A real life flying Sycamore at the Helicopter Museum

[76fan]

"You also checked the freewheel because if that didn't and the engine stopped you were dead."

Sorry for the thread drift but a little story ..... I had the freewheel re-engage in a Hiller when established in autorotation for a practice EOL with a student in training late on a Friday afternoon. On closing the throttle completely at the standard 600ft (or was it 400 ft?) the ERPM needle rose immediately, grabbed the RRPM needle, and brought it back to about 2400 ERPM (normal RRPM was eqivalent to 3200 ERPM). The rate of descent obviously increased very rapidly but despite opening the throttle I was running out of time as the ground was coming up quickly. As we were intending to do an EOL mindset just before the flare caused me to close the throttle and even cut the engine! That obviously didn't help, nor did the flare do much for the rate of descent and there wasn't much rotor inertia left either. One more Hiller with bent skids and tailboom. Called to the tower no-one believed me ("it's never happened before") when I said the freewheel had re-engaged, however Ray Tandy very kindly came round to my house the next morning with the words "you were right, the freewheel had driven up and re-engaged". Months later the armchair report stated that I should have waited with the engine at full throttle to bring the RRPM back, and then flown away ... Nearly fifty years later I still believe that if I could sit in a simulator knowing that particular emergency was about to happen I still could not do that, that ground came up very quickly ...... Unlike some on these forums I have learnt not to jump in and criticize any accident ... learn from the mistakes of others yes, but unless you were there you probably don't know the full facts ....