as they don’t become an onerous set of inflexible rules. So many of the aerial work operations are extremely difficult to devise exhaustive guidelines for.

I’ve always found that what counts at the end of the day is your basic training, was it done with exceptional discipline. There’s very little more than what is in the Basic Helicopter handbook that will help you in most emergencies. What check pilots do is to make sure that people do the actions.

So for those who don’t put the lifesaver down fairly quickly when they encounter silence say, another set of guidelines won’t help, probably only make it worse.

So often these safety management systems and committees that design ‘em, are only there as a means to a political end. More back armour with limited usefulness, a scapegoat for someone up the feed chain.

I’ve seen the same sorts of people on these committees that you often see in the outback on a horse. Horsemen who claim that they are gun ringers, I.E. top line, when in fact after forty years in the bush they are not much better than your very average second year jackeroo.

Regardless of how many top line people are on these committees it is often the case that their combined intellect is only as smart as it’s most useless member.

I wish it luck.

Re the thread. So far the only comments regarding the accident have spoken about mechanical shortcomings. There was nothing in the initial NTSB report as to whether the blades may have delaminated, despite some mighty funny noise observations from an observer that knew at least something about these contrivances.

But hey this was a training flight, all sorts of things can happen. I once just missed seeing, by virtue of being ten feet short of walking around a corner and casting my eyes upward, the spectacle of an inverted R22, courtesy of a trainee doing the wrong thing. That one recovered.

[SASless]

This smacks of the blind leading the blind.:uhoh:

[gwelo shamwari]

Silver State is to help in making guidelines for the FAA.

:eek: This truly is a surprise to me. From what I have heard from people I now work with that used to work there and from what I have read (there is a dedicated disgruntled student website) Silver State has one of the worst safety records in the biz - with 26 incidents including 6 fatalities with in the last 5 years; a lot of these due to their maintenance and operating practices.

Doesn't make sense to me. I would have thought the FAA would have chosen a company with a good safety record to help.

TGZ