R22 overspeed on start due to throttle being fully open

[stigma]

The title says it all. I've been away from flying for nearly a decade. While working on getting checked out in the R22 I rolled the throttle fully open instead of fully closed just prior to start. Of course and engine overspeed ensued when I cranked the starter. My instructor pulled the mixture within 3 seconds and sent the aircraft to the maintenance hanger. He explained that the engine will probably have to be sent to Robinson for an inspection. My questions are:

1) Has anyone else ever had this happen or am I just a complete idiot?
2) What damage likely occurred
3) How many dollars worth of damage did I just do?

I appreciate feedback; critical or not. Getting back into flying after so many years away is very humbling.

[Redland]

Very humbling I'm sure, but I would have thought just as much for the instructor as many have their hand on the throttle and check its closed before start.

Many have done it before you and I am sure many will do in the future.

The damage will depend on the degree of the over speed, but the engine will be very thoroughly inspected and probably overhauled.

Your school will have insurance, there may be an excess though.

We all make mistakes, hopefully we learn from them.

[Flyting]

We all make mistakes, hopefully we learn from them
and just don't make the mistake of paying for it... Your instructor should have had his thumb out of his ass and not let you make the mistake in the first place! You are only a student...

[LRP]

Welcome back to aviation. Don't beat yourself up about it. You certainly bear some responsibility, however it sounds a lot like "IP late with corrective action" to me.

Sitting in the other seat involves more than just demonstrating maneuvers and keeping score.

[SFIM]

There is a endless steady stream of these incidents and always has been, most high hours instructors automatically have there hand on the throttle and check its closed before start.
Would be nice if the start was inhibited if throttle not closed in the same way the rotor brake inhibits the start, would have saved shed load of engines and spinning fans

[Gordy]

As others have said, your instructor bears 100% of the responsibility. You were not current, (no FAR 61.56 flight review I assume), therefore not legally PIC. Any instructor sitting with a set of controls who fails to have one hand on the throttle for an engine start needs to go back to flight school.

[ShyTorque]

Well done on getting it to start first time.

[albatross]

Could be worse...if you had done that in a Bell 206 it would cost a fortune..push start with the throttle full open or even at idle and it is all over. Seen it happen.

[Jelico]

This is pretty common in both R44 and R22. Have seen it (from the hangar) once in an R44. Damage was fairly minimal, an inspection and I believe a mag overhaul. Did you happen to check if the fan had spun? Thats usually a good indication of how bad an overspeed it is.. I am starting to think that Robinson deliberately avoid an overspeed protection system (like the 300's STAR system) to charge for parts! It seems like a basic addition to a 22/44 and would save a lot of downtime, heartache and money. Lucky I did my first 60 hrs in a 300 and when I tried to overspeed it on start, the STAR system saved the day..

[vaqueroaero]

Seen it done in an R22 before. Sounded like a chainsaw starting up.
As others have said the instructor is at fault.....why he never checked the throttle position is beyond me.

[stigma]

This is pretty common in both R44 and R22. Have seen it (from the hangar) once in an R44. Damage was fairly minimal, an inspection and I believe a mag overhaul. Did you happen to check if the fan had spun? Thats usually a good indication of how bad an overspeed it is.. I am starting to think that Robinson deliberately avoid an overspeed protection system (like the 300's STAR system) to charge for parts! It seems like a basic addition to a 22/44 and would save a lot of downtime, heartache and money. Lucky I did my first 60 hrs in a 300 and when I tried to overspeed it on start, the STAR system saved the day..
Thanks Jelico and everyone else. The instructor accepted responsibility, and I sure learned a lesson! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has made this bonehead move. Hopefully a day of beating myself up about it will hammer the lesson in; I sure don't need to make any more mistakes like this.
To answer your question, the fan had not spun. Sure seems like a simple overspeed protection system for starting would be a worthwhile addition.

[stigma]

Thank you to everyone who responded to this post; at least I can stop feeling like I'm the only idiot in the world who has ever done this. I'm glad to hear the flight schools insurance should cover the inspection and repair. If any of you have a favorite site / youtube channel for new R22/44 pilots, could you recommend it? I want to learn from OTHER peoples mistakes rather than from my own! Thanks again!

[stigma]

this is the first time it's ever started on the first try... that should have been the first clue!

[chopperchappie]

In the spirit of "other people learning from mistakes" - our R44 was oversped a good few years ago and the cause was not the common open throttle but the pilot lifting to hover whilst not being completely aware of his surroundings, which introduced excessive yaw, then in an attempt to get to a "place of safety" away from other things pulled in excessive collective too quickly which meant the governor couldnt keep up.

The pilot then continued on his flight and susequently another pilot used the aircraft - it was maintenance staff that heard the event that later grounded the aircraft.

It cost us £30K+ but was insured, took months to sort out - lots of time and effort.

In My Humble Opinion - Lessons to be learned;

1) State of mind - don't fly if you are mentally distracted/tired/drunk/out of currency etc.
2) Discuss and have a plan - if the reaction to yaw would have been lowering the lever - different story
3) ALWAYS STOP and take stock immediately/ASAP after any unexepcted event - you may be in some level of shock or done something you havent considered - seek wise counsel. NEVER IGNORE IT AND/OR ASSUME IT WILL BE OK.
4)REPORT IT

CC

[Arrrj]

Good lesson for all.

After thousands of starts, I always get in and first thought is "THUMB DOWN", then do whatever is needed to start. Doesn't matter what machine.

It's basic. But served me well. 100% actually.

A mate with tens of thousands of hours, does exactly the same thing.

Thumb Down and all is good. Just a thought.

Arrrj

[Bell_ringer]

First lesson I ever got was "take a photo of the back of the squirrel cage". Just in case the bloke before you over-torqued the engine and you get sent the bill. :eek:

[Aucky]

In the spirit of "other people learning from mistakes" - our R44 was oversped a good few years ago and the cause was not the common open throttle but the pilot lifting to hover whilst not being completely aware of his surroundings, which introduced excessive yaw, then in an attempt to get to a "place of safety" away from other things pulled in excessive collective too quickly which meant the governor couldnt keep up.

CC

Also seen things heading this way a number of times as an instructor when the student is tense, could be a slow governor (common at altitude) but more common in my experience is the student/pilot is gripping the throttle too tightly, white knuckled, and not letting the governor do it's job.

[Cylinder Head]

Another gotcha to watch for is the habit of some pilots ticking the throttle open slightly to help the start. We now teach that this is not an acceptable technique following the experience of an examiner doing a type rating test on a R44 Raven II. Examiner had checked throttle was closed prior to start then removed hands from controls for flight as required in that role.
Student had gradually tickled throttle open further and further whilst cranking because the engine hadn't started, then he suddenly realised that he hadn't pushed the mixture in, so did so. Result overspeed and fastest type rating test failure ever - within 2 secs of engine.

[Dynamic Roller]

Good lesson for all.

After thousands of starts, I always get in and first thought is "THUMB DOWN", then do whatever is needed to start. Doesn't matter what machine.

It's basic. But served me well. 100% actually.

A mate with tens of thousands of hours, does exactly the same thing.

Thumb Down and all is good. Just a thought.

Arrrj
My own starting rule is "thumb down, feel the spring". There is no spring on the other side.

[Arm out the window]

Examiner had checked throttle was closed prior to start then removed hands from controls for flight as required in that role.

The unobtrusive fingers of the examiner's left hand resting lightly on the throttle would have let him or her monitor the candidate and prevent an expensive stuff up too - it surprises me that wasn't done. It's not interfering with the test, just sensible.

[Paul Cantrell]

1) Has anyone else ever had this happen or am I just a complete idiot?
2) What damage likely occurred
3) How many dollars worth of damage did I just do?


You're not the first one, it happens, which is too bad because as many people here pointed out, it's easily preventable.

Dynamic Roller said:

My own starting rule is "thumb down, feel the spring". There is no spring on the other side.


which is what we teach. Roll the throttle all the way into the override, and then let the spring bring it back to the idle position. As D.R. said, there's only an override spring on the idle side of throttle travel, so doing that you've just verified that you have the throttle fully closed, rather than fully open. As an instructor, I also twist gently closed just as the student is about to turn the key, to be sure he didn't crack the throttle open.

Arm out the window said:

The unobtrusive fingers of the examiner's left hand resting lightly on the throttle would have let him or her monitor the candidate and prevent an expensive stuff up too - it surprises me that wasn't done. It's not interfering with the test, just sensible.


During flight I will generally have my hand lightly touching the throttle so that I can feel if the governor or student are making a throttle change. During start, my hand is fully on the throttle (but lightly) so that if I have to override the student I can. Not quite the same thing as we're talking about here, but we have had two cases at our school of the governor trying to take the RPM up past 102% once we increase to 80%. In both cases the instructor was able to immediately stop the overspeed from occurring. Robinson's response: "Yeah, sometimes it does that". (I was the instructor during one of those occurrences). As an instructor you should have your hand on the throttle during all those major events (startup, mag check, governor acceleration, low RPM check).

Cylinder Head said:

Another gotcha to watch for is the habit of some pilots ticking the throttle open slightly to help the start.


Agreed. In my experience neither the R44 RI or RII needs throttle to start - correct priming will get you a start with the throttle closed. I have flown R22s that won't start without cracking the throttle but as you say, this needs to be done judiciously. Very cold weather starts are another case where starting with the throttle cracked may be required (in R22). The worry here is that it's not just "overspeed" i.e. a high engine RPM we are worried about, it's "over-acceleration", i.e. the engine gaining RPM much faster than it ever could with a propeller bolted to it. Lycoming doesn't mention this in the manual, but I'm pretty sure you can spin the fan without exceeding 102% by too much throttle when the belts are loose (or during a power recovery auto before the needles are joined).

Bell ringer mentioned that this is the reason to check that the white line on the fan is aligned - if you find it misaligned I wouldn't fly the machine. It's an indication that someone had a startup overspeed (or, possibly, overspeed/acceleration during a power recovery autorotation). If the school claims they don't bother to paint the white line when they've had the fan off, you should encourage them to do so and do what Bell ringer suggested: take a picture of the fan with your phone so that if there's any question about who spun the fan you can prove it was already spun when you flew it. But I personally would (and have!) refuse to fly a ship that doesn't have he line marked.

Jelico:

This is pretty common in both R44 and R22. Have seen it (from the hangar) once in an R44. Damage was fairly minimal, an inspection and I believe a mag overhaul.


It depends on the amount of overspeed. If the overspeed is less than 5% only an engine logbook entry is required. Between 5% and 10% it's a fairly minor inspection including a magneto overspeed inspection. Above 10% you have to pull the engine, disassemble it (including cracking the case). It may make sense to simply overhaul the engine at that point.

One problem is that lots of schools don't have the cash lying around to do this, so either they encourage the pilot to say it was a smaller overspeed than it really was, or they perform the 5-10% inspection regardless of how high the RPM might have gone. The problem of course is that you're asking for engine problems in the future, possibly while some student pilot is flying alone.

Given that people feel guilty about overspeeds, and that they are worried they might be charged a fee for doing it, it's not that hard for a school to pressure the student/pilot into saying it was a small overspeed. This is why I always recommend you "fly rich people's helicopters" - especially if they fly in them - they're less likely to pressure the maintenance staff to not do the required inspection. As our chief of maintenance told me once "I'm not going to jail just to save <owner's name> some money". Therefore they do it by the book and are reluctant to even trust a student to say what the peak RPM was (because really, the student probably didn't actually see what the RPM reached).

vaqueroaero said:

Seen it done in an R22 before. Sounded like a chainsaw starting up.


That's exactly what I tell people. I was in the hanger one day when a student did this and I always tell people it sounded just like a chainsaw. Terrible sound!