Thanks guys!
For those of you who haven't been there, believe me it is very easy to discuss this scenario in the classroom but impossible to simulate in the aircraft. Also, the teletemps on the preflight showed no signs of overheating.
407 and others are quite correct that once the drive btw the mrgb and the engine fails then the only thing driving the tail is the engine, albeit at about idle rpm (when it eventually came back down).
For those of you wondering about the governor controlling the rpm; forget it, by the time I looked the rpm was going
down through 120%. Bear in mind that at the time of failure the engine was sitting at a constant torque setting of about 70% in the cruise.
I stand corrected but in this case the Main rotor uses about 80% of the power; if you suddenly take that away the engine is going to overspeed even though the topping governor will try and limit it to 106% ?? . Remember the engine will have accelerated from 70% up at a fairly rapid rate and I assume the inertia will bunt it way past the limit. I don't know what the max rpm was that it attained.
It felt just like an engine failure with the yaw etc and the only clue I had was the needles having split the wrong way.
I had a fair bit of luck on my side but all credit must go to one of the check pilots who had exactly one week before done a base check on me where we had discussed this exact scenario.
I can still remeber his words " In 30 years of flying helos it has never happened to me and chances are it won't to you either"
Just proves again that training is the best safety device.
I can't remember who said it ; " Try to fly the aircraft as far into the crash as possible".
