PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Helicopter down outside Leicester City Football Club
Old 31st Oct 2018, 08:04
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Geoffersincornwall
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Cornwall
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Preparing for the worst

When teaching TR Fail (drive fail or worse) in the 139 sim I first caution the candidates about taking care not to take too much detail away with them after this exercise - the sim cannot be relied upon to truly replicate the real event. In any case, as the UK CAA research has shown, there are a variety of failure modes that result in loss of directional control. There are, however, one or two elements of the training that are worthy of remembering and putting to good use in the event that you do suffer the loss of directional control and it applies throughout the flight phases - take-off, transition and cruise. That vital action is to quickly lower the collective fully. The second vital action is to close down the engines if in transition to facilitate a pitch-pull prior to ground contact. Failure to do this will result in making the situation worse during the 'arrival' at terra firma. In the cruise, you have more options provided you have been quick enough lowering the collective and are not spinning. It's possible to make use of the engine power to reduce RoD if required but by 500 ft the engines should be off. We see a perfect application of these principles when a 139 threw a blade in Macau. It works, but your reaction has to be instantaneous and to condition yourself for such a horrific event you need to practice - a number of times - in a good quality Full FLight Sim. If the loss of directional control occurs in the hover just lower the collective immediately an close down the engines after you are safely down.
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Last edited by Geoffersincornwall; 31st Oct 2018 at 08:06. Reason: typo
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