Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
Have you personally experienced this particular failure, or practiced it in a simulator? Thirty years ago I was a QHI involved in a full motion helicopter simulator project for the UK military and was part of a team (of two) tasked to expand the then current teaching on tail rotor malfunctions, which was woefully inadequate. We did some practical test flying (hours costed by MOD on behalf of Boscombe Down) and developed a syllabus. We then began teaching both "ab initio" and experienced squadron pilots alike. I saw many highly experienced pilots fail to arrest the yaw rate in time, despite being pre-briefed and pre-warned that the T/R was about to malfunction. Bear in mind that this was in a simulator lesson doing nothing but tail rotor malfunctions.
Given that it takes a second or two to diagnose the failure in the real case, the pilot probably did as well as anyone could have in the circumstances. Note the slight pause in the yaw rate - it's likely that full opposite pedal was applied in an attempt to stop the yaw, probably a pilot response.Then once the tail rotor blades produced no more effective thrust, round it went again at an increased rate of yaw. Once a rapid fuselage spin develops, response to cyclic inputs may not be what is normally expected and that effective rotor rpm is reduced.
Other things that could cause a sudden yaw are a gust of wind, an autopilot/SAS malfunction, or an inadvertent foot touching a yaw pedal. Dumping the lever and chopping the engines would be an inappropriate immediate response.
This unfortunate pilot probably experienced a T/R drive failure at the most critical stage of flight imaginable. I say "probably" because AAIB haven't yet released initial findings and I am quite possibly wrong; obviously I'm only an amateur compared to some experts here.
An fascinating post from a QHI experienced in Tail Rotor failures in the sim.
In what follows I assume it was a tail rotor failure and the usual caveats to hasty judgement apply.
If I'm reading you correctly and not reading too much between the lines your sim experience tells you if you
really do have a tail rotor failure, tail rotor control failure or failure in the drive train to the tail rotor by the time the handling pilot has evaluated all cues and eliminated other malfunctions; yaw trim actuator hard over, other pilots boots, or whatever then the situation is perilously close or already beyond effective recovery action. Put simply if you have a tail rotor failure especially at high power settings with low air speed, zero weathercock stability, then the collective lever has got to lowered immediately and swiftly, how long a second, two at the outside. Then given the T/O flight profile the nose must be lowered aggressively to recover airspeed for flare, check level. Do Flight Manuals even have graphs for this nightmare?