Originally Posted by
Ovc000
Regarding the topic: why do you call this a gov failure?? in the german text I can read "er einen Leistungsverlust gehabt" which is a power loss. Lycoming engines are very reliable so an engine failure is highly unlikely, fuel starvation or low fuel with a high angle of bank turn? On final approach you can have vortex ring... The R44 turned due to a plane departing, in the turn you loose lift, rate of descend increases, if the turn was 180 degrees then they had wind from behind etc. Or maybe they ran out of power (slow speed, out of ground effect) and overpitched, unlikely with 3 pob in a R44 unless very heavy pax and lots of fuel.
That is what I immediately questioned the pilot, if he had to abort the landing on final due to an ignorant plank driver entering the runway.
He dismissed the media report as nonsense. Tower ordered the plane to hold position and it complied flawlessly.
He admitted that he was at 80ft when he noticed the 80% RRPM.
He had not noticed the horn or the low rpm light, guessing that his ANR headset cancelled out most of the horn's tone.
He'd like the horn to be fed into the intercom and/or a brighter low rpm light, but admitted that he missed the RRPM droop, presumable due to heavy radio communication,
as this was a end-of-the-year GA gathering at a small airfield, with quite some traffic.
So no blame game from his side.