Originally Posted by
oldbeefer
SHY - my 3000 hrs on puma included a hyd fail at night ( which led to a restrictor being fitted in the line to the nose jack, as the jack on my aircraft split when I put the gear down), an engine failure at night and half a T/R blade flying off in Belize. Apart from that, I found it a very reliable aircraft!
Bloomin' Jonah! I remember those incidents - was your nose jack the one that motored forward of the normal position? I do recall you ending up in a swamp after the T/R blade problem.
I only reached 2,500 hours but had an early lucky escape after a partial main (metal) blade failure during my OCU course. The rear spar had broken through completely and the main spar about 1/3 of the way out from the root was all but completely broken as well. The engineers showed me the cracked section of the blade afterwards - only about a third of the metal main spar remained intact. I was told that a few more seconds airborne and it would probably have snapped.
I also had a hydraulic failure in Belize. As we lifted off (the same helipad where the 33 Puma crashed and burned) and the landing gear was coming up, we heard a very loud grinding noise from somewhere "up top" behind me. I thought it was the MGB breaking up but it was actually "only" the No.1 hydraulic pump cavitating. I immediately put the gear back down, flew the smallest circuit ever and landed. All the No.1 hydraulic fluid had gone, including the supposed "reserve" for the manual landing gear system. The "down" hydraulic pipe to the nose gear had burst so the manual system wouldn't have worked anyway. Just as well I got the gear down when I did, we only had bare transit fuel to Punta Gorda, there would have been no time to mess about with the sand bag plan. The pipe was one of a bad batch that was known about and should have been changed years earlier. Happy days!
But I never had an engine malfunction (practiced thousands though).