aaa777888: "...low inertia machine like the 44."
Uhhh, what? Low-inertia? I've always heard that the R-44 has inertia like a 206B! What gives?
100 feet agl., 72 knots...engine quits, horn sounds. He does the cyclic-back thing alright to get his rpm back but apparently bled off most or all of his airspeed in the process. The horn sounds intermittently, indicating that the collective may not have been on the bottom. He gets a little rpm back in his premature flare and then again in the turn, but it evidently doesn't stay up.
We cannot see the tacho or any of the caution lights. R-44 kids these days sure do love their devices in the cockpit. I ask: How many devices do you need on a hog hunt flight! This kid has one device blocking his view of the mag switch (obviously), and *another* device mounted in such a way that it may have blocked the PIC's view of the caution panel. I am reminded of that chick out on the U.S. west coast who took off to go do some frost control one *dark* morning. She got fiddling with her iPad right after takeoff and ran her little R-44 smack dab into a grove of trees! Wrecked that ship pretty good - lucky she wasn't killed! (She may have damaged one of the trees in that grove, too.)
Finally, aa777888, you and I will just have to disagree on how "difficult" that EOL was. In my limited experience (11,000 hours) most helicopters come down pretty steeply in autorotation. Like, between-the-pedals steep, especially if you start close to your best-auto speed to begin with. Maybe yours doesn't. The powerline along the road was visible from a long way off. The kid should have realized immediately that he'd never glide past it - not from 100'. But there seemed to be plenty of open areas between the sagebrush to set the thing down. I know it's harsh to judge a guy's autorotation after the fact, but the video evidence of this one is pretty damning.
Yeah, yeah, everybody lived and the machine can be replaced...a new job can be found...new devices can be ordered from Apple, and we're thankful for all of that...I guess... But yet another "helicopters are dangerous!" video will go viral on YouTube and Instagram and wherever else "INSANE!!" aircraft crash videos are sold. And anytime a non-aviator asks us what happens when the engine quits, and we give them that standard old explanation of "air rushing up through the rotor keeps it spinning and we have complete control," the non-aviator will say, "Yeah, but I saw this YouTube video of a helicopter that crashed on a hog hunt, and..." And we'll sigh and silently think to ourself, "At least he didn't ask me about the Kobe Bryant crash!"